DGA130 - 2D Background shot (Week 2)

We were tasked with doing a 2D background shot using this paragraph from 'The Projection Room';

'There were clouds with soft, jewel-colored pastels bouncing off them. The sky was a soothing blue and met rolling, gold-green hills at the horizon. Summer trees swayed gently, reflected on a cool lake. There was a momentary flutter of birds across the sky, which added even more of a sense of movement and realism. In the foreground of the landscape was a boy's bicycle leaning against a tree. A path ran past the tree and along the water's edge and disappeared into the background.'

I drew a small sketch of what the background could look like, trying to use the trees to show the distance and depth in the drawing. I drew a unicycle instead of a bicycle, but other than that I tried to include all the elements of the brief in my drawing.

I then drew the drawing into photoshop, changing bits slightly like the clouds, which I tried to make bigger when they're higher up in the drawing, and smaller when they're closer to the horizon, to try and show more depth. I also added a very rough drawing of a tree in the left corner with a swing on it, as this background shot is going to be used in DGA120 Motion Studies, where we will be animating children playing, which I showed more notes on in the second drawing I did below.

In this drawing, I've started drawing the same landscape but from a different angle, so now we are viewing it from the right of the hill in the foreground, rather than the left. I think I prefer this angle, as the eye starts from the left at the tree and it's details, and then moves right with the road in the distance and the walls on the hills. With this composition, I could use a camera pan moving to the right, where more of the lake would come into view as it moved. I could also have the camera moving upwards above the tree to see the lake and the rest of the landscape from this angle.