North Pole Air Control Devlog - February 2025
stylin' and profilin'
Hello again!
I’m back, and catching up on my queue of updates. Hope you enjoyed meeting the voice actors in last week’s post! Today I’m talking more about my personal contributions to the show. Recently that has been struggling, trying, attempting to FINALLY to figure out the art direction for this thing.
NPAC is very style-forward, and while art direction has always been a favorite part of each of my films, it’s a special priority here. I’m hoping to animate the characters in the the style of their concept art, aiming for a cohesive package of vintage Christmas glitz and charm. I’m arriving with some things already figured out - the characters are already designed, so they should be the guideposts to center the rest of the show’s look. Yet past the guideposts… there’s nothing. Just a lot of decisions and references and hoping for happy coincidences. It’s been intimidating, and frustrating for sure. I keep hoping the next Google search, next book, or next movie could help, but eventually the way forward must be paved by making drawings… bad drawings.
It’s the simple truth of any kind of animation work, and especially design - that until you get it right, you’re always going to be drawing it wrong. Even though I know to expect this situation, it is still frustrating to never know exactly when the right drawing is going to come along. For this project, I still don’t feel like they have, but I’m getting close. And with my current schedule and budget, maybe I can work with “close.”
The character designs have a lot of principles I’d like to apply to the rest of their world. A high-gloss sheen, familiar warmth, energetic flow, a balance between flat shapes and linework - something that feels rich but isn’t too hard to replicate across the hundreds of paintings necessary for this to become a show. As I’ve thought and drawn it’s distilled down to a few ideas:
The fun and nostalgia of Christmas
The energy of flight
The unfinished/longing state the main characters find themselves in
I’ve been especially interested in that last idea - Holly and Ivan are early in their careers, with a sense of potential and a career clearly-not-peaked, and I’ve been trying to find a way to represent that in the style. Maybe the linework begins to fray off, or even the unfinished edges of the painting are visible in areas away from focus. I’ve loved the creative ways animation has interpreted depth-of-focus beyond the (more realistic) blur - like Spiderverse’s color distortion or 101 Dalmatian Street’s abstraction into basic shapes. Maybe these “unfinished edges” could be my show’s way to “blur” extraneous details. It’s been difficult to make something look “unfinished” while still feeling like a finished work of art, and maybe that’s a paradox impossible to truly achieve. But I want to try something new with this show, despite that making this inception phase much more frustrating.
Before leaving for Australia I was able to do two larger environment pieces in addition to some small studies. While I was initially disappointed with them, I think the time away has helped me see past my perfectionism, and that they actually do have value. I’ve been focusing so hard on getting things “just right,” afraid to commit to something I’ll regret later in the process. It’s hard to know just how much people will be bothered by inconsistency (or more accurately, iteration) as I figure things out in media res. But maybe I’m taking myself too seriously. I keep telling myself that it’s more important to have the show done, than to paint a particular background perfectly. It will end up getting covered up by the character anyways :P
Below I’ve shared the two style test paintings I’ve worked up, which is the last step before creating actual background paintings. Paid members, I hope you’ll enjoy them!
See you soon with another monthly update! Man, time is flying ;)
-dh