original painting
digitized painting
"Another Snail Planet": A watercolor painting turned animated short
After a few stop-motion projects, I found myself feeling a bit limited by the medium. I wanted my scenes to feel other-worldly and whimsical. But I lacked the materials, or even the interest, to construct such complex scenes. I started to wonder about using my watercolors as the backdrop for an animation. I'd recently finished a painting called "Another Snail Planet," and it felt like the perfect starting point.
Here's a breakdown of how I transformed a watercolor painting into a 2d animated short:
First, I digitized an original painting by uploading it on GIMP and removing all snails.
Next, I animated 5 snails over the new painting such that, if viewed at full scale, snails would move simultaneously. I animated other elements—such as a butterfly or a pulsating glow on the stars. I used ToonSquid for this part, and the runtime of this initial animation was just 5 seconds long.
Finally, I imported the result into TikTok to create the final animated short. I zoomed in on some spots, lingered on others, and threw some music over it all. The final animated short runs at 15 seconds.
initial animation, as a GIF
final animated short :D
