Dan Meth's Blog

Having finally finished the animation for my Random Cartoons “Six Monsters” short, it came time for me to create the backgrounds. I wanted to try something new, something I’d never done before. So I took my digital camera and looked down.

When you live in New York City you spend an unfortunate amount of time waiting for subways in grimy, decaying underground tunnels. (I hear the LA people laughing). But this is the perfect place to find strange textures and splotchy patterns. I took a load of closeups of these gross nooks and crannies of the transit system.

Then I took some photos of creepy dead November trees in a Brooklyn park. (Be quiet LA people).

In Photoshop I combined the trees and the subway slime and started playing around with hues, saturation, blurs, etc. Soon enough I had a moody and interesting background. It kind of reminds me of Dave McKean’s work in the “Sandman” comic.

But it was a little TOO creepy. This is a Nickelodeon cartoon, after all. So I played with the colors in Flash to make it happier and also so the characters “popped” out in front of it.

And there you have it. I’m done with the backgrounds and done with my cartoon!

Dan Meth