This was an assignment for the "illustration for animation" class I took this year. It's for Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, a children's musical story. Hundreds of paper cutouts shaded and colored with pastels, scanned and composited in Photoshop.

The idea was to make cinematic 16:9 frames illustrating any scene from the story, using techniques that are used for cutout animation (think South Park).

The wolf in the third pic is a temp last minute job which I will replace eventually.

Its looking really good, but I would make things a LITTLE more defined (ie shadows or something) to give it a little sense of depth.

Thanks. Shadows are tricky with cutouts and I didn't want to do any in photoshop. Any ideas?

Love it!!

thats adorable!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

If you made the cat a little darker on the last one, it would look alot better.

Objects in the foreground should be darker, it increases perspective.

Nice aesthetic! Having done cutout animation before, I think you've taken a good approach.

Thanks!
Hmm, good point about the cat. He could be darker because the canopy is casting a shadow over him. In addition I might add a saturation gradient like I did in the first one to simulate haze, that adds a sense of depth.

If you mix background colors together in small amounts this can also increase the idea of perspecting.

For example, mixing the tinniest amount of the grass green into the dog might work. Pastels are neat because if you screw up you just go over it.

The bird on the branch is perfect, it looks like it's in the foreground because it's so dark. That side of the tree would do well with just an ever so slight gradient to a tiny bit lighter of a color as it goes down.

This may be true in this situation because the rest of the foreground is darker as well, but in real life... things in the foreground aren't just darker.

I think he means atmospheric perspective. Things in the far distance will be lighter.

Painting, pastels, drawing work a little bit different than photographs. You have to work really hard to create the illusion of perspective.

Yeah, as I said I used that effect in the shot of the meadow, I should probably add a little to the other two, especially that cat in the tree. Blending the background details into the grass is a good idea as well, I'll give it a shot and post the results here (once I'm through with other assignments).

That's so fantastic!