ANM230 & CIU212

Lighting is often underestimated in illustration – a lot of illustrators and beginning artists look at it as a decorative element, or as purely a tool used to showcase the form. A lot of beginning artists are afraid of shading and of using harsh lights. But even with the lighting mastered, even with perfect rendering and good understanding of form in space an integral element of the light remains missing in their pieces. 

Look at the samples above: the same character’s head has been used in every thumbnail, and the only thing I have tweaked was the cropping and manner of light used on the features. Every single one of these frames tells a different story and gives off a different vibe simply by using light to focus on the features I want you to focus on.

Read how lighting can be used to enhance character, mood, and interaction within your pictures below the cut.

Hey sure I’ll go through some quick tips.

Here’s one involving joints. If you can anticipate the kind of animation that your geometry might go through then it’s good to have some spare geometry(if you can afford it) in the intermediate bits for both of the “outer” sides of the joint to pull at so that the mesh could appear to retain its volume and silhouette regardless of what angle it is flexing at.

I usually go for the middle geometry here which is kind of a compromise between the left and right options when the silhouette is important(arms, shoulder, hips, knees, etc). The right would cause a lot of texture stretch and the left would be a naive way to minimize it somewhat and encourage that pinching effect on the concave part. There’s also this variation that I use for lesser things like fingers or other lesser joints.

Some simple explanations about the main types of Lens you can use when you are drawing a picture.

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Gaming study by itaykeren looks at the subject of how scrolling works in 2D video games, the hidden design methods which control the presentation of levels around the playable character:

 … I was quite surprised that camera work, a subject with more than 30 years of history in games, was hardly discussed.

Scrolling or Panning refers to any attempt to display a scene that is larger than what fits in a single screen. There are many potential challenges with scrolling, like choosing what the player needs to see, what we as designers would like the player to focus on, and how to do it in a way that’s fluid and comfortable for the player.

While I’m going to focus on 2D camera systems, many of these general concepts apply to 3D as well.

The study provides various GIF examples like the ones above, and should be of interest to anyone involved with Game Design.

Colin Gibson (Production Designer): You bet your sweet… George — unfortunately — doesn’t like things that don’t work. I have in the past built him props that I thought were just supposed to be props, and then he goes, “Okay, plug it in now.”

The first version of the guitar which — I think I put too much into the flame thrower, not enough into the reverb. And yes, the flame throwing guitar did have to operate, did have to play, the PA system did have to work and the drummers… Unfortunately, I did get practice in all positions and I’ve got to tell you, the drumming was very uncomfortable at 70 [kilometers] an hour, eating sand.