This is a somewhat accurate illustration of how the animation process works. There's the storyboard phase, then there's the sketch phase, then there's the lineart and after that it's time for colors.

However, there's one thing missing... blending a scene together with another.

Grass animation in it's early stages, made in Blender. The plan was to integrate 2D and 3D, to achieve the desired look.

This is what the final product ended up looking like, after all these stages.

There are no shortcuts to this. Animation is a constant processs of doing, re-doing; thinking and re-thinking.

And, yes, I had to do this for hundreds, probably thousands of frames. This project went on for months.

Here are a few more snippets:

This one actually wasn't included in the animation, it was earlier on in the testing stage.