Blog #5: Pass the Ball Art Direction

This post is all about art direction and to be honest, I haven’t done much planning like this. Usually I just wing it and change colors on the fly until I like the look of them. But in the long run, it’s probably better to learn how to plan this kind of stuff in a controlled environment. Either way, we’ve got color palettes and inspirations today, so let’s get into it. For this project, I was very excited to be able to draw from inspiration of not only my own art, but well-known animation styles that I have grown up with or recently saw that just made me go “I wanna do THAT!”

The overall thought process is to use my already designed character and mix and match two of my favorite animation shows to get something that I want. The overall colors will be mostly warm colors with a splash of blues from the wizard’s coat. This should be able to bring out the character from the maroon background once I have everything moving the way I want it to. I want to use a similar fire effect style to Last Airbender, but I know it won’t be as defined or glowy as theirs is. Then with the planned magic effects I want to plan something similar to Vox Machina’s stylings, which is a little more anime then I would like but it’s close. I know this is a very simple plan, but I think it gets the job done and gives me a guiding light in art direction. That’s it for now, next time I’ll be talking about thumbnails and important keyframes for the beginning of the animation process. See you there!