Some Props...

Here's some props I did for Bratz back in 2004. A lot of the work was almost like doing an animated cel with the character art being on a separate layer from the background so you could create different layouts. Above is a full background plate and the prop was a set of lockers that was for a high school hallway. I did everything separately and so you could take the lockers off and just have the hallway. Then I could add a clock or some other high school themed prop I would then create to redress it. I've done a lot of my professional work in this nature to get more out of a background. I normally don't want to spend a lot of time working on a background only to just use it once and then move on. In some cases, you can reuse them, or just use the perspective of the background and build something new.

Here's the original rough I did of the lockers. I originally did only three and then added two more to make it more of a wall of lockers. When I did the original color file of the locker art, I kept the original three lockers on one layer and the added two on another. I also left it open to go back in and change the colors at some point if I wanted or needed to. Also, all this work was done in Photoshop with the pen tool. Not sure why I didn't do it in Illustrator at the time but nowadays I probably would build it there and then add the color enhancements in Photoshop. Now once I settled on the look I wanted, I save the file in layers and then flatten the locker art and drag it over to the main background file where I compile all the different elements into one final piece. All my Strawberry Shortcake art was done this was since the character art alone could be around 20-25 layers in Illustrator, and that was just one character!

This I thought I would add as a little extra to this post. I had to create a soda can for the lunch room tables in the high school cafeteria backgrounds. I also created brown paper lunch bags, chairs, lunch trays, etc to make the lunch room seemed "lived in". I was and am quite proud of my little soda can. I had this done in about 15 minutes or so and then just copied and pasted a bunch to add throughout the scene. This is fairly big though as they were maybe a 1/4-inch to a 1/2-inch in the final piece. But again, it's a prop that is built and I could reuse again.