About This Role
This role focuses exclusively on designing the scene, environment, and world-building for digital manga. You will ensure characters exist in a believable, three-dimensional space, allowing the manga artist to concentrate on characters and action. The position suits an artist with strong illustration skills and a mastery of perspective.
Responsibilities
- Design and focus exclusively on setting the scene, environment, and world-building
- Ensure the characters exist in a believable, three-dimensional space, allowing the manga artist to focus entirely on the characters and action
- Establish precise 1-point, 2-point, and 3-point perspective grids for every panel based on character placements and camera angles
- Draw highly detailed indoor and outdoor settings, including urban streets, fantasy landscapes, historical architecture, and natural elements
- Create accurate, scale-appropriate drawings of everyday items, furniture, weapons, cars, or futuristic machinery
- Position, trace, or paintover 3D models (using Clip Studio Paint, Blender, or SketchUp) to speed up background production while maintaining a hand-drawn look
- Apply digital screentones, cross-hatching, and textures to backgrounds to create depth, shadow, and environmental mood (e.g., lighting, weather)
- Ensure the line weights and textures of the backgrounds seamlessly blend with the manga artist's character art style
- Work with writers, editors, or project managers to adjust panel composition, fix continuity errors, and meet tight serialization or delivery deadlines
Requirements
- Creativity and good sense of art, proven experience as a manga background artist, with a strong portfolio of work
- Strong illustration skills, mastery of perspective, and understanding of spatial composition
- Proficiency in digital drawing tools such as Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Photoshop, or Manga Studio
- Strong understanding of architectural drawing, environmental design, and lighting/atmosphere
- Willingness to work as a team
- Ability to work collaboratively with character artists to maintain a unified visual style
- May have worked as part of a group or drawn background art specifically, rather than developing characters from scratch
Nice to have:
