Background size and resolution?

nakkeru · Post by **nakkeru** » Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:54 pm

Hi there!
As you all might notice, I'm new and this is my first post here, although I've been around the forum (just as a visitor) for quite a long time now.

Well, I'm about to start a project with two friends to make a short movie, and I'm the one who's gonna draw all the backgrounds and characters.

Thing is, I always draw in paper, then scan it, change a few things and colorize ir with Gimp (lately Pixelmator, I like it better).

The question here is: how big should the backgrounds be? The final movie will be burnt on a DVD/BlueRay so it should be HDTV or whatever... yeah this is one of the things I never thought about before... and, what about the resolution?

I mean, I don't know if it's not big enough then when you watch it on TV you'll see the pixels or blurry or something like that

So yeah that's it... Sorry if there was some mispelling, I'm from Barcelona (Spain) so english is not my first language

Thanks in advance!

Nolan Scott · Post by **Nolan Scott** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:05 am

At least double the resolution of your project resolution “rule of thumb”...
Much higher for closeups...

Regards
Nolan

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:20 am

Nolan Scott wrote:At least double the resolution of your project resolution “rule of thumb”...
Much higher for closeups...

Regards
Nolan

correct

nakkeru · Post by **nakkeru** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:32 pm

Wow, thanks for the quick answers

One more thing: what's considered the standard today? for TV I mean.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 1:28 pm

If you want to sell your product professionally (in Europe), consider to use HD (1920 x 1080, 25fps). Anything smaller can be easily converted from that.

nakkeru · Post by **nakkeru** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 2:59 pm

So, when creating a background, should I make it double the size? (as said before)... and, how many pixels per cm? and does the format matter? RGB 8, 16 or 32 bit?

Wosh... I now these must be pretty dumb questions, but never though of them before when doing stuff just for fun

Thanks all for the answers and patience, really.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 3:43 pm

Inside the computer you don't use cm or dpi. You just use pixels. If 1920 x 1080 px is your project size, your BG must be at least the same. If you want to zoom in, scan it bigger.

You want to use 24bit RGB, = 8 bit per channel. If you have elements with transparent parts, save them as PNG with alpha channel, which makes them 32 bit. If you do body parts, this will be your standard format, because you'll draw those parts on a transparent BG.

nakkeru · Post by **nakkeru** » Wed Mar 30, 2011 4:09 pm

Now THAT'S what I was after

Thank you so much for the answer! I dind't know that DPI has nothing todo with that, I mean, it seemed logical to me to use it... maybe I don't even know what DPI exactly means LOL

So creating a new document with 1920 x 1080 and 8 bit per channel with 72 dpi is OK... and I was about to put 300 dpi because I saw that resolution in a PS tutorial :S

chucky · Post by **chucky** » Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:44 am

When you scan use the highest dpi you can. Dpi is dots per inch which is totally different to pixels which only reside as a reflection of your screens resolution.
Resize your scanned artwork to a 1920x1080 artboard inside gimp or whatever image manipulation program you are using.
Edit:
Oh I see Slowtiger has explained already, just try and get your head around the idea that pixels are a separate measurement to dots, they are independent to each other.

nakkeru · Post by **nakkeru** » Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:45 pm

Yeah it's kinda weird for me as I never though about it before, but it makes sense and, well, once you know it it's fine working just with pixel sizes instead of dpi resolutions.

Yeah it was already answered, but thanks anyway! Intention is what counts isn't it?