OUAN603 - Colour, Lighting & Mood [Establishing an aesthetic for the story world through the visual outlets]

Something in common with all of the visual stories I engage with and draw me in, in an immersive sense usually have 'realistic' or very 'magical' lighting. By this, I mean the setting of each scene is at specific times of day or perhaps the weather is very extreme in one way or another. So for my own animation, particularly because of the magical realism genre this is something I wanted to strive for.

The references or inspiration that was included in my preliminary and on going research included some of my favourite Japanese animation from popular studio, Studio Ghibli and director Makoto Shinkai. Furthermore, one reference that I returned to over and over for inspiration was the work produced by graduated from Gobelins school of animation. In particular titles such as Myosis and Wildfire, as well as some animations I watched at MAF such as Que Dalle. Some of the simplistic techniques that these film makers use are quite apparent when you look closely at their body of work and include shallow depth of field, reflections, lens flares, saturated colour schemes and emphasis on things like dust particles to give an element of magic to scenes - because these aren't things that are usually easily picked up on, but with the animation medium they can be utilised freely.

In the 2D visualisation work I did I tried to implement, where possible these techniques in order to establish a style that I could carry on through the rest of the visuals for this particular fictional universe. Colour was incredible important and constant tweaking of images and experimentation through the use of tools in Photoshop made this a relatively easy process.

Following on from this, I knew that I needed realistic lighting to replicate this type of authenticity within the animation, the realism that sits inside the specific styles of a studio in terms of the other areas of the animation. I simulated light when the set was build in 3D and used that as a basic to construct further lighting and put emphasis on it where I wanted to.

Below are images that exemplify the use of lens flare, volumetric fog and [ground] reflections, shallow depth of field and saturated colour schemes.