CASE STUDY: HAND-DRAWN CHARACTERS FOR PENDRY HOTELS LED SCREENS
Client: Pendry Hotel West Hollywood (Now the Sun Rose West Hollywood)
Studio: MBA Productions
Role: Art Direction, Illustration, Rigging, Animation
Tools: Procreate, After Effects
Featured Scenes: Space Jellyfish & Thanksgiving Turkey
OVERVIEW
A pair of fully hand-drawn animated scenes created for Pendry Hotels' large-format dual-screen displays. Every character was illustrated from scratch in Procreate, separated into rig-ready layers, then brought to life in After Effects using a combination of the Puppet Pin tool and traditional keyframe animation. Final renders were delivered on a pre-built template handed off to the hotel's editor and programmer for in-venue playback.
Deliverables: Two original character animations rendered to the Pendry dual-screen display spec.
01 — ILLUSTRATE (Procreate)
Each character was sketched, inked, and painted entirely in Procreate. The Space Jellyfish leans into a cosmic palette with textured brushwork and saturated nebula tones, while the Thanksgiving Turkey uses a looser, more painterly approach with warm autumnal oranges set against a transparent background for flexible compositing.
02 — LAYER SEPARATION (Procreate)
The rigging foundation. Every moving element gets isolated onto its own Procreate layer with clean fill-ins behind, so nothing tears or reveals empty space once the rig starts moving.
Space Jellyfish — Every element separated: bell, individual tentacles, and each background color shape, allowing for parallax, drift, and independent motion across the entire scene.
Thanksgiving Turkey — Body parts and feathers fully separated: head, neck, body, wings, legs, and each tail feather isolated for individual fan animation.
03 — RIG & ANIMATE (After Effects)
Layered files imported into After Effects and brought to life with a combination of Puppet Pin tool rigging and traditional keyframe animation. Puppet pins handle the organic, flowing motion — jellyfish tentacles drifting through space, turkey feathers fanning open — while keyframes drive the broader scene movement, character beats, and timing.
04 — FINAL OUTPUT (On-Site at Pendry Hotels)
Each scene was rendered against a pre-built Pendry dual-screen template, then handed off to the hotel's editor and programmer for integration into their in-venue display system. The result: hand-drawn characters playing live across the property's two-screen feature wall.
