Turbo Pudding

LullalotlFrom the sketchbook

How we draw a pond, layer by layer

· The Turbo Pudding team · 5 min read

Reedy Hollow, a pond in Lullalotl at night, with every layer drawn: a starry indigo sky with a few glowing fireflies, a green bank with cattails and little white, lilac and pink flowers, dark blue water with a pale striped reflection of the Moon, and five friends on green lily pads, two green bunnies with pink-lined ears and a leaf on top, two round blue fish-like blobs and a teal frog-like Leap in the middle, while Lulla, a round pink axolotl with frilly gills and a wide smile, sits on a flat gray-blue stone at the front of the bank

Every pond in Lullalotl is painted by code, many times a second, always in the same order: from the back of the picture to the front. Each new layer covers the ones under it. This Sunday, we’re walking down that list with Reedy Hollow, the third pond, as our model.

Sky first

First comes the night: a gradient from deep indigo at the top, through violet, to a dark sea blue at the bottom. Then 80 stars in the upper part of the sky, small cream dots that brighten and dim out of step with each other. The stars are the only scenery scattered fresh every time you enter a pond, so no two skies over Reedy Hollow match.

One shore for every pond

All ten ponds share one outline. It starts as twelve points around an oval, most of them pushed in or out by up to five percent, so the shore never looks drawn with a compass. A smooth curve joins them into a loop.

The bank is that outline grown twice: a dark green ring outside and a lighter one inside it, both shifted down a touch, so the near shore comes out wider. Ten flowers sit on the bank, in pink, butter yellow, lilac or white, each made of five round petals around a golden middle. The petals turn a full circle about every half minute.

Then the reeds: 18 thin stems with brown cattail heads, some nearly twice as tall as others, swaying slightly out of step. Only the far ones are drawn at this point. Where each reed, flower and firefly goes comes from a number tied to the pond, so every pond has its own arrangement, and it stays put when you come back.

An empty pond in Lullalotl at night, seen from above at a slight angle, with nothing on it yet: a starry indigo sky, a rounded, slightly uneven shore made of two bands of green, a darker one outside and a lighter one inside, thin green reeds with brown cattail heads standing around the edge, small five-petal flowers in white, lilac, pink and yellow scattered on the bank, and smooth blue water that is lighter near the middle and darker by the shore, with a short ladder of pale stripes in the upper right where the Moon is reflected
Search: “quiet pond at night, nobody home.”

The water

The water is one fill with a glow: lightest a little above the middle, deepening to navy at the shore. In the upper right floats the Moon’s reflection, which is just seven thin, flat ovals stacked like a short ladder, each narrower and fainter than the one above. Each one slowly breathes wider and narrower and drifts a little sideways, so the reflection shivers even when nothing touches the water.

On top go 22 faint white strokes that stretch and shrink, like light catching small waves. Last come a dark band just inside the shore, where the water looks deeper, and a thin pale mint line along the edge.

Lily pads, back to front

Every friend gets a lily pad, and each pad is a small stack of its own. First a soft shadow, nudged down and to the right. Then a darker green oval with a wedge cut out, and on top a smaller, lighter oval with the same notch, lifted a hair, which makes the pad look thick. Five pale veins fan out from the notch. Every third pad also gets a pink flower: six petals in two pinks around a yellow dot.

The pads bob by about a pixel and a half, each on its own timing, and the friend on top bobs along. Before drawing, the friends are sorted by how high they sit on the screen. Higher means farther away, so those go first, and anyone closer to you can overlap them.

A close-up of four round green lily pads floating on dark blue water with no friends sitting on them, arranged in a loose diamond, each with a wedge-shaped notch cut into its top edge, a lighter green top layer over a darker green rim, five pale veins fanning out from the notch and a soft dark shadow underneath; the pad at the back and the pad at the front each have a small pink flower with six petals and a yellow center near their right edge
Typed “lily pad, but make it cute.” Got a notch and a flower.

Rings go under the pads

Ripples are painted right after the water and before the pads, so a ring slides under a pad instead of across a friend’s face. They’re also kept inside the shore, so no ring spills onto the grass.

A ring isn’t really a circle. It’s an oval only 80 percent as tall as it is wide, so it seems to lie flat on the water. Your tap makes a pale blue ring, and a golden drop makes a gold one. As a ring grows, its line gets thinner and fainter until it’s gone. Past a certain size, a thin white line appears just inside it, and a bit later a third, fainter one. Rain rings come out paler and thinner.

A close-up of open blue water in the pond with a single flattened ring spreading out from where it was tapped: a thick pale blue outer line, a thin white line just inside it and a third, fainter line inside that, with eight small glowing droplets in the middle of the ring; to the right, the Moon’s reflection shows as seven pale stacked stripes that get shorter toward the bottom, a few faint white curved strokes float on the water and a curve of green bank runs along the top
People also ask: is that one ripple or three?

Lulla goes on last

After the friends come the near reeds, so their cattails can stand in front of anyone sitting close to the bank. Then Lulla, on a flat stone at the front of the pond, drawn as two ovals, a darker gray-blue one under a lighter one. She’s painted after the friends, pads and reeds, so none of them can ever cover her.

Only a few things go on top of her. If you’ve bought the rain cloud in the shop, it drifts above the far shore with two dot eyes and a smile, followed by its drops. Then the fireflies: 14 soft halos around bright dots, drifting in slow loops and pulsing. They’re painted in a mode that adds light instead of covering, so a firefly over the water brightens it rather than hiding it. After them come only sparkles and the numbers that pop up when a friend sings.

Paint a few of your own

The first two ponds of Lullalotl are free to play in your browser at lullalotl.com, and the full game, all ten ponds of Moonlit Hollow, costs $4.99, paid once. More on the Lullalotl page.

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