The background on our... Backgrounds! (November Update)

Happy November, ya turkeys! Hope you all had a great Halloween season & are currently enjoying the full front of Fall. We’ve been working our tail feathers off on the show as always & are thrilled to say that we’re getting VERY close to being done with the pilot teaser clip! We’re currently about 90% done with the rough animation, all of the music is complete & we’re well into the clean-up of all the animation! It’s all looking and sounding amazing. Our plan is to have the clip out sometime before Christmas, so not too much longer!

We’ve also been working on developing the first season as a whole & are currently deep into writing the final script for Episode #1 of the series! We’re definitely going to be kicking the show off with a BANG. We’ve also come up with so much lore & story wise for the entire series and have a ton of episode ideas lined up that we’ve had a blast in the writer’s room coming up with. We can’t wait for you to see what we’ve been cooking up. This is just the beginning!

For this month’s main production topic, we wanted to focus on what goes into making the backgrounds & layouts for Far-Fetched! Our background team has been working super hard to give our show a very particular style, especially since the pilot takes place in the woods in the evening. We really wanted to make sure that you guys got the full knowledge of what goes into our particular process, so we asked our background lead Georden to give his insight into making background magic!

Georden: Overall during Far-Fetched, I explored a few different avenues before finding a blend of a few mixed aesthetics. The backgrounds should feel approachable, but use sharp and twisted shapes to give easy transition into a darker moment and something that can start to push those shapes more at any given moment. Such as the trees having an almost rotting feel with the droopy leaves and points, but with the right colors can feel like a fall day and relaxing, yet they also give room to give them a lot more intense color and lighting when needed. A lot of the objects that are designed have a rounded, soft feel but with points and sharper edges sprinkled throughout.

For color, it's primarily using monochromatic schemes to push tone, atmosphere and have sharp transitional changes. Like from a fairly purple and pinkish red sunset forest into hard toxic green/dark purples or bright reds at twilight for a darker shift in atmosphere. Overall, I can see things sticking to that as other episodes progress, using complementary colors and pushing monochromatic shifts for tone changes.

Basically being creative with how you use your environments and allow the shift of color to feel natural and immerse people into the story more without breaking that immersion.

As for notes and direction, it’s important for me to make sure that notes are as clear as possible by showing examples and paintovers, but allowing room for artists to be able to play with things and make it their own without breaking away from the established style. I always try to be clear and never try to go past a certain amount of revisions in order to prevent people from feeling burnt out or less motivated. A lot of previous issues I've had with receiving art direction always came from communication and what can be done to achieve what’s in their heads. So by painting or drawing a quick and rough example of what I'm looking for it makes things a lot more simple and clear.

Overall, I wanted to make Far-Fetched backgrounds simple yet complex. That’s the way I've always worked, and has given me the best results in most things. Typically making the foundation and structure simple, but diving in with more detail in color and mark making to give a solid balance. This show has been a blast so far and everyone on the team has been nothing but supportive. I hope everyone else enjoys what's made and finds themselves wanting more!

As always, we’ll be having our monthly Q&A for all $5 & up patrons this Sunday the 21st at 7:00 PM PST! We’ll be joined by our background lead Georden this time, so any questions about backgrounds or layouts you cook up in your noggin bowls he’ll be glad to answer. As usual, you can submit all of your questions for us beforehand in the Discord server. Can’t wait to chat with you all there!

To wrap things up for this month, we just wanted to again thank you all for supporting our show with both your face-holes & wallets. If it wasn’t for you folks, we really wouldn’t be able to make this show the way we want to & bring our particular vision for it to life. Can’t wait for you all to see the completed pilot teaser clip VERY soon, and of course the full-length pilot next year! Hopefully we filled your plates to the edges this month, just save some room for that cranberry sauce!