Production Design: Schwimmer & Jones

From matching a pre-existing art style to designing something completely from scratch, each new production 2A! works on requires us to tackle a new and different look. A good example of a pre-existing art style we had to translate into animation is our work on Playboy's Schwimmer & Jones animated series.

Below is a sample of what one of the original comic panels looked like.



Our challenge was to preserve the very vintage inking style and faded washes of watercolor, while allowing the characters to "pop" from the background.

We found the solution by first painting all the individual color blocks and speckles. Then paper textures are applied on top as a partial transparency to make them look paper-soaked and old. The black ink lines are then laid on top of that to preserve the overall style of the piece. Below is a split screen example of before and after adding the paper textures.



And below is a screen shot of the final translation into animation.



I feel we successfully kept the gritty ink and paint style of the comic, and made it useful for the animated piece.

You can check out the episodes now available online at Playboy.com!

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