Production Design: Polar Bears

2A! had the pleasure of working on an animated greeting for American Greetings last year. We were given a beautifully painted watercolor image of two polar bears and a cardinal, and were asked if we could mimic the style in Flash. Always up for a challenge, we dove into the project!



There were many parts of this project that required a lot of planning in the design phase. The first thing I did was to study and play with how I could mimic the gentle colors of watercolor artwork. I found that if I loosely painted the shapes and variations, trying my best to mimic the random spread and fading of the colors, I could re-create a pretty convincing watercolor look in Flash.

Another thing I noticed with watercolor is that it's very subtle and minimalistic, which is part of why it’s so tricky to re-create as vector art. You only paint where colors are completely necessary, so it's ok to have lots of white and light color washes over large areas.



I'm really pleased with how the vector art turned out. I feel that we were successful in adhering to the specific style in Flash, and creating a piece that looked and felt very similar to the original art the client showed us.

Copyright © American Greetings