I. Preproduction- Background Design

Backgrounds are very important as well, they help create the mood and add to the overall look and feel of your animated short.

Upper left & upper right: "I am the Superhero"
I wanted a comic book/collage feel, so my sister Carmen made amazing backgrounds from buildings, gave them a tint and added a color tone filter in Photoshop to create the moire effect seen in most comics.
For the action scenes in this short I also wanted some action lines, also inspired from comics.

Lower left: "Putek"
Me and co director Tey Clamor was going for a darker tone to this short, yet still retain the cartoony distorted feel. She did a great job using dark blue hues and offsetting them with the yellow light from windows.

Lower right: "The Jerk"
I wanted a looser feel to this one, gave the backgrounds a rough colored edge, which I think came out really well.

© Tuldok Animation Studios, Inc.

© Tuldok Animation Studios, Inc.

For stories that involve the character traveling across a large area, a map may be drawn as a guide for using certain backgrounds in a scene. Here, I placed numbers regarding the areas where "Anna" will pass chronologically according to the "Libingan" script.

Why is this necessary? because when you start drawing your backgrounds, you will know which elements will remain, disappear, or appear depending on the angle you choose for your shot!

© Tuldok Animation Studios, Inc.

*It is important to note that the art direction of a film covers a color palette, drawing style, animation movement style of all the elements. Once these are all carefully blended together, the film has a more cohesive, solid look.

happy backgrounding!

next: Storyboards!