elen of the ways is done!

Elen of the Ways — Behind the Scenes Motion Graphic Process (Timelapse)

This piece was originally titled Moon Princess, but I later renamed it Elen of the Ways because the character I envisioned resembled an ancient goddess still honored by modern-day druids. Early on, I referenced Princess Mononoke a lot—I love her look and how she rides wolves. Beyond that, I didn’t do much planning or pre-production. At the time, I wanted to rely solely on my instincts and experience. In hindsight, I should have known better. The lack of planning and a solid production pipeline turned this project into a nightmare. So the takeaway here—whether you’re experienced or a beginner—plan, plan, plan. Sit down and create a thorough pre-production checklist before your pencil begs you to start darkening lines on your initial sketch

I’ve worked with Blender for two decades. While I don’t do anything too fancy, I enjoy modeling, animating, and texturing. For this project, I started with grease pencil to mock up the character design. Since I only recently got deeper into grease pencil and rigged characters, it was a great chance to learn and practice. I’m intentionally moving away from designing all elements in Illustrator and After Effects, pushing instead to color and shade my characters with grease pencil going forward. This will help streamline my workflow. That said, for this piece I still shaded and lit her in After Effects using solids and masking for each body part. Don’t ask me why—that’s just what felt comfortable. I actually like the slight “shaking” effect it creates. Not everything has to be perfect and polished; it just needs to fit the style and world you’re building.

Another challenge was the clouds. I’d never successfully created clouds in Blender before, but I managed to get them done eventually. I exported them as stills, then animated them using the LoopFill plugin and added internal lightning effects with fractal noise and various blend modes.

Right now, my two biggest weaknesses as a motion graphic artist are these:

1. Falling into a black hole of tutorials. In the past, I stayed in “learn mode” because finishing a tutorial felt like an achievement—even if I never implemented what I learned in my own work. This meant I never really created original work and stressed about how much I didn’t know, which chipped away at my artistic confidence. The solution? Just produce. Stop using learning as an excuse to avoid the fear of “I’m not good enough.”

2. “Render first, ask questions later.” This project painfully reminded me that I tend to rush to see everything together quickly. This cost me two weeks of production. I was constantly re-rendering elements that took up to six hours without properly using preview options in the software. So, before hitting render—take the time to make sure your scene is 100% ready.

In the end, the idea came together. I really enjoyed how the colors balanced and how mysterious and powerful she looks against the harvest moon. So to my fellow motion graphic artists—keep producing. No matter what it looks like, the first step is completion. Then do it again, and again, and again.

Music YouTube: @ScottBuckley

'Winter Waltz' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au 'Ride The Wind' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au