Lighting for Animation

The Art of Visual Storytelling

Jasmine Katatikarn, Michael Tanzillo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317699934
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

Lighting for Animation is designed with one goal in mind - to make you a better artist. Over the course of the book, Jasmine Katatikarn and Michael Tanzillo (Senior Lighting TDs, Blue Sky Studios) will train your eye to analyze your work more critically, and teach you approaches and techniques to improve your craft. Focusing on the main philosophies and core concepts utilized by industry professionals, this book builds the foundation for a successful career as a lighting artist in visual effects and computer animation. Inside you'll find in-depth instruction on:

• Creating mood and storytelling through lighting

• Using light to create visual shaping

• Directing the viewer's eye with light and color

• Gathering and utilizing reference images

• Successfully lighting and rendering workflows

• Render layers and how they can be used most effectively

• Specific lighting scenarios, including character lighting, environment lighting, and lighting an animated sequence

• Material properties and their work with lighting

• Compositing techniques essential for a lighter

• A guide on how to start your career and achieve success as a lighting artist

This book is not designed to teach software packages—there are websites, instructional manuals, online demos, and traditional courses available to teach you how to operate specific computer programs. That type of training will teach you how to create an image; this book will teach you the technical skills you need to make that image beautiful.

Key Features

• Stunning examples from a variety of films serve to inspire and inform your creative choices.

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• Unique approach focuses on using lighting as a storytelling tool, rather than just telling you which buttons to press.

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• Comprehensive companion website contains lighting exercises, assets, challenges, and further resources to help you expand your skillset.

When done well, lighting can bring beauty and magic to a shot. © Disney.

1

Why we Light

Animated films are born when skilled and passionate artists merge their talents to build a story within a universe of extraordinary possibilities. Designers dream up the world, modelers build the world, riggers give the world the ability to move, and animators make the world sing and dance. It is the job of the lighter to make that world beautiful; to give it shape and life and an unmistakable soul. Lighting is about taking geometry and transforming it to create a setting the audience can submerse themselves into, thus allowing the film to take them on a journey. Ultimately, like all departments in an animation studio, the lighter’s goal is to tell a story.

The Role of Lighting

Lighting for animation is an art unto itself, and a subtle one at that. When viewing an animated work the contributions made by other artists are clear. The audience can see all the props in the scene and know a modeler must have constructed objects in 3D space. The characters’ movements are evidence of the animator’s work. Lighting, like a musical score, works on a rooted, more psychological level. Lighting does not necessarily stand out as an element in the scene but is more felt by the audience. The audience generally does not identify each individual light or even pay much attention to what time of day is being portrayed. Instead, viewers feel lighting’s influence and react to it subconsciously.

A lighter on an animated film has three main goals in mind. These goals will be discussed in detail over the course of this book but they will be introduced now. The first goal is to direct the viewer’s eye. The lighter will use luminance, contrast, color, and any other means necessary to craft the scene in a way for the audience to focus on the action. Scenes can become incredibly complex and it is the lighter’s job to ensure that the audience is focusing on the area of the screen that is most important to the story. This is also critical when a shot is very short and the audience has limited time to focus on the main story point of the shot.

The second goal is to create visual interest in the scene by defining good shaping in all objects. Visual shaping in computer graphics (CG) is similar to painting in that the artist is creating value differences so the two-dimensional objects on the flat screen can be perceived as existing in three-dimensional space. By creating light, color, or value variations across an object to give it more volume, an artist can make CG objects appear more visually interesting.

Figure 1.1 Both of these images are the same geometry. The visual shaping caused by creating a variety of tones using light and shadow gives the sphere in Image B more volume, weight, and visual interest.

The third major responsibility of the lighter is to help tell the story by establishing the mood. Again, all artists on an animated project are working toward telling a single story and it is essential that every facet of the film strives to tell the best story possible. The story notes a lighter may receive are often based on creating a specific emotion such as:

• Make this shot more romantic.

• The audience needs to feel this character’s sinister motives.

• Tension needs to build over the course of these three shots.

There are many tools that a lighter has at his or her disposal to help set the mood. One major tool is the use of color design. Through the use of color and light, a lighter can influence the viewer’s subconscious reaction when first viewing the scene. In Figure 1.2, the set and camera angle are nearly identical in each shot but notice how the mood changes significantly depending on the light and color values.

