Research: Light,colour and composition analysis

Lighting and colour

Bioshock Infinite

My first image is a screenshot from the opening cutscene of Irrational Games' Bioshock Infinite. This game contains a lot of symbolism and is very good at manipulating the player's thoughts, which I think is evident here. This colour scheme uses complimentary orange and purple/blue hues to make the scene ahead inviting to the player, encouraging them to move forward. The inside of the pod is filled with hard, cold light and a huge amount of shadow in comparison to the warm, soft light of the scene outside, where the water in the pool reflects the light from the candles very pleasingly. There is a certain amount of underlying unease in the blood red colour being reflected in the water, however, as well as the ethereal bloom of light given off by the candles which seems maybe a little too inviting.

Rembrandt's "The Supper at Emmaus"

(Image source)

My second image is Rembrandt's "The Supper at Emmaus," where Rembrandt has depicted Jesus of Nazareth and two of his disciples, who have just recognised their departed leader, him having appeared to them after his crucifixion. The lighting in this image serves to highlight Jesus' nature as a holy figure; he appears to be surrounded by a corona of light due to his position between the source and the viewer, and the diffused reflection of light across the wooden boards behind his head which Rembrandt has depicted so well. The shadows in the painting show a good amount of dynamic occlusion, seen best in Jesus' shadow down the wall behind him, and there is also a considerable amount of bounced light which allows us to see the objects on the floor around the table as well as highlight the back of Jesus' clothing in the lower right. The secondary light source which illuminates the woman in the background provides a small amount of light to the foreground scene, particularly on the edges of the tablecloth, but mainly seems to serve as a counterbalance to the main source in the foreground. 

Composition

Interstellar

(Image source)

This screenshot is from the 2014 film 'Interstellar.' I've chosen this shot in particular for its strong composition, but the entire film is also very well composed in terms of shot layout. Here the composition roughly follows the divine proportion rule as well as the rule of thirds, with the focus on the broom and the dust the figure is sweeping off the porch. I've overlaid the lines onto the shot to show this more clearly below.

The beam of the porch sits squarely on the third line, and the telephone poles in the field sit on the diagonal line which leads into the focus of the shot, the figure. The porch and house also serve to frame the figure against the very light values of the sky behind him, while attention is further drawn to him by making him the darkest value in the image against very washed out tones. There is also a certain amount of "L-shape" framing of the landscape using the neutral beige colour of the house and ground as shown below.

Feng Zhu

(Image source)

Feng Zhu is a master of concept art, and one of his major focuses in his work is composition and leading the eye. Here he has placed the major building almost directly on the rightmost third line, as well as continuing that line through the image in a high-value beam of light (there's also a certain amount of blue/yellow contrast). The secondary point of focus, the bridge in the lower right, also sits on this line. In addition to this, almost every other structure leads into the main building, creating a radial formation of lines as seen below, and there is a good amount of value contrast between each element (for example between each pillar of the bridges and the city below) to keep the image 

readable.

Week summary - 1

Project: Design an insect

#1

A very interesting first week with lots of new stuff to think about and try out. The main new technique we looked at was silhouetting, something I'd heard mentioned often but had never tried myself. Above is my first attempt; the only design I felt had any potential was the second from the left on the bottom row, and I realised this was because I have a lot more experience drawing humanoid characters than I do insects. Also, rather than focusing on making an interesting silhouette, I was just trying to draw bugs in block colour.

Photo referenced

After realising my mistakes I went to draw some insects from photo references, to get myself familiar with their general shapes. I then found it much easier to make convincing silhouettes without getting caught up in the fact that they didn't look like insects. 

#2

#3

#4

After a few more iterations and some experimentation in Alchemy I had some designs I felt I could use shapes from. Along the way I had been thinking about what sort of creature I wanted to produce and had settled on some kind of mount/pack animal that humans might use when crossing long distances, like a camel or donkey, on another planet where a higher oxygen concentration has allowed insects to grow larger, as it was on earth thousands of years ago. I liked the bipedal stance the best for this kind of beast, but I could see it being predatory in nature prior to being domesticated by humans, so I tried to keep aspects from some of the more aggressive designs as well. 

#5

Paintover #1

I saw the wings as being fairly vestigial, but still helpful in terms of helping it pick up speed or jumping larger distances (similar to how chickens' wings function). The four limbs on the upper part of the body would be for catching and holding prey before killing it with venom from the spikes on the sides of the face, similar to how spiders eat their food by turning its insides to soup and drinking their meal.

I want to go through a few more iterations to work out the finer details of the design, but for the most part I think this one is effective and distinctive. I'm looking forward to putting it in context and showing off how I think it would function.

We also looked at ZBrush as a tool for concept art. Having only used Blender and Maya in the past it was a new experience for me and one I found quite strange and difficult, but the idea of working out concepts in 3D is an interesting one and I'd like to try building some of my ideas in ZBrush as well as drawing them out in Photoshop.