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I started with gathering content that I liked and that felt somehow fitting for one reason or another.

So when this workshop came up I tried to use it to define the part that is my biggest weakness – the background art. However, I am already very happy with the character designs and will probably keep them that way… but the backgrounds… I had no idea… Notice how I try to get out of making a background by throwing it into abstract space.

Movie-making is about making choices and in order to have a defined art style you need to condense it. They feel like they have done their research and can move on with the productions, but that is a mistake.

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You will end up with a folder full of images… and that is where most people stop. Just spend one day on instagram, deviantart, tumblr or flickr and put everything that triggers an association how your film could be. Step 1: Gather anything from anywhere that feels like it could inspire something for your movie. I took most of these tips from a workshop with the guys from polynoid and woodblock. Let’s have a look at how you should put together a mood boards. If you are not good with backgrounds like me, you didn’t waste a lot of time aimlessly trying to paint something yourself that doesn’t come close to what you want. You can now tell a background artist that you want these colors, with this line art and this shading just by pointing at the inspirational art on different mood boards. This can be a customer, who has more difficulties to imagine how your film could look like than other creative people.īut you can also use them when talking to your creative team to avoid some annoying iterations. They are also a great tool to explain the art style of your project to somebody else. The mood-boards we are about to have a closer look at, are not only meant for yourself. Collect, bookmark, write down what you like, use any inspiration that you can get.! A tool to communicate Look at a lot of films, illustration, art and so on. Analyze what your story demands, but also train your instinct. This is just a very brief glance at factors that could influence your style choices. Or maybe ridiculously complicated shapes and very detailed drawing suit your film more… play around as long as you can! Maybe you want simple shapes to play an important role for your designs, keeping it clear with little distraction. More at the moment, etching lines = everything is complicated).Īnd even if you are doing a happy movie, there are many possible directions to go into. Anticipation and Overshoots are Extremes, because. You could choose those things just by going with what feels right or you could get the same result by constructing it analytically (darkness = sadness, little light = little remaining hope, high-contrast = the character only thinks in extremes An extreme keyframe is the moment where a change in direction occurs. If it’s a sad story you might want the art to be dark, with little light, high contrast, many lines in an etching style. Find a style that feels like what you want to tell – that is the mission of a mood board. The most important question you should ask yourself is how the look can support your story. In this article I will give you a quick overview of how you can use “mood boards” to find and define a look and feel for your project, and explain why it is important to put so much work into visual developing.Ī mood board is a collage of pictures (photos, paintings, stills from films, movies, games, illustrations from books etc.) that are examples of how you want your project (or an aspect of it) to look and feel.īefore we dive into making mood boards let’s have a quick look at why defining every detail of your project’s art style is important: Support your story Beginners especially tend to overlook the importance of this step for the overall feeling and also the workflow of the complete visuals. Sooner or later in the media making process you need to define what art style your film or game will be in.

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