EP: Backgrounds with James

For the last few days, James and I have been working together to render the backgrounds for my animation. We decided that it would be wise to focus on the backgrounds that would be used in the bits I had animated to begin with, as it would make those clips a lot stronger.

As James was modelling them, I was creating simple colour sheets for him to shade them with. Although we tested them all, in the end we decided to go for the brown palette for the cave and the blue palette for the trees, as we felt that these worked best. Having said this however, I feel that the trees should have another colour for the start of the animation, to reflect the mood and tone of the story at that point, but I will have to re-visit this at a later date once I have completed what is necessary for submission.

From here James placed a toon-shader onto the assets and we discussed where the camera should be and how I wanted the lighting to look in the scene. I had also made a start on the sky paintings and created the sky plane for the scene in which the plague doctors are introduced, so we have an idea of what these will look like when placed into the final background.

Overall, we are happy with the backgrounds and they are ready to be slotted into the compositions of the animated shots.

(insert background shots)