www.mattkprovideo.com/2025/08/21/cartoon-octopus/

Animated cartoon Octopus made for an upcoming music show promo.

I hand drew the octopus in Adobe Animate, and composited into the scene by making the octopus a “3D Object” with a “floor” (water surface) made as a “cloud” in Adobe Photoshop. I added a ripple effect to the water in After Effects.

In front of the octopus I added a layer with bubbles.

The I added a brief fade in glow behind the octopus by duplicating the layer, and adding stylize> glow and radial blue and light streaks. I had it dissolve in by moving the TRANSPARENCY from zero to 100 a second later, then back down to zero another second later after that.

This was my first attempt:

I realized that the front arm of the octopus looked odd in a 3D scene.

So i sunk the octopus lower, so that it was partially under water. I duplicated the water layer and reduced its opacity to 75 percent. ( i had to make a copy of that water later and move it lower and under the first water layer. That way the black background wouldn’t make the water look darker.

This was my second render attempt.

You will note that I didn’t add the band logos over this render attempt. This time, I rendered that as a separate composition (with an Alpha channel) to be added later.

Final (?) Version: