A whole bunch of new backgrounds

Backgrounds backgrounds backgrounds! I’m not super fond of drawing backgrounds, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

For the past week I’ve been focused on making more backgrounds for Gloom and Doom. While I’ve gotten into a zone where I can do characters relatively quickly (like 1-2 days each), backgrounds are still the bane of my existence. This video store in particular, took about 3 days to complete due to all the movies featured on the shelves!

But it was definitely a fun background to work on. The many movies on display allowed me to mess around and put in some Easter Eggs.

The closest boxes to you, for example, are all filled with short films from my university days, as well as the cover of a book I made for my daughter’s birthday.

Those short films are almost 2 decades old, and digging out their old files was a massive trip down memory lane.

Then next to those are a set that consists of simplified paintings of my favorite movies from my childhood. If you look carefully, you’ll see smudgy shapes that vaguely resemble the box art of movies like Clerks, Reality Bites, Aliens, and Last Boy Scout.

The rest of the movies are just random colors and shapes, which I copy pasted and hue-shifted to get that colorful look.

The other two backgrounds I did belong to two new characters: the demon Johteolath’s office, and Mr. Yesterday’s studio.

Johteolath is a high ranking and sadistic leader of the underworld, so she gets a swanky corner office with great views of the city. This was kinda straightforward, and I kept it to a minimalist look because it’s easier, and it looks cleaner and more professional.

The other new character is a Time Shaman known as Mr Yesterday. He is able to tap into the powers of the time spirits to look back into time with full clarity, so people visit his studio to relive favorite memories.

For Yesterday, I thought it would be good to put clocks all over the studio. It was a look I actually wanted for my home, centered around one of those awesome ball-bearing time machine clocks. But since I never got one of those clocks, the clock wall was forgotten.

With Yesterday’s studio, I was stuck trying to work out the optimal amount of clocks, because I knew too many clocks would make the place cluttered. Also, drawing clocks is tedious and gets boring quickly. But not enough, and the effect isn’t quite there.

Also, you can see that I didn’t draw in the ball-bearing clock cos that thing has so much detail! Maybe I’ll add it in if I have time later.

Anyway, with these three backgrounds done, I can go back to writing again. Yay!