Tokenmagic VS lessfog

You can use the module TokenMagicFX to adjust the token in various ways.

Token Magic FX it'll add a compendium full of all sorts of cool token fx.

Token Magic FX, despite the name, adds magic to more than just tokens! You can set all sorts of defaults for templates, but be aware that when you install it the defaults might be a little more flashy than you're looking for (or they might be exactly to your taste... everyone's different). When you go into the module's settings the Automatic Template Settings is right at the top and that's where you can start tweaking to get things how you'd like them to be.

This is really awesome! You may be able to save yourself some time by adding some dynamic effects with TokenMagicFX. You could have her swoop into the field, hover around her tile, add particle effects, and even cast shadows all without needing to modify the underlying animation at all.

You can use TokenMagic to add depth to the scene by adding shadows to floating characters. Here's an example of how that could look (apologies as I don't have an appropriate map for this): https://i.imgur.com/gOVJRnQ.png

In addition to this you can use (Token Magic FX)[https://github.com/Feu-Secret/Tokenmagic] to make those magic circles glow, highlight important objects, and more with basically 0 additional effort.

There's also the Token Magic FX module which is definitely more advanced, but if you're comfortable editing the guts of a macro, you could write some that would shift between images with a little more fan fare.

SecretFire (https://github.com/Feu-Secret/Tokenmagic | Tokenmagic)

Token Magic FX

Less Fog - Makes the fog of war easier to see through for a GM. Gives a button to toggle between a token's vision and the GM's vision when a token is selected.

Less Fog - lets you control the fog colour for the DM separately from the players. Useful for the DM so they can see what's going on while having tokens selected.

Less Fog

Sounds like you're talking to the right people; good luck getting things set up. For the default lighting changes I was referring to the less fog mod. Not sure it works in v9 (or really in v8 either) but it's something to look at.

Less Fog can make the Fog of War effects transparent for GMs. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. You can make it so that even though you only have the token's vision, the areas of that map that are black to the player are just dim or greyed out to you, so you can still see what you're doing.

You could use a mixture of using Less Fog and pre-exploring the area. Drag a token that all players have observer or better access to around the area to fully remove the fog of war, then use Less Fog to change the opacity of the Explored areas to taste.