Figure 1.2 Whether it is the crisp, clean daylight, the warm orange glow of the evening’s “magic hour”, or the cooler evening lighting, the color palette greatly influences the mood of each of these shots. Stills from the animated short The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Property of Moonbot Studios.

Color is also used extremely effectively to set the mood in this scene from Edmond était un âne (Edmond Was A Donkey) in Figure 1.3 In this shot, Edmond is unhappy and dreary about life. The lighting was designed with cool blues to instantly portray a feeling of sadness and melancholy. As the shot progresses, warm light enters from offscreen creating a feeling of optimism and hope. This feeling is not communicated through dialog or actions but instead with a simple color design consisting of warm and cool light.

Figure 1.3 The introduction of warm light completely alters the mood of this otherwise cool-toned shot. Stills from the animated short Edmond était un âne (Edmond was a Donkey). Property of Papy3d/ONF NFB/ARTE.

Figure 1.4 Diffusion in this shot was added around the window and other light sources. Still from the animated short Little Freak. Property of Edwin Schaap.

Figure 1.5 Diffusion has been used since silent era Hollywood films.

Diffusion is another visual element that helps set the mood of the shot. When artists speak of diffusion they are referring to the effects of a soft light source causing glow and blur over the entire image, giving it a sense of magic. Increasing diffusion is accomplished by evenly spreading the light from a light source creating a softer feel as seen in Figure 1.4.

This concept of using soft light to give the image a glow is a tried and proven film technique. During the era of early cinema, adding practical elements like petroleum jelly to the lens to achieve the same look was common practice. This softness is once again something that is not necessarily recognized by the audience, but is definitely felt and used to influence the audience’s mood. Present-day animated films simply picked up on this already established aesthetic and implemented it.

The soft and diffused look is an excellent example of lighting playing a psychological role in the telling of the story in a similar way to a musical score. The musical equivalent would be a romantic tune that is soothing to keep the audience engaged. The music would flow evenly and effortlessly without abrupt changes that could startle the audience.

Drama and horror films have much heavier, deeper notes to help audibly set the mood. There are quick changes and jumps in the music that could put the audience on edge. The visual equivalent is a dark and high contrast image to convey an evil theme. This type of look goes back to the earliest days of cinema as similar techniques were displayed in one of the first and most influential of early horror films, Nosferatu. In this movie, the contrast is extremely dramatic and many sections of the frame fall into complete darkness while other sections illuminate past the point that the film can record, creating a white, “blown-out” look.

Without the use of effective lighting, movies would fall short of telling a complete story to the viewers. To successfully bring the emotions and story of a film to the audience, every artist from the previsualization stages through lighting must work together with one task in mind: to tell a story.

Figure 1.6 Nosferatu is a classic film that uses dark shadows and high contrast to add to the suspenseful mood. Nosferatu (1922), Jofa–Atelier Berlin–Johannisthal, Prana–Film GmbH.

Creating Visual Shaping

At its core, visual shaping is a way of giving objects in a two-dimensional image a sense of height, depth, weight, and volume. Take, for example, a simple cube. A cube is a known object that has six sides. If positioned and lit in a certain way, the cube will communicate to the audience as a flat plane, lacking depth and dimension (Figure 1.7a). Even if the cube is positioned properly, the lighting can cause the cube to look flat, depriving the audience of the proper understanding of the space and shape of the object (Figure 1.7b). Therefore, if nothing else, the goal of visual shaping within lighting is to communicate this shape and volume to the audience (Figure 1.7c).

By lighting a scene with good visual shaping, the lighter has the power to bring more depth and the feeling of complexity to a shot that would otherwise fall, quite literally, flat.

Figure 1.7 The same cube can be portrayed in different ways by changing the position and lighting.

Figure 1.8 In this shot, the position and intensity of the sunlight draws the viewer’s eye toward the character and the mural on the wall. © Disney.

Directing the Viewer’s Eye

Another lighting technique that influences the story is something so basic and simple that it is often overlooked. The lighter needs to answer the question, “What part of the image should be the audience’s focus?” Shots can be a few seconds or fewer in length and it is absolutely crucial for the audience to know exactly where to look in order to read the action of a shot.

Lighters can use light, contrast, color, or any means possible to direct the audience’s eye. Generally speaking, the viewer’s eyes are drawn to the brightest object on the screen. This bright part of the screen can be accentuated even more if surrounded ...