I am now a couple of months into my Final Major Project, and I have just begun on lighting the Pre Viz. I have begun this early to explore the colour palette of the entire animation, alongside stylistic requirements for textures and to distinguish the overall emotional feel of the piece.
Synopsis
Crash, a young drummer, plays his heart out, blindfolded, taking no notice of the crowd around him. His blindfold starts to slip; confidence turns into panic as it falls to the ground and Crash is forced to face his stage fright, which is embodied by overwhelming lights and monstrous eyes floating towards him. His fear subdues as his bandmate supportively hands him back his drumsticks.
I began with purple and red combined hues, these colours often give the impression of power, confidence, magnificence and passion. The element of green creeps in slightly into the story, a key light here, a flick of green there. It gives the impression that his fear is never truly gone, even when wearing the blindfold. When it begins to fall off is when the green really takes over the colour palette, the point at which it falls off completely there is a bleached overwhelming green, almost yellow, this colour reflects his feeling of sickness, nausea and fear. It's a pungent colour and in this context works well to suggest weakness.
I wanted a clarity moment and used a clear white light to achieve this, the entire piece is incredibly rich in colour. In this moment Crash, is faced with the reality of the fear, without the initial scare, its brought into the light and in doing so allows Crash to comes to terms with it, to accept the fear. Hints of red and purple come back into the scene as his band members helps him up.
Hopefully this test will be recreated to a more detailed quality once the textures have been created for all of our assets. I think I can truly appreciate now how much the textures affect the lighting and what is achievable.