To help with the animation of my episodes, I have decided to design and build my backgrounds and characters separately from After Effects in order to help make the process easier when I begin animating.
One of the biggest advantages I had by creating the backgrounds in Illustrator was that I could control the layers that I was using within After Effects. Within Illustrator I could create objects on different layers and then when I imported them into After Effects, I could split all the elements up in order to create depth by using blur settings or I could have moving elements go behind other foreground elements which helped sell the illusion of the characters being within the scene.
I decided to create all of the backgrounds for all three episodes to make sure they were ready to animate.
I recorded the process for creating the backgrounds, this shows the development of two of the backgrounds created for the final episode, one being the opening space scene and the other being the interior of the rocket. Here a time-lapse of the development:
Here are a few of my favourite backgrounds that I created for the episodes:
Characters
I also worked on the designs for the characters for the animations. As I am using the rubberhose plug-in within After Effects, I have not included arms or legs for the initial designs as I will be adding them when they are being animated.
Again, like the backgrounds I split up each layer of the characters so that they are fully animatable when I bring them into After Effects. For the animations I chose to make front on views and side views. This is so I can switch between the two when I animate to show the different poses that the characters will be in.
I also created a different design for the characters when they’re in space to represent their own personal space suits. As a nod to The LEGO® Movie I created the chest logo to be representative of the logo used for the character Benny (see below) within the film.
Here are the designs for the characters that I will use for the animations.
