These are the original storyboards. The biggest challenge in the beginning was deciding how many animal encounters there would be and what kind of animals Diamond would run into. I chose to have the film set on the coast of Maine because it naturally had a all the types of animals I was thinking of putting into the film and the location gave me room to explore both forest and ocean settings (although the ocean scenes had to be cut due to time).
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Early character exploration and Thumbnails
This was the first background I worked on as a style frame. I liked how it turned out so much that I kept the style with very little changes
More backgrounds and sketches
As I was working on these backgrounds I wanted something to be associated with Molly, the dog, and to give a sense of safety and I ended up doing that with small blue and white flowers. This also added a much needed pop of color to break up all the green and brown.