Some time ago, I talked to Erwin, a friend of mine, who had offered helping me with my background plates for the animated science fiction short film Echoes. Because using simple textures inside a 3D environment didn´t give me the desired results, we talked about different other techniques that could be used to create my painted backdrops you could “walk into”.

After some testing, we came up with an animation concept that needed not only 1, but 3 to 4 paintings per shot to create the illusion of a 3D environment.

Below you can see very rough handpainted backgrounds that depict a simple geometry – just for testing reasons.

Of course, the actual backgrounds will be far more complicated. I made a rough estimate about how many hours I will need to get the final background paintings done: 2.000 hours!
Hm, putting it with the words of my grand childhood superhero. No, I don´t mean Bud Spencer – I mean the other one: Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“You got to do a lot of things. But where shall you take the time, you ask? You need to sleep at least 8 hours a day? Then, sleep faster!!”

Coming up in one of my next Updates: Finally! The first animated Background Tests