From the very beginning, Echoes was planned having moving backgrounds. As the the usual parallax-trick with moving flat planes (like seen in the intro of the kult movie Akira)  was too cheap, I tested out some 3D techniques. Akira was the very first anime I saw. I was something about 13 and was amazed about the story, the world, and the characters. Man, this was not Disney. But nevertheless, for today´s audiences the background animations might look old fashioned.

Below are some cubes with painted textures mapped onto their surfaces. Having objects like these in my backround would have given me the possibility to move my camera freely inside my virtual sets.

In my next post  I´ll show how I wanted to use this technique in my background plates.