Agreed. Backgrounds is the main thing to work on. You'll want to try and match your background style to match the foreground style. I think you should focus your efforts on learning 1-point and 2-point perspective. That would really up your skill level and it's not too hard to learn.
Hello and welcome to my page. I go by Tabby Kazuki. I'm a self taught artist/animator who has been doing art since 2006. I tend to do more artwork than animations. So you'll see that more often.
Tabby Kazuki
@FoxMew4044
Age 27, Any
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Ville D'or
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Comments
You've got some good progress going when it comes to characters/colors/shading. It might be good to go out of your comfort zone to push yourself in that regard--you don't need to go too far; there's a wide variety of ways to approach bright color schemes with cel-shaded shading).
In terms of backgrounds, I can understand your worries about forgetting to properly source your references, but that's where having a multitude of references (and a slowly building visual library) can help. Generally, when I think of backgrounds, I think of settings (that's the story-focused part of my brain talking), and I try to draw from stuff that I know (Florida) as well as locations that inspire me (if I don't know much about those locales, then it's research time).
If it's a fantastical/sci-fi setting, you can start combining references (while keeping in mind concepts of composition, shape-language, etc.).
Also, learning perspective, as mentioned by doffu0000 (1-point, 2-point, 3-point, and 4-point) is a big help. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources and tools to help with that.
Well backgrounds weren't my main focus for a number of years but now really need to add them. So there isn't just empty space. Usually I just throw some random shapes together and call it a day plus there the animater part of me that wants to make the backgrounds as a differentv style then the characters themselves. I do know about the 3 perspectives but my dumb monkey brain always wanted to add more when there isn't a need to. Also I've never heard of 4 point. I thought there were only 3.
@FoxMew4044 Four-point perspective is basically just like 3-point perspective--instead of just one vanishing point above or below the horizon line, you have one VP above and one VP below. It's good for situations where you're facing an object at the middle, but its top and bottom extend pretty far above and below you (like if you're facing the 20th floor of a 40-story skyscraper).
For more distorted/fish-eye views, you can even use 5 or 6 point perspective, but those are really niche use-cases.
Most of the time, you'll usually use just 1-3 points (and you don't have to get too technical with it). And depending on the software you're using, you can use its inbuilt tools to help (Clip Studio Paint has some pretty good perspective tools).
So there's 6 points. I knew about the fish eye that's to movies and whatnot but didn't realize that it's a point. I didn't realize that Clip Studio Paint had inbuilt program. I used a program called 3Dpaint to build what ever I need at that time then trace over it but right now I'm limited to my phone until I can replace my laptop. So everything is a slow hand drawing progress finger is more like it.
littewolf49
Your art looks great! Maybe the backgrounds need some work? I dunno whatever you think works!