I think we’ve all heard someone make the joke of setting their comic in a white void before. When asking around, backgrounds seem to be one of the biggest challenges when creating a comic. In today’s episode we’re going to give our five cents on why this might be and talk about tips and tricks that make working on them more fun!

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Episode Release Date: January 29, 2025

Episode Credits:

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Rae Baade (@overlordrae) - they/them, empyreancomic.com

Phineas Klier (@tentacledeity) - they/them, heirsoftheveil.fervorcraft.de

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:01.05

Phin

Oh, oh, this looks good.

00:02.33

Rae

Is it working? k

00:05.45

Phin

This looks promising.

00:06.81

Rae

Testing, testing.

00:07.52

Delphina

Okay.

00:08.02

Phin

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I guess then let's start. Okay. Hello and welcome to ScreenTones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today we're going to be talking about drawing backgrounds and environments, how we approach them in comics and how to embrace them. I'm Phin, they them pronouns, and I create the webcomics areas of the veil.

00:35.03

Rae

And I'm Rey, I use they them pronouns, and I create the webcomics Overlord of Ravenfell and On Empyrean High.

00:44.19

Delphina

and I'm Delfina. I use she-her pronouns and I make the webcomic Sombulus.

00:49.85

Phin

So I think we've all heard people make the joke that they're setting their webcomic in a vi white void because they don't want to draw backgrounds. Backgrounds are incredibly intimidating. And when asking around, they seem to be one of the biggest challenges when creating a comic. So in today's episode, we're going to give all five cents on why this might be and talk about tips and tricks, how to make working with backgrounds more fun for everyone.

01:19.80

Phin

So ah I will start with Ray. um What is your relationship with backgrounds and how important are there in general in your work?

01:34.84

Rae

I do think backgrounds are important and I will say that I did not set my characters in a white void. It was a gradient void.

01:47.01

Rae

um And i do learn I did learn through experience that I pretty much needed to do backgrounds to give my characters more of a sense of space. So I did start working on them, um particularly when I started Overlord of Ravenfell, and then even more with ah On Empyrean High. And while I'm still not the best at it, I think

02:20.13

Rae

you at least get that sense of place and vibes that I think is very important to my comic. um But I will say that sometimes I do still have that temptation to just put a gradient in there and leave it.

02:41.99

Phin

Yeah, I think that's totally understandable. I mean, backgrounds are a lot of work, are additional work, and especially with webcomics where I feel people really love drawing their characters. They can be a little bit tedious. ah What about you, Delphi?

02:59.61

Delphina

I relate so hard to the gradient. I still use gradient backgrounds. I'm feeling called out right now. um But yeah, i have a I definitely started as one of those folks who just really likes to draw the characters first, um maybe with some light props. And then I looked around and I'm like, oh, they have to be somewhere. Let me draw a few lines in the background of this panel here. Maybe they'll look like the corner of a wall or something.

03:30.08

Delphina

Um, and the good news is that like we're working in web comics. We're not working in full illustrations most of the time. So if you're doing panels, sometimes that is the answer to just do a gradient or, or some light.

03:44.47

Delphina

ah background ah work that that's not very standout. um But I did come to regret like only doing that a little later when some of the world hopping part of zombies came up and like, and nobody knew they're in a different world, there was no real big distinction between, like,

04:06.27

Delphina

where the characters ended up. um So so then I had to kind of go back to the drawing board. um And I found that I didn't want to have to devote a lot of time in the comic to explaining the rules of each world. I just wanted to get to the part about the characters. So it doing more detailed backgrounds that are especially establishing shots um to show somehow where they were would prevent me from having to go into it with the narrative of the story.

04:42.69

Delphina

um so i did come around to eventually want to do backgrounds, want to really establish at least the mood of where the characters were um to to really drive home some of the more deeper character moments.

