iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

And lastly we have the “gross-up” shots of Jay and his tattoos. Jon gave me the tattoo designs and told me to go crazy with it. It was a nice change of pace going from painting dungeons and villages to painting open sores and stretchmarks.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

This BG is one of my favorites. Mostly from how little I had to actually paint, to bring Lukas’ drawings to life. I feel like I finally figured out how to suggest a lot atmosphere without overcomplicating things or getting bogged down in the small stuff.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

Fun fact: I’m pretty sure I reused the same sky gradient in like 90% of these lol. Moving the textures around a bit and all the smoke helped keep things from looking too “copy-pasted.”

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

These turned out a lot darker than I expected. All of charred bits of the buildings throughout the village and the black smoke filling the sky meant the majority of the light in these came from the glow of the fires.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

The final area was the medieval village. Lots reds and oranges since the place was being burned to the ground.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

I did my best not to lose Rod‘s surreal details from the initial sketches. But man, there were so many bricks on the walls and floors of this place lol. A lot of the lighting and textures here working overtime to hide all of my continuity issues from BG to BG.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

The dungeon was much more involved. I think we had a little over 20 backgrounds in the dungeon area. There was a lot more to consider since these had the fighting sequences and more dynamic camera effects.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

The cold mountain tops were pretty straightforward, mostly rocky textures and some overcast clouds to really set the mood. Typical dark fantasy with snowy, windswept mountains. We transition from the cold blues into the otherworldly green pretty quickly.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 25/09/2026

For the fantasy sequence, Jon gave me reference pics from Heavy Metal mags, 70’s fantasy and old metal albums. He really wanted to push the moody colors and dark atmosphere. There were 3 main areas, the cold, blue mountains, the dank, green dungeon and the burning, red village.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

It was a lot of trial and error trying to get things to a “good enough” state. I learned a lot and after this scene in particular, I really want to keep pushing things even more in Blender. The dream is to someday figure out how to replicate the painted 2D style inside Blender!

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

It was a back and forth with how much detail to add in Blender vs just paint in during the paint over stage. I tried to intentionally warp and break some models so they wouldn’t look so “3D” and precise.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

So using my trusty Google Street View, I went down the street slowly building up the town. We spent a while tweaking and adjusting camera placement for all the shots, but finally had the roughs locked down. I went back through with another pass at details and some basic colors.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

I knew it was going to take forever to build a whole street with storefronts and random props all along, but we were looking at over 25 BGs in this scene and the idea of drawing the same buildings that many times by hand would have been torture.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

And finally, the Akihabara street. Man what a doozy. Originally I sketched out some shots but after having to adjust them and redraw them multiple times, I moved to Blender.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

That also provided me a basis for colors, although we did push them a bit to be more “love themed.” The original cafe had a lot more detail and stuff just everywhere so I simplified a lot of things to keep the shots from looking too busy/distracting. (Also helped speed things up)

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Same set up: basic single room with lots of different shots all around the place.Once approved, I went back and added the details and some basic color. This cafe was based on a real place in Tokyo, so I had a number of reference images to go off of.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

After the success of the Love Hotel room, I was excited to do the same with the Maid Cafe.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

For these, I took Ryan’s storyboard sketches, matched them as best I could in Blender and rendered the shot. We went back and forth making sure the 3D shots looked right and thankfully adjusting the camera angle and focal length was super quick!

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Speaking of Blender… The first scene I mocked up in 3D was the Love Hotel room. It was a relatively bare environment with simple props and detail, so it made sense to use 3D. Plus we had 24 unique BGs set in here including some moving camera shots.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

I was tempted to use Blender since there’s so much detail and structures, but decided against it. Since there were only few backgrounds for the scene, I didn’t think it was worth trying to model and paint over a whole city street.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Ok next up is the Akihabara Station, more signs and light bloom! I used a handful of Google Street View images to mock up the layout of the station’s interior and exterior.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

The rest of the office was pretty straightforward. Mostly just some grungy details and anime paraphernalia scattered around the room. It was loosely based on our old basement apartment (except this place had a heater). Comment down below if you can count all the references!

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Speaking of cutting corners! We got creative with the cityscape shot outside the Sapporo Office. I cut up a bunch of pics of the city to stitch together a grayscale version that we could zoom out of. I really liked the effect and I wish we could have used it more in the film.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

The BookOff scene originally had a lot more signs on the shelves. I wanted to keep it as close to Ryan’s reference photos as possible. But this was nearing the back half of the project and after drawing all those books, I made an executive decision to not care about em anymore.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Man, I drew so many signs… Speaking of which, the snowy nighttime shots in Hakodate had their fair share of them as well. Sorry if all the signs don’t translate properly. I was using Google Translate and Streetview for most of em, so please go easy on this baka gaijin. 🙇‍♂️

