Process notes · Animation

Moon Gift

A masked figure, a block of flats and a little glowing boat.

This piece started life as the opening to an animation from a long time ago. The idea was that a child is sleeping high up in a massive, imposing block of flats as a little glowing boat slowly drifts through the air to her window.

In my first year at university, I naively planned to animate a whole short film around this idea, on paper, using a lightbox. Sadly this wasn’t possible on top of coursework, and the project had to be archived, although not before a bunch of background drawings and hundreds of sheets of animation were made for it. Maybe I’ll share it in the future.

Sketch page with a watercolour thumbnail of an apartment block with a golden mote, a boy blowing a paper boat into the clouds, figure studies and handwritten notes

Concept sketches for old project.

Pencil drawing of a child asleep in bed in a dim room, with a television and lamp on a table and tall curtained windows behind

Graphite background drawing for old project.

Anyway, my idea was that the little boat is like a gift from some sort of god: a little escape, presented by some benevolent figure.

2 years after graduating, I decided to come back to this idea and animate that figure.

Animation

The keyframes started on paper, drawn on a lightbox. I enjoy working with a pencil, and it’s nice to have the original frames to look back on once the animation is finished. From there they went into Harmony for the clean-up and inbetweens. It was originally animated on 3s, but I decided to slow it down and put it on 2s. The animation took nearly a month to complete.

Rough keys on paper

Clean pencil line keyframe of the masked figure holding a round halo behind her head, one hand raised above it and the other hanging down

A cleaned-up keyframe

Timelapse clean-up

The hand

Character design

The design of the character was a mixture of inspirations. I wanted the figure to be masked, so various Greek theatre masks were a big reference, as well as sculptures of the Virgin Mary from different periods. Of course there’s also some inspiration from Fantasia, especially this sketch by Frank Thomas, which I love.

Bronze sculpture of the Virgin Mary in a hood, holding the infant Jesus, with downcast eyes

Reference: a sculpture of the Virgin Mary

Charcoal and red chalk sketch of a robed, bearded figure with arms raised, beside a loose figure drawing

Reference: Frank Thomas, a sketch for Fantasia

Two of the references behind the design

Sketchbook page of pencil studies of hooded, downcast faces, one hood patterned with stars

Sketchbook page of many hooded, mask-like faces with closed eyes, and a figure holding a halo

Sketchbook page of painted mask-like faces in gold and orange, with a red hand reaching towards a hood and pencil studies of hands

Sketchbook pages working out the mask, the hood and the hands

Colour

Her face needed a jewel-like glow, with different reflected colours despite the lack of a background. Ultimately I think this worked to give the piece a theatrical quality, as though her face is lit by a spotlight.

Painted study of the masked face in deep orange, red and violet, under a white hood patterned with violet stars, against black ink

Digital colour test of the face glowing gold inside a pale circle on black, with two hands painted in warm reds, pinks and blues

Colour studies for the face: on paper, and digitally against black

Her hands have colour variation too. I wanted them to feel warm, almost like the embers of a fire. To achieve this, every keyframe and breakdown was painted over, then a piece of software called EbSynth applied this texture to all the other frames. EbSynth has been available since around 2018, so it’s not related to the new AI models at all, and I don’t see a problem with using it.

Painting over the keyframes

A painted keyframe

The painted frames that EbSynth carried across the rest of the animation

Compositing

Finally, the piece was composited in After Effects. The different colours were imported separately so they could change slowly over the duration of the piece, and the figure was brought together with the illustration of the block of flats and the cars whizzing round. That illustration was actually something I made in my first year of uni, so it’s nice that it still held up and was interesting enough to include nearly four years later. It’s a loose graphite drawing, sprayed with several washes of diluted watercolour using an airbrush. The lights are just little spots of opaque yellow gouache.

Pencil and blue spray paint drawing of a tall block of flats at night with scattered gold windows, a curving road and small houses below, taped to brown paper

The block of flats, drawn in my first year

The response to this piece was a real surprise, and I’m very grateful for all the comments and messages.