Darkness Falls Across The Land

This was a background from my film "The Illusion of Life". The cartoon was a turning point in how I made my backgrounds for my animated movies. In the past I would do them in Photoshop, but this time I did it solely on my Toon Boom Animation software. I was fiddling around with the software one day when I found a cool lighting effect that gave the backgrounds or characters a real glow and depth in shading. I was shocked when I first found out about the effect because I never knew it existed…and I had the software for a while!

There was background during one of the songs in “Aladdin” that always stuck out in my mind. It was that of the moon with its glow in an illuminated crescent shape surrounded by tiny stars. I wanted that atmospheric feel for the scene I had in mind. My previous backgrounds were made in either a full screen ration or a little bit bigger than that. The background in this film however had a very wide canvas which required more detail and structure to fill up the space. This piece is particularly long because it is used for a pan that moves from the right to the left.