Its-a-Wrap: Art Direction Part 2

Aside from helping out in the character design area of Its-A-Wrap, I am also the main Background and Prop designer. Christopher Perkins (Director/Writer/Voice/Etc) will typically send me a quick sketch, and a notepad describing the shots needs per episode. Let's take a look at the first background from Its-A-Wrap: Drizzy Drake and His Sexy Pants Date.

The above sketch and the following quote is what I got for Shot 1 of the second episode;

"Wayne and Drake are basically on a date. This will be the establishing shot and opening shot. It's like a 1960's date scene and they're at a kissing point. A hilltop with an overview of the city. Tackle this scene last, because I may be able to bring in C4D for the city. You'll probably only have to draw the hill/car etc." ~Christopher Perkins

So I only did draw the car and the hill. The tricky part was not knowing how detailed to make the scene in relation to the CG city. Even with a toon-shader on the city, it may look overly complicated in comparison to my simplified drawings.

Chris added the city to the shot and sent it back to me for my opinion. I attempted to dumb down the details of the city by adding gradients of black and playing around with adjustment layers in Photoshop. The key was trying to dumb it down the city with out making it look flat. Another trick I did was added details to the hill and car to even things out.

And this was the end result;

I still feel that the city might be a little clashing, but deadlines are deadlines, and this is a quickly made web show.

So now that you know the process of what I do, I thought I would add more sketch-to-final shot comparisons from episode 2;