“Animating the Alternate 14th Century”

Welcome to the official production log for The Plague Knight.

Independent animation is a marathon, and we want to pull back the curtain to show you exactly how we are bringing Richard Lee Byers' dark, alternate 14th-century universe to life. Our production pipeline moves strictly from concept art, to storyboarding, to final cinematic reproduction.

The process starts entirely with the mind of our Production Designer and Art Director, Johnny Atomic. He handles the initial concept design phase, anchoring the visual world of The Plague Knight by hand-drawing intricate character turnarounds, sprawling, decayed environments, and atmospheric keys.

Once those master designs are locked, we push directly into storyboarding. This is where we block out the cinematic staging, pacing, and camera movements for every beat of the script, translating flat concepts into a blueprint for cinematic sequence.

From there, the core team at Westerfield Studios steps in for the heavy lifting of production and reproduction. Our animators, layout technicians, and digital sculptors pick up Johnny's assets, blocking out the raw data and hand-detailing every single frame. We are moving through this film systematically to ensure the final animation maintains that striking, premium, living-painting aesthetic we are fighting for.

Aces are in their places, the pipeline is moving, and we are incredibly proud of the animatic frames starting to drop onto our monitors. 48 of 58 scenes have full animatics. We have dialogue for all the characters. Stay tuned to this space for exclusive animatic frames, asset updates, and deeper logs straight from the studio floor.

— Robert Westerfield