A few months ago I finished working on this interesting project for the NGO known as Conservation International.
I had not done anything like this in years so it was both fun and challenging to develop all the art on my own (most of the times I take the artwork from someone else and animate it). The process began as usual: I got a script which I turned into a storyboard. Once it was approved it was time to get into production.
What's nice about a storyboard is that it makes it easier to illustrate all the artwork. You have a solid reference to work from, right? Well, in this case it was even better! The client just loved the style I used on the storyboard so there was no need to develop a new style, it was already there in the paper. So I scanned those pages and took them directly to Toon Boom, drew over them, tweaked a few things here and there and then started putting some color.
Once all the illustrations were colored it was time to take them to Photoshop. All of you who have read my previous posts know this is what I do: take the original illustration from Toon Boom and add some lights and shadows in Photoshop. Keep in mind that all these illustrations were exported as separate layers if they were going to get animated.
Now that the whole package was colored, I started all the compositing work in After Effects. Every object was in place just like the original B/W storyboard but fully-colored. It was really nice to see this thumbnails coming to life even though they were not animated yet.
All the animation process went very smooth. I have to admit this is the way things should go every time you work on an animation project on your own but they just don't. Due to time constraints, most of the times you just start animating the whole sequence on-the-go.
The end result is something that I am really proud of. I take credit for all the artwork and the animation. Sound effects and music were added by someone else after I delivered the video file.
Now go ahead and take a look!
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