I started with the influences that actually shaped my eye for this kind of thing, Danganronpa and Coraline, both things I grew up loving. Danganronpa gave me a starting point for background design, simple enough to build efficiently but with enough personality in the 2D and 3D mix to feel intentional. Coraline gave me the tone I actually wanted, dark fantasy, textured, a little unsettling, built through colour and animation rather than anything overt.

From there it was a lot of foundational animation work done properly before any of it looked atmospheric, tweening, blinking, multiplanar movement where the closest layers move fastest and the farthest move slowest, the kind of detail that makes a scene feel like it has real depth instead of flat layers stacked on top of each other. Once the animation itself was solid, I moved into After Effects to build the actual mood, a glow on the moon to make it read as genuinely luminous, drifting snowfall with its speed and direction tuned by hand, and an attempt at a smoke effect that I loved in theory but couldn't get to move slowly enough to fit the ambient feel, so it didn't make the final cut. Not every experiment earns its place, and I'd rather leave something out than force it in.