High Tide's overall look was very important to me; I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to have a rich, illustrative quality.
I created my own custom Photoshop brushes to paint the backgrounds to give them a textured, painterly look.
Once I'd settled on the color scheme and general look, I modeled the entire beach in Maya, rendered shots from dozens of different angles, and used them as reference when painting the final backgrounds.
I mean the entire beach.
Working this way kept the lighting and scenery absolutely consistent, which helped ground the entire film and make the beach feel like an authentic, tangible location.
