Anatomy of a BG: Part 3

Thought I'd take this long weekend to finish my thread on the background design process for Esurance. This first image is of the bg taken into Flash and cleaned up into vectors. Our go-to gal for this phase is the fabulous Christine L. Toscanini. The secret to her power is that she's been trained in the trenches of traditional animation so she's got an eye for good assisting. That goes long and far in the world of Flash clean-up. She's also wicked fast. We're constantly amazed when work comes back from her because it always looks better than we hope. Peruse her handiwork:

Chris gave us a good basis to start by laying in gray tones for value on the bg. I love to color style the bgs myself, but lately when we have no time for art school noodling, we call on the talents of color diva, Jenny Hansen (previously mentioned on this blog here and here) to alter the color spectrum in our favor. She really injected the mood into this one (I love her subtle use of gradients):

We couldn't have cranked out so many spots in so little time without the help of these two fine friends. Thanks, ladies!