2D Background - Layout Plan

After doing many sketches of background layouts, and changing elements in each one, I roughly drew out my final layout on Photoshop. I kept in elements from each of my sketches: the willow trees, the fencing, the pond, and the mountains. I added a stone monument in the pond as the scene seemed very empty, and I wanted a mid ground element that I could have characters interact with.

I then moved items around, to the make the scene work better. I struggled with what to do with the path, so I added some more rocks in the pond and other rocks in the background. I kept everything else the same, however it changed a little when I drew the layout as the shape of the willow leaves took up more space. After drawing the sketch, I drew the foreground, midground, and background on different layers. I had 2 midgrounds as some of the elements overlapped. There isn't much in the background as the scene was already quite busy with all the willow trees.

sketch

foreground

midground 1

midground 2

background

When all the sections are layered on top of each other, it looks very confusing. I was so worried if my scene was too busy. However, I decided to shade each section to separate them, which seemed to work well. I had a lot of trees in my shot, so I removed the tree that went over the rocks. This cleared the scene a lot, and it highlighted my stage where my characters will be positioned.

all

all shaded

revised final

without opacity

without middle tree