Published: April 11, 2025 | Last Updated: April 14, 2025
What is a BACKGROUND ARTIST? DEFINITION & MEANING
A background artist is responsible for painting, designing, or building the visual environments seen behind characters. In animation and visual effects, they create immersive worlds. In live-action, they’re often matte painters working either analog or digitally.
What does a background artist do?
Background artists make the world feel real. In animation, they create forests, cities, rooms, or entire dreamscapes that set tone and guide spatial logic. Their work comes after the layout phase and before animation is finalized. In live-action and VFX, they create painted or digital environments that extend beyond what’s filmed on set.
There are three main types of background artists:
- 2D background artists paint or draw environments to match the animation style.
- 3D environment artists build digital sets using modeling, lighting, and shaders.
- Matte painters work in live-action, creating digital landscapes or set extensions.
In all cases, background artists define how the world looks and feels. Even when they’re invisible, their work frames everything else.
2D background artists in animation
2D background artists paint environments in a style that matches the rest of the project. Their images are based on the scene’s layout and are usually created before character animation starts. They set the mood, define light sources, and help create the illusion of space.
Most artists work digitally in Photoshop or TVPaint. Some still paint using watercolor or gouache by hand, especially in projects that go for a handmade look. Studio Ghibli, for example, still uses hand-painted backgrounds with poster paints on art board. That’s part of what gives films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away their textured, lived-in vibe.
The job requires a firm grasp of perspective, composition, and lighting. Good background design supports the characters without stealing attention. It’s a balancing act between clarity and atmosphere.
3D environment artists in animation and VFX
3D environment artists build entire worlds inside software. They model geometry, assign materials, and light scenes so they look real—or stylized—when rendered.
Think of the layered cityscapes in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the clean sci-fi interiors in Lightyear. All of that starts with background artists who know how to control form, texture, and space.
Often, background artists work in Maya, Blender, Houdini, or Unreal Engine. They don’t just “add detail”—they think about how a scene will move. Will the camera pan across a skyline? Then that skyline needs parallax depth. Is the shot shallow-focused? They’ll build with depth of field in mind and hand off depth maps to compositors.
What is a matte painter?
A matte painter creates environments that don’t exist or can’t be filmed. This role is in the visual effects pipeline and is about illusion. If a ruined city, a medieval castle, or a planet with six moons is too expensive to build practically, the matte painter steps in.
The job used to be physical. Artists like Peter Ellenshaw painted directly onto glass, placing the artwork in front of the camera. His work in Mary Poppins helped define the London skyline with nothing but a brush and oil.
Albert Whitlock painted burning cities for Earthquake and eerie townscapes for The Birds, often animating sections of the matte to add motion, like drifting clouds.
And let’s not forget the matte paintings by Ralph McQuarrie in the original Star Wars trilogy:
From analog to digital matte painting
Today, it’s all digital. Matte painters work in Photoshop, Nuke, or proprietary studio tools. They composite paintings over plates or 3D renders, matching lighting, lensing, and grain to the live footage.
Sometimes they use camera projection, mapping a 2D painting onto simple 3D geometry so the camera can move slightly and still maintain the illusion.
Modern examples of background art
Background art shows up in more ways than most people realize. Here’s how it plays a role in recent projects:
In The Mandalorian, entire planetscapes are created by 3D environment artists and displayed on LED walls (LED cycloramas) during filming. These real-time backgrounds light the actors and move with the camera. It’s like shooting inside a matte painting, only with parallax and interactive lighting.
In Mindhunter (2017–2019, Netflix), the backgrounds feel invisible—but they’re almost all digital. Matte painters updated skylines, added buildings, and removed modern signage to recreate 1970s America. It’s all subtle, but it sells the setting:
And in Princess Mononoke, Kazuo Oga’s forest paintings use light and shadow to suggest wind and time of day, even when the camera holds still.
How to become a background artist
If you aim to work in animation or VFX, build a portfolio. The title might vary—background painter, layout artist, matte painter, environment designer—but the skills are consistent:
You’ll need strong fundamentals in drawing, perspective, color theory, and lighting.
For 2D roles, Photoshop is the go-to tool. For 3D, get comfortable in Maya, Blender, Unreal Engine, or Nuke (for compositing) and understand how to work with shaders, textures, and render passes. For matte painting, you’ll need a combo of photo-bashing, painting, and compositing.
Many background artists come from illustration or concept art backgrounds. Some start as layout artists, painting props, or doing color keys before moving into full scenes. Art school helps, but a sharp portfolio matters more than a diploma.
What do background artists earn?
Pay depends on the role, studio, and experience level. Here’s a rough breakdown:
2D/3D background artists at major animation studios usually earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year. Union rates for background painters often start around $56 an hour.
Matte painters in VFX typically earn between $60,000 and $100,000+, especially at major houses or on feature films.
Freelancers can sometimes earn more per project, especially if they work across film, TV, and games.
Summing Up
Background artists are worldbuilders. Whether they’re hand-painting a forest, modeling a sci-fi city, or blending a digital skyline into a period drama, they shape what we see—and what we believe. Their work sets tone, defines space, and builds immersion from the ground up.
In animation, they create 2D or 3D environments that match the story’s style. In VFX, they add impossible backdrops or extend physical sets.
They might not stand in the spotlight, but their fingerprints are on every frame. If you’re looking for a role that combines composition, mood, and technical skill, background art might be your way in.
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