Background Image

[tossedman]

Hi,

I've been looking for an appropriate background for a layout that I have in mind. About all I know about the layout is that it will be about 15 feet long and 18 to 30 inches deep. I wanted an image with that quintessential Fujisan in the background but without all of the buildings and trees and other foreground detritus in there. In other words, something simple. I couldn't find a long panoramic photo that would do the job.

I can't paint for beans but I can fake my way around a computer. I found this web site and this one and a picture of Mount Fuji that I converted to a vector image in Adobe Illustrator. The nice thing about vector images is that you can make them as big or small as you want and you'll get no pixelization or other distortion that you'll get in a photo that's significantly enlarged. I drew the following. Not the same as a photo but maybe good enough.

Here's the first attempt at a background image. It will be 15 feet wide and 18 inches high. Is this too high? Maybe i'll make It longer to wrap around the ends of the layout. Dunno. I'll probably ditch the pink at the top of the mountain as well. This is a jpeg copy of the vector graphic so it can't be easily resized. Also, I don't think posting a 15 foot long image would be a good idea.



Still not happy with the clouds nor the hills to the right of Fujisan but I think it's a good start. I'll have to look at some more real photos to see what things might look like. I might have to learn to draw a forest as well.

If you don't have Adobe Illustrator and don't want to fork out heaps o' money for it, Inkscape is a good free alternative. (click on the download link on the left - works with Mac, Linux and Windoze). Be warned that both Illustrator and Inkscape will have a pretty steep learning curve, but if you know what you're doing it might be an alternative.

Cheers eh,

Todd

Edited June 8, 2013 by tossedman

[KenS]

At 18" deep, and 18" high backdrop might tend to dominate the scene, but a stylized one like this is probably less likely to do that than a photorealistic one.  And in any case, it's probably better to be too high than too low.

 

At 30" deep, 18" might be a bit on the short side.  I used 18" backdrops (which stuck up about 13") on a 24" layout (HO scale) and they were okay (see photo), but in hindsight I think they were probably on the short side.  My rule of thumb today is "at least as tall as the layout is deep", but I'll admit that I have a 24" backdrop viewed across more than 48" of layout in one place, and it looks fine.

[tossedman]

Thanks Ken, I'm pretty new to all of this and was just guessing at a height. It'll be easy to change though since I'm drawing it as opposed to using a photograph. I'm just batting ideas around in my head at the moment but it could all change when I see it. The actual layout is still a ways off. Still collecting track, etc., but some feedback from those who have gone before is great.

 

Todd