Background questions

[Mongo_Slade]

I was wondering what brush mediums are good for doing my backgrounds i will be painting them in corel painter and photoshop, i also would like to know the resolution i would need to make them look sharp and clear and not pixated

[jeremyhopkins]

It'll depend on the art direction and style that you want for your film. I'm not a background painter so when I use painter for my stuff, I just use the stock brushes. Many of the stock gouache or watercolor brushes work fine for me.

[segun]

Hi there,
Like Jeremy said it all depends on the look you're going for. While I'm no authority on the subject, Classic cartoon backgrounds usually have a Watercolor look to them, if you're going for nostalgia, that's the way to go.
A recent example of this is Disney's "Lilo and Stitch." Gouche is also a popular medium for backgrounds. Oil Paints and Acrylics can create a very naturalistic look to the backgrounds, I recall reading interviews with background artists who worked on Disney's Hercules and Tarzan, that mentioned using Acrylics for creating backgrounds.

For further research, i suggest reading Hans Bacher's (a master) blog.
http://one1more2time3.wordpress.com/

As far as resolution goes, it really depends on what your final output is going to be:

If it's just a DVD(NTSC), your bg paintings should be no less than 720x480 pixels wide at 72 dpi (screen resolution). Other popular output formats are HD 720p, HD 1080p, 2K (film), 4K (IMAX). You can google each of them to see what their sizes are in pixels.

I recommend working a little larger than your final output, this is even more crucial if you're going to do camera moves like a dolly in in or out, then you'll have to work a larger (than your final output resolution in pixels) to make sure your background doesn't pixelate.

If you're going to do high quality prints of these backgrounds, then work at at least 300dpi(print resolution).

[jeremyfries]

Hi Mongo,

If you're going to do them digitally, have a look at ArtRage (http://www.artrage.com/) software. It has some amazing tools, a very simple interface, and it plays well with Photoshop. Also, it's really cheap! You can even download the starter version for free!