Praying for Mantis Love by Rachel Healy

ive been working on my backgrounds, i was going for the silhouette look of black framing the forefront of the image and the going back in lighter and lighter shades of grey to give the illusion of depth. i have been studying lotte reiniger's films and think that the coloured ones are a bit too much and so i do not want fully coloured backgrounds in my film either. although i do not want just blacks and greys either, so after researching i have fouund i prefer one colour dominating a background works best like in The Adventures of Prince Achmed, and in Michel Ocelot's Princes et Princesses. therefore i have decided to use coloured lighting in after effects, the colour for each scene will alos represent the mood of the scene. i have drawn the backgrounds and outlined them in pen then scanned them in and arranged them in photoshop and added levels of light or dark. each background contains around 3 or 4 layers to give the illusion of depth and to allow me to arrange them in after affects for track ins and shadow effects. once i have put them into after effects and added lighting i will post them on here. In the mean time here are a few examples of the influential pictures ^