Faculty of Art

Experimental Animation

Maya Harding

01 │ Cloud Watchers

Cloud Watchers explores concepts of curiosity and finding inspiration in one’s own environment through its storytelling and design. When faced with art block, two friends begin to play a cloud spotting game. Set in a world constructed from digital collage and overlaid with both 2D and 3D animation, viewers are encouraged to step back for a moment and find inspiration in their surroundings. Cloud Watchers is a mixed media experimental film. It was made as part of OCAD U’s Animation Studio House in the Winter Semester of 2026, and combines the efforts of 16 animators/designers. The project was directed by myself, produced by Jessica Lin, and supervised by Catherine Feraday Miller.The backgrounds are digitally collaged, non-existent spaces that closely resemble the real world. Pull back their layers, and discover that there is art everywhere in this world. Trees that are constructed from the textures of organic material, seam lines from digital collage that are playfully left in backgrounds for viewers to discover, and hand drawn clouds that are masked over the image of real ones. The two 2D cartoon characters, Kit and Dogson discover this themselves, slowly shaping the uncanny clouds into a hand drawn appearance and bringing them closer to their more immediate understanding of creativity. For those interested in seeing Cloud Watchers in person, it is showing throughout the duration of Grad Ex 111 at OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street in Room 230.

“Inspired by past projects I have worked on, Cloud Watchers has come from a realization that the different insights or skills that artists have in a collaborative capacity are incredible assets to a team project such as this. Although Kit and Dogson initially could not see the same shapes in the clouds, they eventually were able to align their vision. Animation, like many other crafts, has very specific niches and areas of focus. Creating a finished mixed media animation like this one requires a very broad set of skills, and allowing members to focus on specific elements that fit their own skills created a final piece and visual style that none of us would likely have been able to develop on our own. In terms of programs used to create the work, flexibility allowed all students to work with tools that they are already confident in. However, the final 2D animation and masking was done in Toon Boom for consistency across the large team. Backgrounds were digitally collaged using Procreate, Photoshop and Sketchbook. The background layouts and 3D plane in the beginning were modeled and animated in Autodesk Maya. The animation was composited using Adobe After Effects, and credits were assembled in Adobe Premiere Pro. The sound mix was made using Adobe Audition and Premiere Pro. Key frames and rough animation were made in Toon Boom Harmony or Procreate/Procreate Dreams, and then exported as a transparent png sequence. As a Director, it was my responsibility to oversee all of the assets that were being created from the storyboard phase to the compositing one. It has been a pleasure to be able to look so closely at work in all of its stages. I also contributed directly to the final visuals of the film. I designed some of the cloud elements/characters, and did rough and cleanup animation for the clouds. The dragon was my main focus, as well as developing a style for the SFX when clouds dissipate. We had meetings twice a week within our main team of 8 members, and outsourced some work to volunteers in order to stay within our production timeline. Jessica Lin, our producer, was instrumental in making this project happen within the allotted time. She was a pleasure to work with, and is very thorough with her scheduling and communication. Considering the scope of the project, this was a large task. She often took on work outside of producing including background work, style tests, animation and compositing. The main characters, Kit and Dogson, went through a period of visual development from my original pitch/boards. Nithya George is our character lead, and created the final character designs. Her ability to make high-quality work at a fast pace was a huge asset to the project. She created the majority of the main character keys, and ensured everything was kept on model. The cloud animation style was the most experimental aspect of this film, and required a lot of tests before the final look could be chosen. Letitia Chui is our cloud lead, and by doing these tests, she helped us to finalize and standardize cloud style across the team. The naturalistic looking clouds were made by using a masking technique combined with an image of clouds. The magical clouds were drawn with a pastel brush, each frame was hand filled to create a unique boiling drawing effect. Lineart was made by erasing parts of the frame with a textured brush. Letitia tested different brushes with the rough animation and created style guides for us to refer to. She also made prop references for the teapot and teacup. The backgrounds were also an opportunity for us to experiment with photo bashing techniques. Jiahao Di, our background lead, created the layout for the park in a 3D environment in order for us to have consistency with land structure and tree placement. After the shots were finalized and the angle was captured in Autodesk Maya, Jiahao photo bashed the landscape together with the help of Jessica. He also worked on cleaning cloud animation. Carly Lee assisted with backgrounds, focusing on ones that were of the sky itself. She worked on balancing the level of photographic clouds so that they did not overtake the animation. She also worked on character and cloud cleanup, as well as some early prop designs and compositing tests. Gurnoor Singh assisted with the initial story development, with a focus on the first 30 seconds of the short. He created the majority of the sound assets and music for the project, as well as the main mix (which was later touched up by Dominik Kosciolek). Nolan Xia was our primary colour artist for the main characters, and helped animate the 2D puppets we used for select scenes. He also made and animated the 3D plane that appears in the beginning. Our animation volunteers, Angela Lin, Ernest Vacal, Joan Maio, and Sarah Yousif helped make the cloud animation work more manageable in our timeline. Additionally I would like to thank Sasha Galoustian who made our posters, and Michelle Xiao who voiced Kit.”