Hi Steve,
those are excellent points, however if you dont have the proper lighting, those things would easily get lost imho. For example:

Motion: If you have an evenly lit scene and just a couple of character on the scene, them motion would be the correct answer, but if you have a lot of characters, like you said motion would just be confusing. In the case of a battle, how do depict where your hero is in the middle of that chaos, to me the answer is proper lighting. And please, im not saying motion is wrong by any means, IMHO is just secondary to proper lighting. On the plus side, the motion of all the characters moving towards a single target will make the audience look at where they are running to. :)

Eyes: For me, unless we are dealing with a close up , Line of sight is more important than the sign of life on the eyes. But again this is only secondary to proper lighting. On the plus side, when you can see the characters line of sight and see that they all converge into the main hero character, it will make the audience look at where they are looking at too. :)

Like i said, those are great tools as well, thank you for sharing your views, im sure this will help everyone.

Take care,

Stuckon3d



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hi all

i love this thread and the topic itself.

visual impact IS the most important area of making a movie/video.

i'll list what i think is important ( in general )

1. motion...if you have 15 different things moving at once, the idea of motion is reduced and what is not movig is important.

2 eyes....we look for signs of life and the eyes have it... at this image the chain saw guy is more important ...not only do you see his eyes but also the man in the forground is looking at the chain saw guy.

3 placement we read left to right and will scan the image the same.

4 tones (light and darks)

3 and 4 is shown with the placement of the fire coming out of the can...the can being light and looking like is forward and if you place the can anywhere else would have made it look "out of place"

this is just the tip of the ice ...you could get in to design and composition :) 

Steve

 

01 - Street Lines

02 - Blade and Fire

03 - Guy with PickAxe

04 - Guy with Two Cleavers

05 - Guy with Chain Saw

06 - Blood on Apron

07 - Bottle on Ground

08 - Beverage Can on Ground

09 - Buildings on Left

10 - Sky

:cool:

thanks good points on the foliage and lighting will try those

Hi teviniii,
Thanks, and to answer your question, the quick answer is no, not at the moment, however my goal is to make a few more still from different movie styles and make them all come to life in ten to twenty second shots, so that I can make then in to a powerful showcase of what iclone is capable. :)





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Now that sounds like a mighty fine idea brother. :cool:
Now to answer your question. While I will be teaching this in depth on my intro to lighting and advance lighting class, ill give you a few tips here. Just because i like you. ;)

When lighting a day time scene try this:
1) Use foliage if you can, to cast shadows on the background. This will make your character stand out more in full light.
2) Using Rim lighting on the character. This will give you an extra light to make it stand out. Rim lighting= a source light that gives your character an outline, usually coming from one side.
3) Using bounce lighting on the character. Bounce lighting= a source light imitating light coming from the ground. this is yet another light you can add to your character to make it stand out.

I hope this helps you out a bit, and like I said, all these lighting techniques will be cover on my intro to lighting and advanced classes. I hope to see you there.

Stuckon3d




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Stuckon3D, I love your still imagery and set design.

Do you, by chance, have any work online with motion and contiguous events?

ok let's call in a misunderstanding and move on

now a non offense intended question
when doing a daylight scene and without using dof - what is the best way to draw attention/hold the attention to a specific object

i find easier to do dark/.night scenes because you can use lighting to draw the focus - but i always find it difficult for daylight scenes

Dear Gabe,
just like you have your opinions I have mine, and we are here to share them, in a nice and polite manner of course. ;) The way you phrased your post felt like you were challenging the way I was trying to teach my point. therefore challenge = aggressive. If that was not your intention fine, if it was, well that is fine too. Like you said we are all entitle to our own views and opinions. And i respect that. That's why when i replied to you, i did it in a polite way and not start yelling at you. I also try to clarify the points you looked confused or felt weird about. Again, in a polite manner. BTW the fact that I replied in this way shows that I'm plenty thick shinned. FYI
Also, sorry if the the word sabotage offended you and it felt harsh, so how about i call it focus shifting intead. Becuase that is what your post was, so much so that you got now someone else second guessing himself, and I was not the only one thinking that, because someone posted right below you , in his own words of course, to stay with the thread.

However lets get back to the heart of your post, this is what it sounded like to me:
The fact that I asked the question, made you second guess yourself, and made you start looking for a different answer beyond the obvious. Is that what you were trying to say?

My question to you is why? This is the post where "the question" in question (pun intended :D ) came in:

"Great observations guys. So based on all the lists so far, what would you say the answer to the questions is?

how do we keep the audience's attention from wandering around the images?"

I highlited the "so based on all the lists so far" for you because if you missed that i could see why things got weird for you. However, I also was reassuring people that their lists had enough commonality that they were ready to answer the question. And please noticed that i waited until enough people gave their lists before asking the question.
By doing this there was no second guessing involved. The answer was obvious. "Lighting" is a great tool to guide the audience's look at point. One of the many ways available.
After people posted their answers, I was going to mentioned why and how to achieve this using iclone. Because even if people know the obvious answer sometime they just dont know how to apply it correctly in their projects. Does the answer mean by putting a spotlight on your character, no. Sure this works if you are doing theater and the likes, but what about if your are trying to do a day time scene where both the actors and the background share the same lights? what can you do?
This is where Paumanok answer comes in, minus a few minor details he nailed it:

1. Reduce contrast and brightness in the background; increase it in the foreground
2. Use cooler colors whenever possible because warmer colors are thought to approach the viewer
3. Minimize movement in the background; also minimize movement of other characters while any given character has the stage!
4. Avoid clutter and treat the scene as a stage, with empty areas for the actors to move

And he was the originator of this question. He was the reason i started this thread. When I saw his answer, it put a big smile on my face cause i knew the wisdom I was trying to share has been passed. He saw deep into the answer, past the obvious meaning and nailed it. Bravo man! :D
I know from now on he will never see an image the same way again and his art will benefit that much more from it.
Sure , i could have just given the answer out without using an APE(audience participation excersice) but it is my experience that if you learn things through self-realisation and doing, you tend to embed the answer better in your brain and really apply what you learn, instead of going: "oh that makes sense" and then forget to apply what you learned.
This was the methodology behind my training on this post and the result is the reason I enjoy teaching.
This all happen before your post. Perhaps if you would have worded things difrerently, like saying : hey cris what did you mean by this.... Instead of saying: look at what you are making me do by asking this question... i might have been able to explain all this before the drama. thats all im saying. I have no ill will towards you. But I will stand by my methods unless you can prove them misleading. And then of course i will apologize. And say thank you.

Peace brother in arts,
Stuckon3d

PS: I trully live by my signature "the way is in training". It really is.




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"when i first looked at picture my eyes were drawn to the orange light - having asked the question, i looked again but this time at the background - so my point is by asking the question, you change my frame of mind in that i was searching for other details rather than jsut lookign at the first thing that drew my attention".

I have to agree with akn on this point, because thats exactly what happened to me. On first seeing the pict I was initially drawn to the character on the left, but after reading further and going back to the picture I was drawn to the axe. Or maybe it was just because it was a second viewing. Very interesting anyway.

:cool: gizmo