Once the animation is ready, we start considering the environment in this step. Lighting for each location and scene was decided when designing the environments. Here, highlights and shadows are drawn in the animation, in accordance with the decided light source(s). Some aspects were kept in mind when adding highlights and shadows -
- The light source and direction were decided before adding the highlights and shadows.
- Shadows and highlights were drawn on a separate sublayer above the colour layer, but under the clean-up layer.
- Drop shadows were drawn on a separate layer under the colour layer.
- Shadows, highlights and drop shadows were drawn for one element at a time, to make it easier to keep a track of how the light interacts with each element and material.
- The backgrounds were added in the light and shadow stage to ensure that the light source for the animation matches that of the background.