05:02.06

Delphina

um so so yeah I would start out um with some of my earlier work was like, okay, I have a king character. What type of place does a king live? I yeah have an architect. What kind of place does an architect work work? But I feel like it wasn't until I got to the toaster world in Zombielist, I'm like, I want to do I don't have a core character necessarily that I want to show here, but I have a concept for a world that I like. I have this world that is powered by toasters. All the vehicles are toasters, all all the electronics and and stuff. They're all toasters. And that's when I started being a little more diligent about using the 3D models or looking up reference pictures to to really drive home

05:46.90

Delphina

that that flavor so that it would just be more exciting. And I think readers really responded to that too, which was very encouraging.

05:56.27

Phin

Yeah, I think especially with a story on that scale um and where the world hopping is ah um involved, you kind of have to go into the backgrounds and into the details because readers normally don't want to like have the characters explain what's special about the world. So it's like easier to just show what's special about the world. So I think that that makes a lot of sense and that that's something that like kind of pushed you to to go more into like the background work.

06:30.05

Phin

I think I'm like a little bit of an outlier because I generally like doing backgrounds more than drawing the characters because I don't know, it's kind of like something when when I started drawing someone complimented me on my backgrounds and I just like hyper focused on that and was like, okay, I'm going to be the best at backgrounds. My backgrounds are going to be immaculate.

06:56.39

Phin

because someone once said that they liked them. So to me, I'm really trying to invoke a sense of the world with my backgrounds and also ah let them do like a little bit of storytelling. So basically, Delphi, what but you already said, ah because you can establish so much with just the background, you can show who who are the people that live in that place. What are they like? What are they doing?

07:27.19

Phin

with the architecture, with facts like do they have graffiti, do they litter and all this like kind of fun stuff. So to me backgrounds were always kind of something where I was like, okay, I have this world and the backgrounds are kind of how I express how the world works, which I think is incredible fun.

07:53.85

Delphina

And they're so beautiful too. I just really love, um, heirs of the veil, especially just so much richness and detail. You get this, this idea of this, this, you know, just the vibes. And I think that subconscious like feeling about it's a snowy place. It's a, it's an urban place. Um, these are the kind of people that inhabit this place. It just really does a lot to bring the characters to life too.

08:25.67

Phin

Yeah, I think especially in comics, background should kind of be, um I don't know, kind of a springboard for the characters, maybe stuff they can interact with, but also something that enhances who they are, which I think is also fun to play with and also fun to play with when it comes to characterization, because it's basically like, um I can't think of the word, but

08:54.75

Phin

When something is like um an additional detail to the character itself, something that like, yes, exactly something that that complements the character and that makes the reader understand better who that character is without you having to directly be like, this is the character.

09:04.96

Delphina

It complements it.

09:20.52

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely. I love showing rooms and like places that they live and and just like what kinds of stuff they collect and you can say so much about a character. I remember when I got to the part of um when I was introducing Ciara in some of the later um chapters of Sombulus. I just had so much fun with like, okay, she loves food and fashion and she's a mess. What does this person's living environment look like? And I could tell so much about the character um so much quicker. I think that's the thing that like we get

09:58.21

Delphina

Into this mindset that backgrounds take time and they're gonna take so much time away but if you do a Well a good background a good establishing shot it saves you time because you're telling people things without having to go into multiple pages about like showing them in different things that might detract from the main plot of the story and

10:23.57

Phin

yeah Yeah, to me it's basically like I think a lot of people view them as something they have to do. So they have like um an okay product, an okay comic, but don't really view them as tools that they can use for their own gain. Because ah as you said, you can save so much time, make your life so much easier when if you start to like um get into the vibe of it. And I don't think that the backgrounds always have to be super detailed. They just have to like carry that vibe and carry that mood that you want to um that you want to communicate with them.

11:19.14

Phin

Okay, I think that brings us to our second question. I've already like touched upon it a little bit, but what are your general biggest struggles with backgrounds and how to use them properly? And I would ask Gray again to start.

11:41.03

Rae

I would say probably my biggest struggle with backgrounds is it's very easy to get caught up in what the characters are doing, that you never have a clear idea of where they are.

