The Art Behind the Animation: Drawing a Street Scene

Creating an animated street scene can seem intimidating, especially when buildings, perspective, textures, lighting, and tiny environmental details all need to work together. Animation Backgrounds: Draw A Street Scene takes a practical, step-by-step approach to this process, guiding learners from initial research and rough sketches to a polished background painting. Taught by animation professional and artist Siobhan Twomey, the class focuses on building colorful, quirky environments while explaining how background art supports storytelling and animation.

• Aspiring background artists — Learn the process behind creating environments for animation.
• Animation students — Develop practical background-design skills through a complete project.
• Digital artists — Improve Photoshop-based painting, texture, lighting, and color techniques.
• Illustrators exploring animation — Understand how an animated background differs from a standalone illustration.
• Creative beginners — Follow the project progressively without needing to create a complicated composition.

• Research and organize visual references for a street scene.
• Turn an idea into a loose, workable sketch.
• Simplify complex environments into manageable color shapes.
• Add texture and color variation to flat surfaces.
• Draw windows, doors, canopies, signs, and architectural details.
• Create environmental elements such as lamps, wires, drainpipes, and washing lines.
• Apply shadows, highlights, and color corrections.
• Prepare and hand off a finished background file.

Animation Backgrounds: Draw A Street Scene offers a particularly useful introduction to the thought process behind animation environment art. Rather than jumping directly into detailed painting, Siobhan Twomey breaks the work into manageable stages, making a potentially overwhelming street scene much easier to approach.

The project centers on creating a colorful street scene inspired by the warm Mediterranean atmosphere associated with Luca. Learners begin by gathering references and developing a rough idea before refining the sketch. From there, the class moves into blocking in base colors, adding texture and color variation, and gradually building the architecture and environmental details.

One of the strongest aspects of the class is its attention to the small details that make an environment feel lived-in. The lessons cover windows, repeating windows, doors, doorways, canopies, lamps, wires, drainpipes, signs, paving stones, peeling paint, and washing lines. These elements demonstrate how relatively simple additions can give a background personality and a sense of history.

The course also goes beyond simply making an attractive illustration. Twomey explains how background art functions within an animation production, including considerations such as leaving appropriate space for characters, staging the environment, and maintaining color harmony and visual balance. This helps learners understand why certain choices are made rather than simply copying a sequence of Photoshop techniques.

The workflow is presented through 26 relatively short lessons, covering everything from workspace setup and reference gathering to the final render and file handoff. The complete lesson list amounts to roughly 2 hours and 44 minutes, giving learners a substantial project without requiring an enormous time commitment.

A downloadable brush pack is also provided for the project, and learners are encouraged to share their finished work through Skillshare’s project area. The project itself is deliberately kept approachable: students do not need to create an overly complex composition or become overly concerned with perspective.

Overall, this is a hands-on course rather than a purely theoretical introduction. By following the project from its rough beginnings through color, texture, architectural details, lighting, and final corrections, learners finish with a completed background painting that can also serve as a portfolio piece.

Animation Backgrounds: Draw A Street Scene is a strong practical choice for anyone interested in animation environments and digital background painting. Its biggest strength is the structured workflow: learners gradually transform a rough concept into a detailed, atmospheric street scene while picking up techniques for composition, texture, color, lighting, and environmental storytelling.

I would recommend it particularly to beginners and intermediate artists interested in animation background art, digital illustrators wanting to explore environment design, and animation students looking for a guided portfolio project. More experienced artists may find the fundamentals familiar, but the animation-specific perspective and professional workflow can still provide useful insight.