Breaking Down Backgrounds (Part 3): Designing a Room with Personality

Drawing backgrounds can be really intimidating for both new and experienced artists. Whether it's trying to understand perspective or just figuring out what stuff to include in the first place, it can be a really daunting task! I know from firsthand experience that it's tough to take the first steps into figuring out how the heck it works.

I'm hoping this guide will be able to break down all the steps I go through when making a background into manageable, easy to understand pieces.

Planning - What Makes a Room Unique?

Whether you're making a comic or just doing a single drawing, background scenery is a fantastic way to convey information to the viewer. 

Take a look around your bedroom - everything in there is representative of you, the lifestyle you live, and what your personality is like. Are you messy or neat? Do you collect anything to display, or are the walls bare? Is your house new or very old? There are probably signs in the room that could tell you how old the house is, or even where it's located - the molding on the walls, the shape of the windows, any cracks or scuffs in the paint. 

When designing a room, it's important to think beyond just the room itself, and instead think of its context and purpose. Who lives here? Where and when is it? How is this room used?

A kitchen may have some common staple items in it, but the features you give it will dictate what kind of person lives there - a college dorm kitchen would probably be very bare bones and tiny, with lots of junk food in the cabinets and some unwashed dishes, while a cozy grandmother's kitchen would be fully equipped with cookware and some knick knacks, maybe even a pie in the window.

If you only draw the bare bones of a room, it's going to look clinical and lifeless. All it takes is a few details to bring a room from bland to interesting! 

A few notable details that can help bring out the personality of your room:

•  floor molding
•  curtain rods + curtains or blinds
•  cracks, chips, cobwebs
•  vents, air conditioners/heaters, outlets
•  garbage cans next to beds or desks
•  posters, painting, and other wall art
•  decorations and collectibles
•  plants, pets, stuffed animals, etc.
•  mirror, vanity, some place for the character to check their appearance

For today's example, I'm designing the cabin of Caspiano, a nature-based magician from Deryli and the Magician's Key. At this point in the story, Caspiano is largely a mystery to the other characters - all they know about him is that he has a bit of a smug attitude, and that he practices naturalist magic (think witchcraft). By entering his cabin, the other characters can start to get an understanding of who he is, without him having to say anything.

Drawing - Building Up From The Basics

When I approach designing a room, I start off with the most basic elements: what are the main pieces of furniture that make up the room? A bedroom needs a bed, a kitchen needs somewhere to cook, a bathroom needs a toilet. 

For help on planning out a room's layout, check out my guide called Drawing Backgrounds for Comics - Drawing A Room From Multiple Angles.

When I have all of those staple objects planned, then I can start filling in the surrounding area with personal items. 

This is my rough thumbnail, where I figured out the composition I wanted and gave myself a rough map to work off of. Caspiano is a notorious hoarder of unusual things (to the point of clutter) and is constantly reading and experimenting. I wanted his room to be full of weird, magical junk and a lot of storage containers to show that, although he isn't very messy, he's definitely limited by the small size of his cabin.

Personally, I like to move right into inking after I do the thumbnail, rather than making a cleaner sketch. I tend to think of random little things to add to the scene as I'm inking, so the ambiguity of the sketch actually helps me brainstorm a little. 

Like with the sketch, I start off with the most basic elements and build up. Caspiano's cabin was built by him only a few years ago so it's in pretty good condition, minus some leaky pipes. If I wanted to make an older cabin, I might include some cracks, loose nails, cobwebs, or pinholes for light to shine through.

To convey that the floor is coming towards the viewer, I thickened up the lines closest to the foreground and increased the size of the floorboards. (Check Part 2 of this guide for more information on how to convey depth and space in your backgrounds!)

Drawing - Items and Personality

With my walls and floors drawn, I moved on to the furniture and objects, starting with the shelves and desk before moving on to the smaller stuff. To help keep things easy on my eyes, I changed the color of the wall and floor lineart (in CSP, you can do this with the Change Layer Color button in the Layer panel. Otherwise, you can just manually fill the lineart in with a random light color and change it back later). 

While drawing all the objects, I tried to think of what sort of items Caspiano would have in his home that reflect his personality.

As someone very well-read on magic, Caspiano collects books and has a tendency to do a lot of writing, so I included a lot of books on the shelves. But he's also very rash and quick to scrap an idea in favor of another, so I added a few crumpled up paper balls and scattered books strewn across the floor.

Since Caspiano is pressed for space, he tends to stick things wherever he has room. The large chest sitting on his desk probably isn't very practical for writing, but when he dragged it in from wherever he got it he probably just shoved it wherever there was the most free space. He probably thought "Eh, I'll move it later," and never got around to it, so now he just writes on the floor.

The inclusion of a few skulls (including a human skull) and a box of bones gives a bit of a different impression: is he potentially dangerous? Why would he need these? Are they used for something, or just a morbid decoration? It not only makes Caspiano more mysterious, but his magic, too.

His collection of plants also lends to what we already know about him: he's a naturalist magician who grows plants with magic. Him keeping a collection of various plants around his cabin shows that he has a genuine interest and care for them, beyond just utility.

When I was happy with the look of the room, I erased all of the overlapping bits and combined the lineart. 

Colors - Atmosphere and Emphasis

With my lines done, I moved on to colors. Just like furniture and details, the colors of the room can also give the viewer information about your scene. A character who is very organized and tidy might have their closet color-coded, or all their furniture matches. A more chaotic character may have mismatched, random-looking furniture that they just use for convenience.

And color can also help set the mood of the scene. Warm, gentle colors might convey that the place is comfortable and familiar, while dark, cold colors may give an air of mystery or danger. 

Caspiano's cabin has a mix of both traits.  The warm sunlight coming from the window has a very "natural" feeling, which complements the rest of the scene. It's also the only light source in the room, so the shadows in his cabin are very dark and leave a lot concealed depending on the time of day.  You can imagine him writing on his desk when the sun is high in the sky, or how dark and eerie it gets at night when only moonlight is hitting the cabin. It suits the mystery and duality of how the other characters know him - mysterious and rooted in nature.

With the colors complete, I finished up the rest of the page. The scale of the characters helps to better establish the room around them and make everything seem more impressive.

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Thank you for reading, I hope this was helpful!

Part 1 

Part 2