"Another Snail Planet": A watercolor painting turned animated short

After a few stop-motion projects, I found myself limited by the medium. I wanted my scenes to feel otherworldly and whimsical; practically, what I truly wanted was to ground my animations in my watercolors. This was this project’s main motivation: to animate over my paintings.

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. This original watercolor painting was inspired by a Crepe Myrtle I met in Atlanta--it's also a part of a painting series, "The Tree at Hansell St".

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 segmented the video and presented it one portion at a time, lingering on each snail, and threw some music over it all. The final animated short runs at 15 seconds.

In retrospect...

Animating such small details compromised the quality; the watercolor texture faded and linework blurred. I also struggled to capture the natural movement of snails while staying accurate to perspective. In the future, I’ll paint on larger paper and be more strategic about photographing it. Storyboarding and planning angles will also help me streamline animating.

All in all, I’m extremely proud of my result. It was a relative success on TikTok and a joy to make. I challenged myself, learned a lot, and I'm excited to do things differently next time.