40. Illustrating Animations for an Eco-Documentary on Soil Health

Back in 2024, I landed a totally unexpected and wonderful project: illustrating animations for an ecological documentary. The director was looking for an illustrated solution and I got connected as a creative despite having zero experience doing animations. Chalk it up to having really good friends! So, I rolled up my sleeves and the client was gracious. I'm finally getting around to sharing about this special experience. Read on for a real juicy process blog.

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I've never done animations before. Ever. But I had it on my dream project list, and I had played around making animations in Procreate. Which creative hasn't, right? So it was fun to receive a query from a friend who connected me to the project - would you ever be interested in doing illustrated animations? And once I said "ooh yes!" I received a preliminary email of the general brief: title, name plates, locations, credits, explaining graphics for a film on farming practices and soil health. A cool project about the health of the planet? Yes, please!

To wrap my head around the project, I proposed a series of graphic styles just to gauge the client's aesthetic and actual interest. (Isn't it always so exciting in the beginning, when you don't really know whats happening or even if the project will align with your skills?) Having the client give me their style choices gave me some direction, and provided me with limitations that helped me start to see what the project might look like. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have started with style choices because it kind of forced a style that wasn't as suitable once we got to the end of the project. ::sigh:: But a little naïveté is always best at the start of a daunting project.

Pumped and peppy, I bounced into the first 1:1 meeting wih the producer to talk about concepts for illustrations. Together we tossed a bunch of creative ideas into the air which I turned into some quick illustrations. Afterwards, I expanded the best ones into some colored illustrations to present to the colorist and editor. You can see how I was already trying to bridge the introduction and finale of the documentary - using the same imagery and style. You know, building a full-circle concept to see if the style would really work.

(1) First client call sketches, (2) conceptual ideas (3) doodled conceptual ideas © thesmarti

Colored designs to present to the colorist and editor © thesmarti

Once the team picked the illustrations that translated the concept best, I attempted an animation reel in Procreate to see if this could work. This was one of those scary moments. I mean, who hasn't been in awe of animators. But I suddenly appreciated how the frame rate expands the concept into millions of small line decisions. It humbly took me more than 20 hours to make this silly 5sec thing. And it wasn't even that good. I lost steam at the end of the animation and ran out of time. I cried to my partner that night out of sheer panic that I had no idea if I was actually going to be able to pull this off! Thankfully, the producer saw potential in everything I did (I always seem to luck out with generous clients) and he gave me continual encouragement as I fumbled along.

The first animation test "Deflated Earth" © thesmarti

Eventually, the project solidified and the schedule fell into a groove. The producer outlined 7 separate animations reels, with clear scripts:

1. Introduction: About the Earth

2. Eutrophication

3. Erosion

4. Humus

5. Cover Crops

6. Agricultural History

7. Conclusion: Circular Agriculture.

Every week, I'd finalize one of the animation, do some research (I learned so much about soil health!) and then propose the next week's storyboard for approval. And we moved from one animation to the next over a period of 2 months. I stuck with Procreate, because although I had done some previous work in After Effects, I remember being stymmied by the crispness of the Adobe Illustrator vector designs. In Procreate, I could draw textured pieces faster with my ipad and then figure out how to animate them intuitively.

(1) scripts for the entire project, (2) my illustrated script for "Eutrophication" (3) cleaned up script on "Cover Crops after a video call meeting and (3) closeup on pink notes for the script for "Cover Crops" © thesmarti

Conceptual design illustrations for script of "About Earth" © thesmarti

Elements to animate and illustrate for script of "Agricultural History" and "Circular Agriculture © thesmarti

To be frank, the animations never got easier. It took me whole days to make 3 seconds of material! Crazy. Even though Procreate was intuitive, it broke my head to map out the frames, and decide when lines would need to appear or move or fade. I'm so used to static illustrations that it was a whole other beast to make the illustration move convincingly. Making things speed up or slow down was beyond my calculations. I made loads of mistakes, investing in animating a sequence only to decide hours later that it didn't work. Then I'd have to regroup and plunge back in to try a different idea.

Animated first version for the script of "About Earth" © thesmarti

By the time we finished the first round of animations, I needed a break. This was important because I was getting almost angry with the project. I started feeling dread when I would have to figure out the pieces, and then a strange relief and short-lived elation that I had somehow pulled it off...just in time to start on the next concept! I also think the tension was because I had to drop a lot of other client work. The animations required so much time and energy that I needed to dedicate all my attention on it. I had an "aha" moment on this project that a variety of work keeps me healthy and happy. A lesson well-earned.

