A little look into the process of our Illustrator and our favourite 2D animator Tom W (not to be confused with our other Tom, Tom S ... less of a favourite)

Step one

I started by sketching out the scene, positioning the character in front of a big window working on their laptop with a steamy cup of tea/coffee on the side. I duplicated the scene and created two versions with very different moods and light: the cloudy version is more grey and flat, the sunny version has a beautiful pink glow that invades the room and warms up the character.

Step 2

I had some feedback from the team and we chatted about what kind of direction to go in. Once the sketch was approved I started working on Illustrator creating the main shapes that compose the character and the scene. At this stage I assign a base colour to each shape, knowing that they might change in the next step once I’ve added lights and shadows.text here...

Step 3

This stage is my favourite! I play with colours to give life to the scene. I add shadows and lights and some glowing areas. I also used a grain effect to give more texture to the rays of light. The main characters stay the same, with dark hair and green jumper, but the overlying layers change with the weather. I wanted to give a significant distinction between the two scenes and to do that I used two opposite colour combinations: the cloudy scene will be blue and purple, the sunny scene pink and orange!

And now onto the animation...

Step one

I wanted to practise creating and using a motion reference, so I recorded myself to try and get the most natural movements possible. This stage was about working out the transition between the two illustrations.

Step two

Now I was happy with the general movements I moved towards bringing colour back in, and adding motion to some of the smaller aspects such as the pencil and rain. It still looks very flat at this point but its good to see what's working and what isn't.

Step three

Again, you can see much more movement added in to give some more life to the character. The rain was removed as it wasn't working. Lots more texture and colour have been added to the character at this point too. I think its really interesting to see where it is here and where it gets to at the end, how lots of little changes make such a huge difference.

and with a few more stages in between, we're brought back to the final animation...