Background Art is the one element of an animated movie that really creates the atmosphere or mood. As a Background Designer, you get to create these magical worlds that viewers can escape into. And if drawing a street scene sounds difficult, this class will teach each step along the path to painting colorful, character-filled and quirky scenes.

For the class project we are going to create a scene inspired by the charming and magical Disney Pixar movie, Luca, a scene saturated with warm mediterranean colors that exudes a quirky and authentic style. A  street scene with buildings can be a really daunting project. So, I’m going to take you step by step through the entire process and explain everything that I do and why I do it.

• I’ll teach you first how to research your ideas, and build a solid reference to work from


• You’ll learn how to translate your idea or concept into a rough sketch.


• How to wrangle that complex drawing or idea into simple and manageable color shapes


• From there you’ll roughen the edges, add texture and color variation, giving your world a lived in feel, a real place that has history, life and character.


• Finally I’ll show you how I add all the minute details that go into a street scene - things like windows, doorways, drainpipes and even washing lines.

I worked for 15 years as background artist and environment designer for animation. Before getting my career up and running I was enthralled by the scenes and images that the art of animation created, and I never thought I would be able to do something like that. 

In fact even when I tried, it felt impossible, because i didn’t even know where to start.

When I finally did get a lucky break and land a job as an assistant BG artist, I learned in my first week on the job, every trick and technique that had been missing and that was all I needed to set me up for the rest of my career.