5 Steps to Creating an Animation Background

Finally, with Scene 11, I'm doing the first "real" animation and color backgrounds.

Here were the steps I took to make the light switch background. The coloring was done in Photoshop:

1. The rough drawing on tracing vellum (I got the idea to use vellum from Bill Plympton. He uses it as an inexpensive way to plan.):

2. The clean pencil drawing on animation bond paper, this time using a ruler to make the edges of the light switch cover straight:

3. The inked clean-up drawing (I tried skipping this step but scanning graphite pencil makes for ragged selections later when coloring.):

4. The initial coloring. The highlights and shadows were created using the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop:

5. The addition of a texture to make it look a bit more realistic:

And that's the first color background for the film. The photo-realism of the switch, however, means that I'll have to maintain that look throughout the film, at least for close-ups.

Future post: the steps to coloring an animation drawing.