1 person film stuff and the power of After Effects

Ok, so I caught that Spice Frontier short and was super into it, I like the flat shade look with 2d vfx. Partly because it feels more 2D so there's more wiggle room to having more stylized characters. Watching a making of Steamroll Studios made it over 2 years, and the main creator wrote basically a novel that he developed into a short. (with plans to go series or feature)

I also bumped into Denver Jackson's Cloudrise pictures again.  Specifically this comment he made:

A year ago, I started animation on this feature. I am now approx an hour and a half through animation! Another 30 minutes to go!

Super exciting. The idea that 1 person can make a whole world  and complete story in a conceivable amount of time. Although I have seen timelapse of Denver working at his cintique and not moving for an entire day, so I think he is putting in deadly amounts of hours.

But, he also turned out a whole feature worth of work already.




He said he painted over 200 backgrounds for it. And then just hand animated the whole damn thing.
A lot of his backgrounds I think he quick mocked up in 3d and then painted over, so as to speed up working out the perspective.

He mentioned that currently he is working with CG characters that he then stopmo puppets in quill/occulus for speed, then reexports back to render.

But a big factor in 1 person productions seems to be how much power is in after effects. Make a shot feel full and vibrant. Lighting tricks and depth of field and atmosphere for depth. Running through some of these it occurs to me that that is what makes a scene feel real, the depth and the sense of environment, weather effects (mist and clouds and rain and wind) and light effects, which makes it feel cinematic because it's easier to suspend disbelief.

And Toniko has a amp up vid about making a film in a week, then you can just blaze through it because you know it can't ever be perfect so you're not slowed down trying to make it perfect.


flat in photoshop, shade and light in AE


basic putting together assets in AE


and adding some volumetric and depth of field to AE


building a long parrallax BG in AE


another putting together a scene in AE


overpainting photos to make BG


rain fx



artist drawing BG starting from ref


lasso color line art


rim light AE


just rough to clean 2D anim


lighting effects in AE