Hm, I see. Well that poses a small problem. If Java, objects take "priority" in order they get drawn on screen. If I draw a circle and then a square, the square will overlap the circle until I redraw the circle. So if I draw the map as the background, and put the characters on top of it, they will overlap the map constantly since they will be redrawn over and over for their movement animations. I only need to draw the map once, so if they're separate images, there's no way of actually having the map overlap the character when they, say, go under a tree. Do you think it'll be easier to just draw the individual map pieces by hand and draw them as I see fit? That way I can control passability and priority with ease, but it will take a lot of graphical work.