11:53.69

Rae

And particularly if I have like, um say they're in a room, I'll often have issues on where they are placed, to what kind of things are behind them when they move. I know some people you will use like a map to keep track of this, but I don't know, my brain never seems to actually work that way.

12:20.04

Rae

So sometimes it's like you wing it or draw vague shapes rather than anything that's particularly concrete.

12:35.03

Phin

Yeah, though, I think that's also something you can kind of work with. But I feel this because if you like go with the vague shapes, it can like kind of bite you in the ass later on.

12:45.83

Phin

If you have to like return to that place and you have to give more detail now.

12:49.99

Rae

ah very much so

12:51.18

Phin

Yeah. Yeah.

12:55.96

Phin

So what about you, Delphi?

12:59.16

Delphina

Oh, yeah, I definitely feel that um one problem that comes up a lot for me is I won't think about the background elements I need until the page comes up and it looks empty.

13:10.78

Delphina

And I don't really feel like like breaking my flow to spend the time to find like a model or a photo that I need.

13:12.87

Rae

Oh, very much so.

13:18.78

Delphina

So I'll just like fake it. um And I don't think that's the worst sin. But if you don't have a lot of experience, Or if you're doing some wonky perspective things, it might look distractingly bad and that's almost worse than no background. um So taking the time like before you get into it, maybe at the scripting stage stage to gather up or make potential references can help with that. um I also have a real hard time with 3D models. like I tried them. um I wasn't really great at modeling them myself. My brain just bounces off 3D so hard.

13:58.50

Delphina

um but the google set Or is it Google Sketchup? I don't know anymore. It's Sketchup or Clip Studio. They have a lot of assets for for rooms and environments and stuff. um But one of the things that I also struggled with was I would have this empty room or this empty apartment. I had um a location with no people in it.

14:20.96

Delphina

Um, so drawing them, I could draw the room and I could draw some characters, but then like the characters would not be the same proportions as the room. Like I would have stairs that were comically large compared to the people or the doorknobs were at people's shoulders. And it was just like this bad anatomy, like.

14:43.96

Delphina

perspective combination. um I still have problems with that sometimes. um And I just have to like walk up to some door and and be like, okay, the doorknob is actually about hip level for me.

14:56.44

Delphina

So let's just use that transform tool on my character to resize the sketch so that like, I'm i making realistic environments here. It was so bad.

15:09.20

Phin

Yeah, yeah.

15:10.28

Rae

I know a few people that kind of skirt around that problem by building a lot of their like interiors in like Final Fantasy XIV housing or The Sims or whatnot. But even then, it's like when you draw a character moving through the space, you can get a lot of proportional problems happening. So yeah, that's certainly a problem.

15:39.97

Rae

a lot of people struggle with.

15:43.23

Phin

Yeah, I think it's also like to do with that. Sometimes you're like you're you're not kind of. Maybe I think we're all kind of like we have a lot of a lot of things to do with all that comics, so we won't always go into the like, OK, I'm setting out a perspective grid and I'm completely like lining up how the character has to look in the perspective grid because I'm using like boxes to do that stuff.

16:13.62

Phin

which is all like kind of very professional because that The thing, I guess, if you really want to make it look right, that's what you should do. But it's also not something that I think we have the time to always do because we are doing the comics for free and we update them regularly.

16:35.47

Phin

so um and and it And it takes a lot of time to to get the perspective and everything right. I think, yeah,

16:44.15

Rae

Yeah, it's also really easy to make them look very sterile when you do it that way too, which I think also is a ti is a time thing.

16:49.65

Phin

evening

16:57.64

Phin

Yeah, I also think like it's a real skill if you go from these clean, clear, straight lines to then create a space that feels more organic. So I totally get that.

