2D Production Memo - Sept 2026

Written by Andrew Frastaci, Background Artist

The FOREST team is currently deep in production, executing on a year’s worth of planning, writing, storyboarding, and pre-production art! The final vision of our short film is beginning to take shape, with our lovable characters beginning to move on top of lush backgrounds.

Crafting the Landscape of FOREST
Our setting, a pint-sized town in the midst of a fantastical forest, is as much of a character as our main cast. Background artists are responsible for communicating our short’s unique sense of scale while supporting the emotional beat of the story.

Our artists are held to a professional standard for maintaining continuity between shots, keeping in mind size, proportion, and color. During this production, our background artists have also learned technical tricks to help them not only paint faster, but even more accurately, allowing them to enhance their skill sets.

Background art teams must constantly reference each other’s work to ensure a sense of consistency in each shot.

Bringing It All Together: Compositing
All of our individual art teams must work together to ensure a sense of cohesiveness across assets, but the compositing team is where our short film literally comes together!

We can’t just slap our animated characters on top of our backgrounds and call it a day - characters need to feel grounded in the world created for them. The compositing team layers in extra shadows, atmosphere, and effects to create a sense of immersion in each shot.

“Animation, as a medium, is at its best when it is collaborative, pulling from the artistic experiences of everyone involved.  Compositing is where all the different schools of animation magic become one. The Comp team takes the lovingly crafted lines of the animation team and the beautifully painted images from the background team, then combines them to make a cohesive whole. The collected creative output of the entire crew, distilled down into one perfect image, one frame at a time.” -Eric Wolford, Compositing Lead.

Rough Animator: Grace Jung | Clean & Color Animator: Gab Talan | Compositors: Eric Wolford, Fionna Chang

This compositing test shows just one shot on its way to completion. Modern compositing might look a little different from the days of laying clear animation cells over painted backgrounds, but the fundamentals are still the same.

Crafting the SOUNDscape of FOREST: SFX and Soundtrack
While we have a good idea of what our world looks like, if you close your eyes and picture a dense forest, what does it sound like? That’s the question our SFX team is hard at work answering, a key complementary element of bringing our 2D Short to life. We didn’t set out to make a silent film, so everything from footsteps to falling fruit will need to be captured over the coming weeks to complete FOREST.

And last but certainly not least, our soundtrack: the emotional heartbeat of our short film. Rumors among the crew say that as much as 5 minutes of the soundtrack have been recorded so far, and it already has rave reviews! A powerful score drives the point home on a film such as ours.

Next Steps

• Cleanup animators will be penning the final lines of our characters as they receive color and lighting.
• Characters will continue to be composited into shots with backgrounds and FX.
• Our short will be receiving a final audio mix with SFX and score!