Perspective grids are an invaluable component of drawing backgrounds for animation,

and even animation itself is heavily reliant on having proper perspective yet the entire
subject still remains a mystery to even our most studied viewer, guys how to get those
perspective grid on Photoshop mm-hmm

great question love that but you see perspective is a vast subject that couldn't possibly
be covered in one video on YouTube, just kidding it's gonna take five seconds this is
not a part one.

But guys the grid is not very useful if you have no idea how to compose a shot, place
a horizon line design a composition, proper set dressing, proper lighting all that without
mysteric perspective, so let's do an episode about the perspective grid, and all the other
things

if you're new to BAM it goes like this, you guys submit art and we's guys redraw that
art, like it was a real animated show.

Linear perspective is based on horizon lines and vanishing points. Once you place a
horizon line and one or more vanishing points you're ready to draw in perspective, lots
of animated shows that you see on TV use perspective, because it adds a sense of
realism by grounding it in a believable 3d space.

The perspective we use in drawing is called linear perspective and it's a system
developed by artists during the Renaissance era. In 1413 filippo brunelleschi figured
out geometrical perspective by painting the outlines of a building in a mirror and by
doing so he discovered something the parallel lines of buildings if extended would
converge to a single point on the horizon line, known as the vanishing point.

Before this discovery vanishing points were not fully understood, artists would attempt
to depict 3d surfaces but had no clear concept of how receding lines should converge.

Now this all sounds really academic but the truth is basic perspective is actually really
easy once you understand the tools and how to use them effectively
Click the shape tool and change it to the polygon tool, then edit the properties of the
polygon tool, make it a shape with no fill and a one-point stroke, then make it a start
with 100 points and indent those points by 99%,

click the horizon line and drag the shape you'll get the star shape thing with a hundred
lines that all converge to a single point, this is a one-point perspective grid

One-point perspective is useful for rendering objects that face the viewer it's perfect
for drawing a simple city street or a simple room in one point perspective a rectangular
surface that's facing you will be made of horizontal and vertical lines, you can hold
shift to draw these, but the edges that recede need to follow the grid

knowing this we can fix this cha-cha painting if I overlay the grid we can see how the
perspective of this room could have been improved

oh you think you can improve art history, well Johto maybe yeah, he's early
Renaissance dude yeah

One point is simple but there's a lot to understand about using it effectively. James
emailed us his background Bhandari drama aired at gmail.com and it is a pretty decent
execution of one point perspective however the composition is quite boring and that's
because the horizon line is placed too high, this is a problem I see with most beginner
artists, this creates kind of a security camera angle and we see too much of the boring
ground, he really disconnects us from the space let's move this horizon light down
which will allow us to drastically change the composition of this piece

now we can add more background elements like these buildings and make the overall
shapes really dynamic to look at part of perspective as well is understanding lighting,
so after my drawing is done I'll paint some value underneath the line art, if we imagine
our light sources coming from here we can paint in a quick layer of shadows to help
make this drawing a read much better, I'll brighten up the back buildings as well to
imply a bit of atmospheric, perspective typically as objects get further away from you
they become affected by the atmosphere and they'll lose contrast and blend in with the
sky

here's a band tip for you guys humans walk with their arms and legs - ,offset so make
sure the legs are swinging opposite direction of the arms not vice-versa

in two-point perspective if an object is not directly facing you but still has vertical
lines, the two services will converge to two points on the horizon, so how do we do
this with our grid.

Let's grab the center of our star shape with the white arrow tool, the white arrow tool
grabs individual anchor points while the black one grabs the entire path, take the white
arrow tool and click in between the perspective lines and then drag a selection around
the vanishing point, notice the anchor points are now selected, then click and drag to
move the vanishing point off to the side somewhere.

If you want to stay on the horizon line, hold shift before you drag, go ahead and make
a duplicate of this grid and drag the other point way to the left now we have a two-
point perspective grid going, the key to to point is again understanding where to place
the vanishing points, putting them very close together will create a wide angle lens
effect which heavily distorts your drawing, and putting them far apart will create an
isometric effect both of these are correct but you need to choose the right position for
your scene

Photoshop allows us to place our vanishing points wherever you want even very far
off the campus which is something that's like much more annoying to do in real life.
Hey here's another drawing by James BAM that redrawn my art a Gmail calm very
cool, but the horizon is too high again and the vanishing points are not well defined.

Yeah let's fix this by lowering the horizon line a bit and drawing more background
details to help establish the scene. Let's had some said dressing like weeds cans and
newspapers like real stuff that would be around a dumpster details likethese will really
help tell the story. Let's push the line of action more in this character and make the
silhouettes more clear.

Here's the submission by Zack, this one is great but it's in dire need of said dressing,
there's almost no details to tell us about the space typically restaurants are loaded with
all kinds of junk that really make the space feel lived in, to make the character feel
more impressive to these viewers, let's place them up high. Now this perspective might
look confusing but it's actually a variation on the two-poin,t instead of placing our
second point off to the right, let's place it somewhere up here to emphasize they were
looking up at these shapes in our scene, and then we can tilt the camera as well by
making a grid of parallel lines and then rotating them slightly, that's called a Dutch
angle

Take time to set dress your scenes properly objects can be placed in a scene to create
interesting compositions, just arranging objects evenly spaced like this is not very
appealing unless you're drawing an Apple store, this layout is boring instead group the
objects together to create miniature compositions that are visually more interesting.

