Hey Frei, hope you don't mind me taking a stab at this. I got the character seperate from the other thread, and thought it might help you to see how I'd go about picking a backgound.
1 The image I started with. Seemed a little reclined for such an active pose, so I rotated it. If its a camera tilt, I'd do that afterwards and save a whole lot of parrallel angles. flat=easy. Also, it puts her eyeline in the centre of the canvas, which is meant to be a good thing. It works for me anyways :D
2 This probably looks crazy, but the one thing my layout teacher always hammered home was 'BACKGROUND MUST SUPPORT THE CHARACTER. ANYTHING ELSE IS A LANDSCAPE'
So I did like an extended gesture. flowing out from the arms to see where the general forms would go. Note at this stage perpective hasn't crossed my mind, its all about shapes. A good way to work this out is to literally scribble blacked out shapes to give you compositions. You can find some really interesting angles that way, and you intuitively know how things should be before you start tying things down to proper perspective.
3 Now comes the perspective. Basically what you're doing here is making sure your doodled background fits the rules. In your current one, your vanishing point (there would be one, seeing the straight roof and sides) would be off the right hand side of the page, about two thirds of the way down. Which doesn't really fit the character.
WHY IS THIS? -
Look out a window. Look to see where the horizon line is. About eye level, more or less... depending on where you live.
Look up, from the same place. Where's your horizon line now? DOWN lower, back at your earlier eye level.
Look down, and the opposite happens, the horizon is up high- because you're staring at the ground.
If your horizon is low in your picture, it means you're looking up, and would be more likely to see the underneath of a character.
If the horizon line is high, it means you're gonna see more of the top of them.
Your girl is pretty much face on, and the background should follow that. A character can go to whichever vanishing points they like, but only so long as its along the same horizon. That's the key to drawing rotated objects in perspective.
So, with her front on staging, we should have a front on horizon line. Around eye level.
Going back to what I mentioned earlier about Supporting the character. we want to have the character as the centre of attention. One of the easiest ways to do this (although possibly cliche....I like it though) is to place the vanishing point behind the character's head, or a point of central interest. Putting it behind one of the guns would change the foreshortening on the rest of the figure, so behind the head will work fine. NB: A lot of people tend to do a lot of their backgrounds at eye level, as its what they're used to. Many directors use strong upshots to create an image of strength (almost like worshipping an idol) and downshots to show weakness.
So we have the horizon line and vanishing point (1, to keep it straightforward, and so as to match up with your drawing as closely as possible), and then its just a case of blocking in some shapes following the rules.
Then the ball things, I wasn't sure if they were cameras or killbots, so I had a little fun with them. I had them shooting lasers at her to justify why she had her guns out, and also to cross behind her head as a point of focus again.
You used the repeated forms in your own bg to create depth, just mentioning it to check it off my list. Things get less saturated, and slightly bluer the further they are away from the camera. The Blade Runner poster in yours seems to flatten the pic a lot, and should probably be shown in perspective, and tying in to the colour scheme of the rest of the picture. In moonlight, nothing looks red. Similarly, in a purple city (unless its a lightsource in itself), Deckerd wouldn't have his orange-tan complexion.
Obviously very rough, this is just a guide. Look up the rules for distances between things in perspective. Mark Byrne's The Art of Layout and Storyboarding is a pretty good reference, although its geared towards backgrounds for animation more than anything else. I hope this has been helpful, and not a confusing rant about things I half understand. Unless Koshime wants to tell me how wrong I'm doing it XD
---
Come to Ireland, an eclectic mix of cynicism, apathy and sarcasm that will warm your heart like microwave radiation!
