Having 3D characters blend in a matte painting is always a challenge. Here we also wanted to keep some of the imperfections in the drawings like the obvious paint strokes increasing the difficulty to mix the 3D an 2D elements together. A lot of texture and coloring layers were applied to give a painted feel to the characters in addition to the hand drawn textures of the models.

The most difficult part was how to get the shadows look right. We did not want to go with a completely flat look on the characters or a cell shaded look. Using the raw 3D shadows wasn't possible as the characters elements of the image would look too "3D". We decided to go with something between the three methods and clever lighting to get the look we wanted.