Organising elements in the scene

I separate the back-, mid- and foreground elements on to individual layers using the Lasso tool and copy/pasting the selection. This not only streamlines the work for me, but if the art director decides to move or scale any of these elements, then it’s easy to do so without disrupting the others or needing a lot of repaint to fill in gaps. Because of the small amount of mid- and background in this image, I decide to group those two elements together and only separate out the foreground character.

Colouring the background

I wash some neon colours on the background on a Color layer. Darken layers help to tone down some of the brighter areas and produce more saturation, while Color Dodge layers amp up the light sources. I want to give the impression of a busy dance floor, as well as supporting the shape of the main character. I also avoid design elements that will give Noise a strange silhouette.