17:11.80

Phin

I also struggle with that when I when i like go really in, because sometimes I get the itch and sometimes I'm like, okay, I want to do this right and I want to create this background really nicely from scratch with everything set up correctly with all the the perspective grids. And then I kind of struggle like at the stage from actually making this into a space that feels lived and that feels like it has history because that can also be like really difficult because you can kind of draw a nice looking room or a nice looking building but then there's this small thing that is missing that really makes it feel like, okay, this is an actual space

18:07.32

Phin

And sometimes that can be an easy fix because sometimes you can just be like, okay, I have this empty street and I put some burger wrappings and some other trash and some plant life in the cracks of the of the um um of the walkway and stuff. But other times it can be more difficult. And I think that that can also be a struggle to go from like that sterile background to an actual living breathing space that captures the mood that you really want to capture.

18:51.01

Delphina

Yeah, I think you can kind of go one of two directions folks, folks can get lost in drawing too many details that aren't really important. And like that just uses up your energy and stamina too quickly. So you never make more than one page every two months or three months or something like that. And it's just, a you can't sustain the the story that way.

19:13.04

Delphina

or folks just don't draw the backgrounds and it's it's just really hard to tell like how much detail to put into your point um or or like what kinds of details are going to help and i both of these are just an issue of knowing what you're trying to say with the page, what you're trying to say with the art um and like the emotional core of is this um You know, are we are we trying to highlight the environment here or are we trying to highlight something else? Is this an establishing shot or is this like would this be better served with a lighter touch on the backgrounds? There's just so many elements. I think it comes down to practice I think it really does like you have to kind of form your own strategy for it so that you can go both ways and

20:08.05

Phin

Yeah, I think the both ways is really important here because you can draw amazing backgrounds, but if you overdo it and you don't understand how to use them correctly in a comic, it can be overwhelming. It can make pages too busy or hard to read and take focus away from what is actually important on the page.

20:33.01

Phin

That's like one of the background things that I struggle with that sometimes I get so lost in the details and in the backgrounds itself that I kind of lose focus on what's actually important on the page and where I think a simpler approach would work better but I get so up in my head because I'm having fun doing the background that it can be kind of hard to like pull back and get this like dislike view on everything because you like as they say you don't see I don't know if this is this also a saying in English speaking countries because we we say that you don't see ah you don't see the forest because all of the trees okay

21:22.54

Delphina

Yeah, you don't see the forest for the trees.

21:23.36

Rae

Yeah.

21:24.42

Delphina

We have that.

21:25.52

Rae

So what you're saying is sometimes we need the gradient void.

21:30.93

Phin

Yeah, we do need the gradient for it.

21:32.65

Delphina

or Or you could make the gradient, you can use the select tool to make the vague shape of trees and then do the gradient void. I sometimes do that too. um

21:42.90

Rae

Yeah, I do that. I do that sometimes, especially for building like buildings off in the distance and stuff, you got to make use of that atmospheric pressure right there.

21:54.21

Rae

so But sometimes gradient voids can give the eye a rest because doing backgrounds every single panel will make things super busy and can affect your comic paneling compositions.

21:55.05

Phin

Mhm.

22:15.43

Phin

Yeah, definitely. I think I've read somewhere before that um a good use of of backgrounds would be to have like one background, at least each page to like, um kind of ground the reader at the space where the characters are. But I also think that doesn't have to be like a general rule, because sometimes it doesn't really work that way and you won't really be able to draw the backgrounds or to draw a detailed background to like ground the reader. And I think there's like like um the balance between highly detailed detailed background in every page and you get totally overwhelmed or characters like talking for 60 pages in front of a brown wall or something.

23:11.49

Delphina

Yeah, it's about contrast, I think, like, because you can put in some work for some background. And like for other smaller panels, maybe you don't. um I think there's an an emotional element too. So sometimes like you'll see in a slice of life, or romance comic, like they're The conflict is happening internally or they're they're saying some some very important things and so you'll see no backgrounds. They will be in the void and that's an intentional choice. But that intentional choice only works if you do do backgrounds elsewhere so that you establish there's a contrast here. like

23:51.94

Delphina

They were in the world, but when this person said, I'm breaking up with you, the world went away. Wow. Now you're actually showing something. You're because you use the backgrounds before and you're not now. That contrast is giving your your announcement like that much more power. And that's that's really what you want from like the emotional side of like a clean void background to to try to to get that across.