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Here’s some process shots of one of them. Originally this one looked much different. Ryan found a stairway while exploring the city that looked way more cinematic.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

A lot of these were also based on pics Ryan took himself while in Japan. (Except the Hachiko statue, lol that one’s actually in New England)

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

The Shibuya Station and Red Light District were fun change. Ryan wanted a much moodier and extreme palette for these so we go from harsh reds to purples in the Red Light District to greens and harsh bokeh in the station.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Next up is the Tokyo Underground Mall. Google Street View was incredibly helpful for understanding that place's layout. For the colors, we went with a warm golden hue. I used A LOT of light bloom to avoid having to draw extra details in the stores 🤫

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

The big panning BG was a lot of fun! There was a lot of layering for this one to create a cool parallax effect out the train window.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Moving on to the other train scene, this one had a softer and warmer tone. In general, Ryan really wanted the backgrounds to have this kinda hazy, dreamlike quality to them. So I pushed the airbrushing hard to blend and wash out the colors

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

I believe after those, we moved on to the JR train interiors. These have a colder and more stark color palette than the warm and cozy bar. These also had a lot of compositing going on with moving elements, characters and background assets.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

Here’s a look at the process. It starts with a storyboard sketch from Ryan to show the composition and where animated elements will be. I drew over with some rough lines to get an idea of the perspective some basic details. Then the final render with colors and lighting.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 08/08/2026

We started with the bar in the Red Light District. We wanted a warm environment to contrast with the cold winter night outside. The pictures on the wall are actually all photos of Ryan and I from back when we were roommates, just super posterized and compressed.

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 14/04/2026

Some backgrounds I painted for the recent @naddpod.bsky.social live show in NYC!

Illustration of Sunny lake side with old shacks and buildings

Illustration of a sunset over the mountains and forest

Illustration of a cauldron under a swampy forest

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

These last few are actually reused backgrounds from previous episodes. They were painted over to look like winter/Christmas time. I also adjusted the values and colors to make them look warmer/cooler as needed.

Illustration of a snowy apartment building

Illustration of a tv decorated for Christmas

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

I think if I could do it again, I’d find a better way of adding the snow to make it look a little more fluffy/soft. But after the 3rd or 4th background full of trees, I sort of got lost in it all lol

Illustration of snowy trees and bushes even more

Illustration of snowy trees and bushes and more

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

@speedoru.bsky.social asked for a couple generic tree shots to use throughout the episode, these were meant to be used in bits and pieces. The bushes and trees were painted using the same foliage brushes I made for Ep2 and then I added the snow on top.

Illustration of snowy trees and bushes again

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

Plus it gives the BGs a sort of dreamlike haze, which fits the vintage Christmas special aesthetic. ☺️

Illustration of Santa's sleigh crashed in the snow

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

With the other effects layered on in the final comp, any of the sharper details get “smoothed out." So even though the BGs have high contrast between the darker elements and bright snow, the characters are still able to stand out as the focal point.

Illustration of Nono with the snowman in the snow

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

Even though these BGs take place in the woods at night, we didn’t want the same dark/spooky vibe of Ep 2. So I tried to use the snow almost as a way to illuminate the night environments. I gave the snow a pretty harsh bloom/glow in most shots to help push its “brightness."

Illustration of snow on the ground behind a building

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

The outside shots are mostly just snow and trees lol. Luckily not a lot of buildings or complex structures in this episode, so my fight to understand perspective was a little more forgiving this time.

Illustration of a snowy winter night with a large moon in the sky

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

Thankfully, its Christmas time so any inconsistencies can just be chocked up to Christmas decorating/moving stuff around. You can see in these two, how I tried to transition between the warm orange glow of the inside to the darker blues of the outside.

Illustration of a snowy balcony and Christmas tree behind it

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

First off are the interior shots of the apartment. The main goals for these were to 1) give off a warm and cozy holiday vibe to contrast with the cold and icy wintertime outside, and 2) try to stay relatively consistent with the original design of the apartment.

Illustration of a Christmas tree and kitchen

Illustration of an open oven in a kitchen

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 21/12/2025

Hey! Did you see there was a new Punch Punch Forever special? Did you want to want to get a better look at the backgrounds in it? Did you also want to hear my unprompted thoughts and comments on said backgrounds???

Snowy image of a Christmas tree in a village

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 10/12/2025

Wonder what they’re discussing?

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 01/12/2025

Some more backgrounds for Penguin Midnight. You can check out more behind-the-scenes stuff over on the Kickstarter page but you gotta hurry because there's only a few days left! Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/rya...

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Josh Floyd @iejomaflo.com · 31/10/2025

🎃Happy Halloween!! 🎃 My part for the Fantoms of the Underground collab, hosted by some friends over on @districtmograph.bsky.social and @fantomcomics.bsky.social . It’ll even be screened in DC at Dupont Underground tonight with a bunch of other cool and spooky animations!

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