Fantoms of the Underground: Creepy Capers
I loved producing this animation. This piece debuted in Dupont Underground’s art gallery on Halloween night in 2025. In partnership with District Motion Graphics, a wonderful group of motion designers in the Washington D.C. area, this animation showcase was the first collaborative animation event I had ever particpated in. Through this experience I got to meet so many other talented artists and afterward I felt so creatively energized. I would definitely recommend collaborating with other motion designers, even just for fun whenever possible. The event was held in conjunction with Fantom Comics in Dupont Circle, and so this is where the comic theme in the piece was inspired from.
I had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted the piece to be in my head right from the start. I knew I wanted an urban 3d environment with lots of atmosphere that I could render in a comic book style with thick lines and toon shading. Then, I could handle all the characters in the scene as 2d cutouts really leaning into the comic book inspiration for the piece. I started by blocking out the rough lay of the street with splines. Once I was happy with the rough outline of my city block, I created the geometry for the curb, sidewalk, and asphalt street.
From there I started building a separate Cinema 4D project as an asset folder with all my models. Everything from walk up houses, storefronts, apartment buildings, and skyscrapers to the street level details like mailboxes, street lights, and benches were collected in this project and textured with simple Redshift toon shaders. All the models were sourced from The Happy Toolbox via Greyscale Gorilla and the C4D content browser.
With my city block arranged it was time to animate my camera for the first person perspective I wanted the scene to have. My initial conception for the piece was to put the viewer right in the shoes of the protagonist to enhance the creepy mood of the piece overall. To achieve this the camera needed to move down the block at a natural pace with some random bobbing motion to mimic the perspective of walking.
Now that my Cinema 4D animation was rendered it was time to bring the files into After Effects and composite in my 2D elements.
2D and Composite
I placed nulls at specific points relative to the camera in Cinema 4D where I knew I wanted to place my 2D elements and imported the nulls into After Effects from C4D. Then it was just a matter of sourcing appropriate elements to composite into my scene. I knew I wanted to treat the character in the scene as a flat card, and the best way to get a vintage comic feel was to find public domain vintage comic assets.
I cut out assets I felt I could use in Photoshop, then re-colored them and did some other adjusting so they fit my color palette and look of my scene.
I lined up these comic cut outs with my nulls from Cinema 4D and my animation was complete. From there I added a touch of vignetting, blur around the edges of the frame and a bit of chromatic aberation to really make the scene feel spooky and unsettling.
In the end, the piece debuted at Dupont Underground’s Halloween Animation Showcase and I could not have been more honored to share a space with dozens of other incredibly talented animators. It was my first time actually seeing my work projected in a physical space, and it was an unforgettable experience