Bi-weekly blog #21: Background Appreciation Monday (Patreon)

This week is a bit of a "in between news"-week. I'm as busy as ever, but I don't feel tired at all because the things we're working on are just so much fun to make. 

I'll share everything with you when I'm allowed to, but I promise you, it's gonna be awesome.

Still, I feel obliged to write something for the few people who read these posts, so here's a little bit of backstory into the backgrounds of our comics.

I've never been very good at making backgrounds. I'm much more interested in creating characters, giving them expressions and emotions, telling stories, using whacky humor, stuff like that.

Still, backgrounds are - in my opinion - very important in comics. Too many (web)comic artists just use a white background or a single color. I think that's a shame. Comics get so much more vibrant, colorful and intense when you try to make the backgrounds just as beautiful as the characters. Also, if you have a cool background you can hide jokes and references in it, which is something I LOVE to do.

Anyway, as I said, I've never been very good at making them. Which is pretty obvious if you look at early comics like these. I made an occasional good one, like Annoying Abra  or Plenty of Men's Sky, but they weren't exactly top-tier backgrounds (in my humble opinion, at least). I drew these backgrounds the same way as I draw characters: take my custom line art brush, and draw away. The only difference is that I use lines for characters, whereas the backgrounds don't have lines.

But then, along came Coen: the first intern who helped making the comics. Coen used a chalk-liked Photoshop brush in a lot of his work that we baptized "the Coenbrush". You can pinpoint the exact moment we started using the Coenbrush. The background in the Stick Figures comic was made by me. The next comic, the Battlefield Haiku, was me trying out the Coenbrush. Still not very beautiful, but definitely more chalk-y than the previous backgrounds. The comic after that included the first background made by Coen. I asked him to create a background for this comic, without knowing how good it was going to be. It turned out that Coen was a natural at creating beautiful backgrounds that were easy on the eye but still interesting to look at. From that point on, I only made backgrounds when Coen was having a week off. It saved me hours of time and the comics became more beautiful than ever. A few of my favorites are Lewd Cage, Plasma Do-Nation  and Starter Shame.

One of the coolest things about the Coenbrush is the fact that it makes it very easy to make artwork look alike. This is an example of a background I made myself  (using the Coenbrush, of course) when Coen was still doing his internship but couldn't make a background for whatever reason. Now, be honest: would you have noticed any difference if you didn't know it was made by different people?

But, just like George Harrison said, all things must pass. And Coen finished his internship in February and left me with the task to find his replacement. For some reason we only got a few internship applications, so I didn't have much of a choice. But one of the applications was Merel, who I'd met before. I was aware of her skills and I was pretty confident she'd be able to become Coen's equal. So, after making one more background myself when I was "in between interns", she started making the backgrounds. Her first one was Breath of the Open World. Actually, that one was a collaboration of Merel and me. I did the exterior shots (the inn) and she did the inside scenes. That's because I wanted to ease her into it. Merel didn't have a lot of experience making backgrounds, so I thought asking her to make background for a full comic, interior and exterior, was bit too much to ask.

But once again, the Coenbrush did his job, and I was very happy with the backgrounds Merel created. From Breath of the Open World on, Merel made almost every background and she will continue to do so, untill she will finish her internship as well in September. She's making one for this week's comic as I type this, and I hope we have a lot of beautiful backgrounds to look forward to, but a few of my favorite Merel-backgrounds are Koopunlings, Masahiro Sacrifice, and Thanks, Guys.

During Merel's internship I did became more interested in creating backgrounds myself, though, so sometimes, when I had some extra time, I took over background duty from Merel. For example, I did both of the Xenoblade comics backgrounds.

I'm still very happy with the fact that our comics boast these beautiful, detailed backgrounds, made by three different people, while still looking very much alike. I hope that someday, we can publish a book with all the comics and I can give Coen and Merel (and the interns that are still to come) the credit they deserve!

I also challenge you to look closely at our backgrounds from this point on. See if you can make out who created it. You'll need a sharp eye though!

- Abel