Food for Thought - Production - Background Designing 1

That rough storyboard also allowed me to roughly count how many backgrounds I needed to design for the animation, with two directions that I felt that we could possibly take them in. Design elements that would be retained in both directions will be the fact that there will be a tiny bit of animation inserted into them to make them a little less static.

The first idea would be the more challenging one where we attempt to retain the same art style throughout for all of the background designs while the second one would allow me to lightly replicate the art styles used for the various time periods (Such as a hieroglyph for the egyptian setting, a lithograph for the medieval setting and so on), which I think would work better for a chronology on any sort of subject matter, especially during that scene where Johnny is being placed in several different time settings when the history of cake is lightly discussed upon.

The design process for these backgrounds turned out to be trickier than I initially expected, various considerations had to be made, such as whether the backgrounds should merely present the time period itself, or whether kitchens should also be incorporated into each one of them, the latter was a problem when it came to the background design for the Industrial Revolution, I wanted to show all the smoke that would come out from factories and initially wanted it to be an outdoors setting, and so it was a problem if the other settings (Egypt and Medieval) took place in kitchens.

Another issue was once again attempting to use the same art style for all the background designs, especially when it came to designing the Egyptian setting, it was just a lot tougher visualising something for it as compared to the other settings, while still making it recognisable enough to the viewers (Which I felt would work better if they were each given their own unique art style). And if we were to go the other way round by simply designing settings that showed what time period it is, it doesn't seem as effective without showing something of relation to baking.

Again I did some really, really rough sketches, the decision is up to my teammates after this.

Another interesting element that I decided to retain is keeping the oven to the right, other parts of each setting can change a little however (Like other people in the kitchen will be doing other things such as rolling and flattening dough, mixing mixtures, etc.), so the composition wouldn't be the same for all of them. The colour scheme will most definitely be differently from one another as well (With more vibrant colours for the Egypt design, warmer colours or black and white lining for the Medieval one, and something more sepia for the Industrial Revolution one).

'Slightly' clearer sketches.