In this workshop, Mike shares how his experience in comics, games, and animation shapes his approach to background painting. He walks through a professional workflow for animation backgrounds, showing how to balance efficiency, structure and creativity. His step-by-step process reflects industry standards for creating production-ready backgrounds that support animated storytelling.

Duration: 2m 39s

In this lesson, Mike shows how strong environmental design comes from preparation, quick exploration, and experimentation. He gathers lots of references and creates many thumbnail sketches, demonstrating how producing more ideas leads to better concepts. By moving past safe or repetitive ideas, he uncovers more daring and narratively rich designs.

Duration: 15m 4s

In this lesson, Mike begins to refine his chosen thumbnail sketches. His focus on the rhythm of forms, and the balance between detail and hand-done imperfection, all serve to create a believable space that communicates character personality. He illustrates that even seemingly technical stages like inking involve continuous creative problem-solving, with each design decision contributing to the final image's appeal and narrative function.

Duration: 19m 23s

In this lesson, Mike focuses on blocking in values and separating layers with an emphasis on efficiency and production workflow. While this prep work may seem tedious, it’s essential for meeting TV animation deadlines and collaborating with a team. Drawing on his experience, Mike shows how balancing creative vision with practical constraints (even on backgrounds that appear for just a moment) helps maintain high quality under art director review.

Duration: 10m 57s

In this lesson, Mike moves into the color phase, starting with instinctive first attempts and refining them using reference. He shows how creating focal points and iterating (even starting over when needed) leads to stronger artistic results. Staying true to the concept and story from the first lesson, he explores what a "nice little spot to relax and dry your damp bones" might feel and look like.

Duration: 28m 38s

In this lesson, Mike shows how careful planning during sketches and thumbnails makes the final painting process smoother. By focusing on applying established color and lighting principles, he can work efficiently while maintaining visual consistency across multiple backgrounds. This approach demonstrates that time and scope constraints don’t limit creativity; they provide a framework that helps artists work confidently and meet production deadlines.

Duration: 29m 41s

In this final lesson, Mike puts the finishing touches on his background, stepping back, and even flipping the canvas, to catch details that might have been missed. He shows how breaking a complex illustration into manageable stages, from thumbnails to final painting, creates an efficient workflow for both professional projects and personal work. By knowing when to add detail and when to suggest it, he demonstrates what makes a piece feel polished and cohesive without overworking it

Duration: 12m 19s