Process notes · Animation

Curtain Approach

A dark red curtain rising out of a warm green field.

This piece is a mixture of 2D animation, cloth simulation, and a lot of time compositing in After Effects to create the wind effect in the grass.

The idea started as something graphic I wanted to explore: the contrast between a large, dark red structure emerging from a warm, saturated green field. Looping animation was another interest, and creating moving patterns by arranging these looped blades of grass.

As the sketches developed, new ideas came along, like a curtain stretching up to the sky with a mandala-like pattern similar to a Persian rug, and shadowy figures walking on the other side. These ideas meant thinking carefully about which software and techniques would achieve them in the way I was imagining.

Blue pencil thumbnail of a field with tall grass, flowers and dark shapes hanging at the top of the frame

Two blue pencil thumbnails of a tall curtain rising from grass, with a dark opening and a figure beside it

Blue pencil thumbnail of a tall curtain with a dark vertical opening, and a small figure sketched to one side

Early painted test of a patterned brown curtain with a dark opening, rising from loosely painted yellow-green grass

Digital painting of a boy in a purple jumper lying in yellow-green grass with his bike, in front of dark red trees and a tall black shape

Early thumbnails in blue pencil, and the first colour tests

The grass field

After finishing the sketching and ideation, the first job was the grass field. I animated a single blade of grass in Harmony and brought it into After Effects, experimenting with different intensities of swaying and adding a highlight for a couple of frames at the moment the blade is most bent. In Miyazaki’s films, the fields have these waves of light that comb through them as the wind blows, caused by the sun reflecting off the grass as it bends to a certain angle. Arranging the blades so those frames line up one after another seemed like a nice way to get something similar. In the final animation the effect is subtle, but I think it does add something.

After duplicating the blades and bringing them into Blender, I arranged them in rows and synchronised them so each blade is offset by a frame or two. Adjusting the colours and values of each blade took a very long time. The final part was to add overlay layers with different colour zones over the whole field, just to add some visual interest and break up the colours even further.

The finished grass field: yellow-green grass with daisies, ferns on the left and darker grass along the top

The grass field with the boy’s legs standing at the far edge

The finished field

Flowers and foliage

Then came the flowers. I tried animating them traditionally first, but then came across a free plug-in for Blender with a set of flowers you can use in your scenes. It made it easy to add flowers and vegetation, with some basic animation. All the 3D foliage got repainted UVs, so they just have flat colours and a line around all the edges. I also experimented with making the UV texture a sequence with a boiling line, but decided against it in the end.

Blender viewport showing ferns, daisies and leafy plants with flat colours and black outlines in front of a plane of painted grass

The foliage set up in Blender

Repainted UV texture with flat yellow-green leaves, pale petals and orange flower centres on black

A 3D fern rendered with flat green colours and dark outlines on a grey background

Repainted UVs: flat colour and a line around every edge

The boy

Next came the boy walking into the scene. Originally, I wanted him to cycle in, put his bike down and go and explore the curtain, but getting the bike to interact with the grass proved too tricky, so he just walks in. This was animated entirely in 2D in Harmony.

Linework export of the walk

Some clean-up animation in Harmony

Pencil line drawing of the boy from behind, mid-stride, in a hooded top and loose trousers

A frame from the walk

The curtain

Next was the curtain, in Blender. I would have animated it in 2D as well, but getting textures onto 2D animation is very difficult. The shadows came from royalty-free footage of people walking past a green screen; they needed to be low resolution and hazy, so stock footage worked fine. In After Effects, the footage was combined with the curtain texture, which I drew in Procreate using the symmetry tool. Finally, the result was exported as an image sequence and imported into Blender as a moving texture for the curtain.

Square mandala-like pattern in burnt orange with fine dark linework, drawn with a symmetry tool

The curtain texture tiled into a grid of mandalas and dark blue borders, with hazy shadows of walking figures across it

The curtain pattern, drawn in Procreate, and the texture with the shadows added

After that came the cloth simulation, with the wind settings adjusted to create the effect I wanted. The animation of the boy went in too, with the cloth reacting at the moment he pushes it aside.

Render of the patterned curtain hanging in soft folds, its hem lifting slightly

Cloth simulation in Blender

Compositing

The last thing was to bring everything together in After Effects and figure out how it all overlaps. This was a headache, but rewarding when everything started working. I also adjusted the colours and values, and added some textures, filters and lighting to the character animation to integrate it all.

A tour of the After Effects project

This animation took about a month to complete from start to finish.