Wolfwalkers - Concept Art and Background Painting

Worked with directors Tomm More and Ross Stewart as Scene Illustration Artist, Location Designer, Color Script Artist and Background Painter for their feature film "Wolfwalkers" from the 5 times Oscar's Academy nominated studio Cartoon Saloon. Designed Sequence Colour Scripts and Key Colour Backgrounds to establish the look and the methodology for the Background Colour Team.
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Here you can find some of the backgrounds I painted, all made traditionally in watercolour with some digital treatment afterwards.
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PAINTING THE FOREST - The way we painted the forest was many times a representation of Robyn’s feelings. Seeing it through her eyes, to transmit that feeling of wonder, we treated the forest trees many times just like blobs of watercolour, diffuse, dreamy and beautiful. The line was almost disappearing in places. As the story progresses we move from wonder to fear, to even real threat, sharpening the brushwork to dry aggressive marks.
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DREAMSCAPE BACKGROUNDS - Designing the dreamscapes of running with the wolves sequence was the peak of the forest style where we dived into the pure emotion of friendship and freedom. We pushed the limits of the otherworldly feel and magic on the backgrounds, painting with watercolours in the most loose way. We mixed the pigments and washes wildly and with a sponge subtracted the paint to create the bright silvery moonlight onto the trees, as well as diffused the edges of the frame to infuse the feeling of submerging into a reverie following the heartbeat of the drums.
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MAGIC BACKGROUNDS - These were more challenging as, similar to traditional Ghibli backgrounds, the change of light was done with 2 different painted bgs. Beautifully animated in compositing, with gorgeous FX, and enhanced by compositing and grading, with great teamwork.
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BREAKDOWN - A little behind the scenes of how these BGs are built. Action or camera parallax often requires the BG to be layered, to be animated or to overlap elements to give the illusion of depth and space. These shots of the City were an example of that, having to accommodate the action of the characters and having layers of mist/depth and smoke, to make the city feel alive!
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CITY BACKGROUNDS - The style draws from mediaeval tapestry and tableaus and many times the Storyboard and layout team would split a canvas in three, making the action flow between them. Blocky and cage-like abstract shapes that trap the characters was what constituted the city backgrounds. A mediaeval pattern, abstract and blocky, a BG mainly composed of squares and triangles! The challenge here was to, while staying flat, add depth with value, hue variation and saturation between the levels of hills and buildings. The vegetation plantations, cattle areas and cut trees gave so many opportunities for interesting colour shapes combinations! We didn’t need to go far for inspiration, just peeking out the window would invoke the muses. A real Ode to Braque which tribute I had to immortalize in Robyn’s messy still life. (which you can see in the Art Of Book) :D
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RED SUNSET - Sometimes in BG we were left wild and painted them as concepts, like is the case for these red sunset ones. For them I went full rage mode as Mebh went rampant and showed the darkest city, illuminated only by red stripes of fiery sunset.
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All artwork copyright by Cartoon Saloon & Melusine Productions.