24:23.71

Phin

Yeah, I love that point because it's basically you're using that intentionally. You're just not being like, okay, I want to avoid drawing backgrounds here. You're like, okay, I am having a conscious choice to not draw backgrounds to create that contrast. And I think that also kind of like, um,

24:44.62

Phin

kind of kind of brings us to a point of like more abstract backgrounds because that's something that comics also like to use because it doesn't always have to be like architecture or um i don't know scenery in general.

25:00.22

Phin

It can also just be something that's more abstract or vague to give this feeling.

25:06.83

Rae

the shojo bubbles, shojo bubbles sparkles, or sometimes the, or of course, like the um ones that act that actually depict motion are also popular, especially in the action manga and such.

25:07.11

Phin

um Yeah, i was I was specifically thinking of those.

25:15.64

Phin

right

25:34.24

Rae

Yeah.

25:35.06

Phin

Yeah, I know.

25:35.24

Delphina

Yeah.

25:36.32

Phin

Oh, sorry, don't be gone.

25:37.41

Delphina

Oh, well, action especially is one of those things where you really want to highlight what the, the bodies are doing, what the figures are doing so that it's very clear the silhouette of how this person is lining up for the punch or something.

25:50.80

Delphina

So that's another aspect where you want the backgrounds, very simple, minimal, maybe speed lines, maybe not even that so that you can focus the reader's attention where you want it.

26:05.89

Phin

Yeah, and I think that's like you. There's there's also the the thing that I think background should do. They're supporting what's going on, what's happening with the characters. And I think these these kind of like action focused backgrounds, they're shaped to move with the characters. So they're like the perfect example of a background supporting what's going on on the page with the character, which I really like.

26:37.82

Rae

Oh yeah, you gotta have those Zoom focusing on the characters or following their movements to emphasize just how powerful and quick they are. So I do think that those are definitely something that some people will not think of but when they think of backgrounds because it's also kind of an effect. But do you realize those are used a lot in certain kinds of anime, so you should keep that tool in your toolbox too.

27:18.99

Phin

Yeah, and speaking of toolboxes, I think that brings us to our third question, and that would be, what are some of your tips to make working with backgrounds easier and more fun? Do you have any shortcuts that you would like to share? ah Right.

27:39.29

Rae

Okay, so sometimes I'll just browse the CSP assets and I'll look for 3D things. I won't use them directly a lot of times, but I will like use them to position like say I want a wall with bricks on it and I'll often add a door or something. It's pretty much using them as tools. And another thing that I often use to try to motivate myself to actually draw backgrounds is consider that it's its own character and place. It's more of an environment and less of a background.

28:21.25

Rae

And that helps me consider and make more choices on the actual environment rather than ah kind of just drawing vague shapes like I do when I have to meet a deadline or something. And you might also consider some ways that the characters can actually interact with the environment rather than having it as a backdrop. um Just make sure they're actually surrounded by it and can touch things. What are they standing on, sitting on? What can be picked up or fiddled with? And what's the weather or season? And how do your characters react to all these things that are

29:07.14

Rae

eventually essentially just surrounding them. So that does help me get more into the mood to actually draw backgrounds because it's something that your characters can actually react to much like just another character.

29:24.75

Delphina

I like the comment about weather because I heard some writing advice somewhere where it's like when you want um to intensify the emotions or something of a scene, change the weather, like make it start raining or make it make the sun come out or something like that, because then you're like you're actually showing something Like that's very subconscious but very understandable to everybody everybody understands like ah How the weather can can affect the mood so that's that's really cool when you can think of ways to do that and One of the, one of my favorite comics to come back to when I think about environments, because I also like the point about environments, using the word environments instead of backgrounds. Backgrounds sounds just like, oh, it's a thing I got to do in back of the characters.

