Warner Brothers Animation Background Style Guide

In cleaning up and sorting through a lot of old junk in the studio I came aacross this quickly aging and fading fax from George Stokes the head of the BG Dept. at WB Animation back during the Batman/Sueprman/Batman Beyond era.

In between seasons when the storyboarding was done I switched over to doing back ground designs for a while on the shows. When I started George sent me this fax breaking down how they did it at the time and the 'essence' of their style which owed a lot to Paul Rivoche's great work on Mr. X in the 80's.

George was a great guy to work with and made the long distance relationship with WB being off site here in Philly smoother. So I thought many animation students, fellow artists and fans would find this an interesting read and peak behind the scenes on how we worked.

Animation***I just got an e-mail tonight from Paul Rivoche saying these were his notes to himself about his approach to doing the backgrounds which George Stokes passed on to me.***