I tested a lot with various materials when creating my backgrounds. I understood the environment I wanted to mould, and I had three words that redirected me if I was drifting: cold, icy, and snowy. This technique really helped transform the sea into something with depth.
I began in the real world, grabbing random pieces in my room, in the world around me and spare materials and fabrics in M301.
I used photography from the Arctic as a guide, but I trusted my gut more and looked for colours that looked satisfying together and complemented the foam blocks used to imitate ice blocks. It was a lot of glueing and cutting and ripping, at some point I got lost in my own little world and whilst I didn’t end up using this in my end piece, I learnt so much in regards to the limitations of certain fabric but equally how flexible so many materials can be when creating an environment.
I kept working in the real world, and at some point during this time, my pillow ripped, the stuffing came out, and I began to realise it looked oddly like snow. I began layering the stuffing over my fluffy white blanket and scanned it with my phone, then added a blue overlay in After Effects. I loved the results, but the previous raw materials were not what I had in mind, so I turned to Procreate and began designing a digital background for the sea and ice, with the reassurance that my first background was now complete.
Using a drone image of the Arctic Sea, I began working on my backgrounds, using a range of textured brushes and trying to highlight the water with a turquoise shadow, as it complemented the snow well. I then realised I would need to create three backgrounds to make them move in After Effects.
This ended up being more challenging than I thought, as I had to make sure each background blended perfectly, avoiding any new colours and keeping to a strict set of rules for every background.
Once I had my backgrounds complete, I created a quick digital overlay to make sure that my title page and ending credits page would have some movement. This meant keeping to the same colour theme and playing with a range of brushes to create a ‘mess’ of colour tones.
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