30:17.51

Delphina

But like and sometimes like there are elements in front of the characters. Sometimes they're they're touching them. Sometimes they're walking around them, and that can enhance the story. um And I feel like a lot of us can kind of say, well, my story is about the characters. So I don't know why I should be focusing on the environments, because it's really about the characters. But here's the flip side. Your characters live in a world.

30:46.77

Delphina

you're you're telling us they struggle in this world or have problems, but we don't see what makes it any harder or worse for them than our own. And in some genres, that's really that can really pull you out of the thing, especially like post apocalypse or something like that. um yeah Your readers might not respond to your emotional beats as well as they could.

31:08.97

Delphina

because um you weren't using the environments as a tool as effectively as you could have to convey the high stakes or what shaped them. And for post-apocalypse especially, I think everyone needs to read Soul to Call um because you definitely know it's a character-focused piece. um you definitely There's no question when you read it that like it's about the characters.

31:34.31

Delphina

But every environment just gets some beautiful attention, like the graffiti we were talking about, that you know just showing what has happened to this world and what the history is like. And especially when you're showing a world that's very different from what the reader knows, it can show you a lot about how the characters have had to adapt.

31:58.63

Phin

Yeah, I think that's really important. um I generally like the point about treating the environments really like what Ray said, like some kind of own character, where you have to think about what have they ah gone through, why are they like they are now, which I think is cool to kind of go a little bit into the history.

32:26.23

Phin

And like maybe not too much, but just like have a little bit of thought about it. And I think something that Delphi said earlier about filling the space in a way where it shows who the character really is.

32:43.51

Phin

um I also really like the point of giving the character something to play and to fiddle with in the environment because that makes you as the person who creates the environment a little bit more conscious about what is actually in there and how and why would the character interact with the environment the way that they do.

33:08.56

Phin

um Something that a friend once told me was like that she kind of treats her environments like um sets in a stage play where she very consciously like puts things into certain places to um compliment the characters.

33:28.96

Phin

And um she has been studying a lot of old movies and how they set up scenes and how they um set the stage, so to speak, which I also think is something if you like start to think about backgrounds, about the environments you want to create and you look into other media and you look into how other people set their stage and what they achieve with that. I think that can also make working with backgrounds a lot more fun because you suddenly like discover a whole new world where you can do even more with your art than you could before.

34:20.59

Delphina

Yeah, I think to one of the things that um that keeps me ah because i'm I'm a little like Ray that like I don't really use the 3D models like so much anymore. I don't use them directly um because it didn't really click with my brain. um So these days I get a lot more mileage from looking up things on stock photography sites for reference, ah like Shutterstock and iStock photo or a few that I use.

34:48.22

Delphina

What's a little better about this than just Google image search is that like the the photos are taken by professional photographers, so they do give you nice angles and they do um sometimes show a little more emotion and stuff than like your your standard cell phone photo of a place. um So that can really help you understand the connection of this background to to like the people in it and the environment.

35:20.88

Phin

Yeah, that's that's true. i I don't really use stock photos, but I can i can see the appeal because you're totally right. I mean, I personally, I really like using 3D backgrounds and I've also built a lot of environments with them so I can use them for the comic over and over and over again.

35:42.63

Phin

But I also feel like it's important to not rely too heavily on them because the backgrounds, if you just use the 3D background and you do not add a lot, that's like kind of to the point that I had earlier. but And the thing that Ray said where it can easily become a little bit sterile. And I think you don't really want that. So I think it's like a little bit nicer to work with 3D backgrounds more fast and lose and maybe not rely on them 100%.

36:19.79

Rae

I've also seen like the same castle that you can get for free on CSP like in 10 different webcomics by now.

36:26.17

Phin

ah

36:31.54

Rae

So you should probably also keep that in mind. And the thing the fun thing about backgrounds, too, is you can also just use your imagination.

36:42.47

Rae

You can put like a bunch of bottles. in like a little bunch and take a photo of it and then turn those into buildings or something like that you don't have to play um you don't have to play like completely by oh i'm going to look at this picture and draw it exactly or trace over this 3d asset you can even You can just make your little um environments out of pretty much anything. As long as you have that reference and the motivation, you can actually go and get it.