But after a 2-week trip (we took a quick local flight to Victoria Falls to gawk at the water and wildlife), I felt refreshed enough to start the second round of animations. This is when the producer talked me through each animations and requested some changes - different colors, replacing some objects, accelerating parts, slowing down others. By now I had the voice-overs which were in Swedish which isn't the same as Danish but I still thanked my lucky stars I had learned some similar key words and phrases! Even better, I also had some estimated time stamps so I could attempt to sync the animations with the voice-overs.

I had learned from previous projects that both clients and I can have unrealistic expectations of the workload with edits. So I try to make sure that at the end of a project I either get priorities or extensions (or both) to make sure I can deliver the necessary changes. In the case of this project, I knew that expanding from 2-frames per second to 8-frames per second was going to literally quadruple my workload. So I had to limit the changes. And the producer did his best to create space for extensions so I could meet the deadline with the best work possible.

By this point, the project was using the animation reels as projected images onto filmed macro-shots relating to the animation reel subject. So I was submitting them on transparent backgrounds and once I saw the mockups - in my horror I realized I needed to solve some visual hierarchy problems! Basically, the moving elements in the macro-shots were more saturated than my illustrations. So it was hard to see or pay attention to the illustrations. And the whole point was to understand the concepts via illustrations! So I needed to oversaturate the illustrations in edits so that they wouldn't get lost in the macro-shot details.

First, I condensed small elements that would get lost in the busy background. Second, I repainted the colors on elements so they would contrast better with the busy background OR add in some visual tricks (like white blocks or transparencies) for the elements that couldn't be repainted because of consistency issues with other animations. Because each macro-shot created a different problem, I couldn't use the same solutions. I had to solve each one creatively.

I barely kept my head above water while churning out two new animations from modified storyboards, and then expanding 5 of the 7 animation reels from 2-frames per second vs 8-frames per second all while attempting to solve the transparency/visual hierarchy problems along the way. Procreate has a limit to the frames you can add, so I ended up making multiple parts for each animation. Parts 1-8 for a single 15 second reel! (They were combined together later as a whole sequence.) I raced to the deadline in time to upload the Procreate in multiple formats - Animated HEVC, Animated MP4, Animated PNG, and finally as PNG files so the colorist could put them in order himself to time-sync it exactly with the voice-over.

Animated final for the script of "About Earth" © thesmarti

I wish I could load all of the isolated files here, but you'll just have to forward to the time stamp to see each of the 7 animated illustrations in the documentary:

1. Introduction: About the Earth (01:36)

2. Agricultural History (05:12)

3. Erosion (07:07)

4. Eutrophication (07:28)

5. Humus (09:33)

6. Cover Crops (13:21)

7. Conclusion: Circular Agriculture (35:02)

Here are some screenshots so you can sneak peek some of the illustrated concepts:

Concept: Over-farming and depleting the soil, screenshot from "About Earth" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

Concept: Cycle of Plants to Animals to Manure to Plants, screenshot from "Agricultural History" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

Concept: Fertilizer Runoff Leads to Deadly Algae Blooms, screenshot from "Eutrophication" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

Concept: How Cover Crops Hold Soil To Keep Farms Healthier, screenshot from "Cover Crops" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

Concept: Decomposition of Animals and Plant Debris Create Humus, screenshot from "Humus" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

Concept: Cover Plants Hold Soil, Push Out Weeds, Improve Soil, Increase Humus, Counteract Erosion, Deter Pests and Attract Good Insects, screenshot from "Cover Crops" animation for Lånad Jord © thesmarti

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In the end, I have no doubt that this project helped me build tenacity. I used Procreate's simple animation software to make a complicated deliverable. One of those "I made what I could with what I had" and I know I tried my very best. Even still, I'm sure it was a headache for the colorist who had to put the pieces together and freeze some frames and reconfigure sections in the editing process. (Ah, editing! I'm grateful to you, Jonas, for taking on that challenge!) All in all, I'm so very proud of what I contributed, and I'm grateful that the whole team was gracious enough to make it work. I'll be cheering on Katagrama Productions in all their endeavors - what a fun team and what an interesting project to collaborate on!

The documentary Lånad Jord (Borrowed Land) is permanently published on the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry site here as well as on youtube with subtitles in English.

here's to rising-to-the-ocassion and taking on new challenges,

smarti