I'm gonna increase the size of these characters and make them foreground elements
this will help frame our hero making the composition more dynamic. Vinnie's drawing
is great because the angle is very intentional we're a tall person looking down on this
rabbit, so a high horizon line is perfect, I'll use a three-point grid for this one one for
each surface direction a 3-point grid will yield the most dynamic drawings.

And we can use that grid to match our character, that way they will match the
background, so sorry guys, even if you are a character designer there are gonna be
times when we have to draw in perspective. Not all perspective is linear, sometimes an
animation we may want to warped grid to mimic a fisheye lens, this will allow us to
cram in more background information. In Photoshop there are ways to tackle vanishing
points like these, the simplest type of lens distortion is called a banana pan, and it's an
approximation of a panoramic photo, for something like this you can stitch together
two more vanishing points by simply rasterizing and distorting your grid.
(7:31) A more advanced version of this would be called spherical perspective, this is
where all of the vanishing points are made of spheres or parabolas. Let's take a look at
this piece by Brandon now this is one of the best examples of perspective that has been
submitted on the show. Great job BAM done we've done our digibook album.

But I would like to take this even further notice the rows in the buildings are starting
to curve back inwards towards the vanishing points, the artist is implying some
warping, but I think we can enhance this, let's add a spherical grid.

Use the ellipse tool and make a single ellipse, then duplicate it then change the width
slightly and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. This is how I accrued the grid for
our gas station background, however in this drawing I'll duplicate this grid and rotate
it 90 degrees, so there are four vanishing points and then of course one point going
down. I'm going to vary these types of buildings and their heights, this will be more
interesting than a bunch of buildings that are all the same, real cities have variation,
notice the distortion happening is stronger near the edges, if I wanted to I could keep
extending this background further until we reveal the horizon line, then we can make
it drawing like this.

You need to also add realistic infrastructure like water towers and air conditioners these
details help make the scene feel more believable so take the time to draw them. I had
some quick lighting in the scene to show the light is hitting the top of these buildings,
and some gradients to emphasize the depth of this road, in 3d art this effect is referred
to as ambient occlusion, this is when the light can't penetrate the deep cracks of a
surface you.

So now that you've got this arsenal of grids up your sleeve, how do you use them
effectively. The best way to utilize grids is to apply them midway through your
sketching process, first roughly draw what you want in the scene, establish the
composition and where you want the horizon line just by eyeballing it, to find the large
shapes in your composition, and whatever small details that you think are important.
Then decide which type of grid to use and then match that grid to your sketch, then fix
your drawing with proper perspective while maintaining the composition that you
originally wanted, obviously you could start out by just drawing with the grid but that's
kind of distracting and will most likely yield to some fairly stiff results,, because the
grid is like kind of distracting but that's just like my opinion man,, you can use
Photoshop cheats to help you draw certain shapes for instance ellipses can be placed
on the grid, and then warped into place using the free transform tool, using a
combination of control shift and alt ,you can transform the points to align things to the
grid

You can also draw flat surfaces and then skewed them into perspective which is very
useful for like windows and arches. You can easily draw a staircase by figuring out the
end points then drawing flat steps, and skewing them into place. Then just duplicate
these parts move them over and scale them.

You can scale objects in perspective by moving the rotation point to the vanishing
point, hold alt and shift and then transform, this is very helpful if you need to move
things further away from you or scale them in perspective. To make simple lighting
identify a light source and use the polygon lasso tool to block out the surfaces which
will be in shadow. Then add cast shadows by identifying the shape casting the shadow
and how that would interact with the topology of the object being affected by the
shadow.

You can add simple gradients by selecting an area with the polygon lasso and then
painting with a large brush with very soft edges. As objects go away from you shift
their shading to make them have less contrast, less details and blend in with the
background, more doing that will establish atmospheric perspective.

So by combining, composition perspective set dressing lighting and atmospheric

perspective, you will be able to achieve convincing drawings for your animation or
illustration. Hey you, me! Are you tired of wasting thousands of dollars in art school?
well now, you don't have to introducing the band animation YouTube channel, you can
gain a knowledge of skills from professional designers working in the animation
industry for free all, you have to do is subscribe, just get a Wacom tablet a copy of
Photoshop and you were ready to learn. So what if I want max and bridge to redraw
my artwork, just send it to BAM don't read Romero to gmail.com and they'll make an
episode all about you.

Dear brennan max attaches my drawing at my OC Val cameras she's 16 old goth wizard
of Hogwarts study the art of demon transformation she's the smartest person in her
class and sexiest with no weaknesses is it that she's a half-demon and has two different
codes eyes and seven very important tattoos and bracelets and even though she's not a
demon she's also asexual and a POC and an amputee please animate her in your next
video great when's the next episode. Whoa kind of like tayo with my class right now.
I'm almost I'm teaching a class as well and I'm working that's a lot about you're working
– yeah, I mean not next week No nah that's true not after that either not

So I guess maybe in between episodes you should just practice drawing happy
Anniversary Brent oh hey dude we've been doing Bamm for one year yeah

and you guys have left a lot of positive comments and we've learned from listening to
you as to what you wanted to get from these videos

It's really important to us to keep education free you guys can all do this we really liked
making videos for you and thanks for watching and being supportive yeah thank you.