37:24.77

Phin

that is such a cool point and also such a cool idea. I kind of remember Akira Toriyama talking about a similar approach if you look at like his earlier works like something like Dr. Slum where some of the backgrounds are literally just objects because it's like the houses are like kind of shaped like objects and you can also kind of see this like taking over to Dragon Ball where it's like a similar approach but it kind like

38:00.86

Phin

he made it work just because it fit the world so well and his general style and it was something that was like kind of fun and unique so you can always kind of look into being more abstract with your buildings and your environments too so I think that's like a really really good point.

38:24.40

Delphina

Yeah, I think it's sometimes just about the shapes, right? You're, you're kind of seeing like, this is a small shape. This is a large shape. This is a medium shape. We are arranging them in a certain way that is aesthetically appealing. And that's universally appealing, whether it's the size of a building or the size of a stack of bottles. So then you, you kind of, you get that compositional interest, I suppose.

38:52.42

Phin

Yeah, and I mean even if you look at like the great painters um stuff like impressionism or expressionism where they used like not too many strokes to invoke the background and I sometimes feel like it's a little bit like sketches where the brain will kind of infer the information so with the backgrounds you just have to like um You just kind of have to tickle the right parts of the brain to get that information. I always think of the webcomic charity case where the artist at some point like simplified the style and also simplified the backgrounds and a lot of it was made up of like broader simpler shapes.

39:46.66

Phin

But because they still communicated the right information, they the pages still looked gorgeous, even though it was technically simpler than what they did before.

40:04.16

Delphina

Yeah.

40:08.21

Rae

Yeah, you definitely do not need to draw every single brick on the wall or whatever. You can just sometimes just give an impression and maybe a little bit more detailed background occasionally and that'll be fine. As long as the reader knows where they are, knows where the characters are, it doesn't have to be scary or intimidating.

40:40.09

Phin

Yeah, and I think a good point is also if you're scared of backgrounds, just start. Just try it and ease yourself into it. Do your backgrounds in a way that's comfortable for you and that aids your story.

40:58.97

Phin

you don't have to do the most detailed backgrounds ever. They can just be backgrounds and I promise you it will be a thousand times better than only using the gray void. We already said the gray void is great. um We can use it to our advantage in many ways but your readers will thank you if you sometimes use something different than that.

41:25.17

Rae

But what if it's said in a gray void?

41:27.96

Delphina

No! Don't do it!

41:31.08

Phin

Oh no! Yeah, now the story's in the gray void. and My cat is screaming. Sorry.

41:43.17

Rae

This kitty's screaming because they're in the gray void.

41:46.03

Phin

she I think she fell into the gray void, yeah.

41:49.45

Delphina

No!

41:50.90

Phin

Okay, but I think... Are we done? Is there is something that you would like to add?

41:57.75

Delphina

I'm good.

42:00.47

Rae

I think I'm good.

42:02.12

Phin

nice ah then I would say um I unfortunately I don't have any fancy raps that I could rap but I would say thank you for listening. um I've been your host Phin and you can check out my work at www.airsoftheveil.com

42:29.88

Rae

and I'm Rae and you can check out my work at Empyreancomic.com or Overlord of Ravenfell on Webtoon.

42:41.78

Delphina

and I've been Delphina and you can check out my comic Sombulus at sombulus.com That's close yeah, it sounds comfortable actually I kind of want to go to the void now Oh

42:48.22

Phin

So we're talking about a gray void. I was i was kind of thinking, i did I did a story once where it ended up in a black void. So yeah.

42:57.49

Rae

That's close enough. No. No.

43:03.83

Phin

Yeah, let's let's go to the void.

43:05.80

Rae

Yeah, let's go.

43:05.99

Phin

We don't we don't need environments.

43:08.01

Rae

Nope, no environments.

43:10.30

Delphina

by

43:10.80

Phin

Bye, Environments.