Another study of a boy. I’m spending a little time letting the river run it’s course and doing some ground work for a future project. I’m not expecting to begin work on it properly for a few years so I’m just planting a few seeds to let it grow subconsciously.
This is a concept image of what all the different elements in the film might look like together. The butterfly/colour tendrils element is a little weak but the overall effect is quite nice. Making these images is a quick way of seeing how a final shot may look and aid lots of decisions that might save time at this stage of the production. I can see from this image that the grimey look to the large flat areas will help fill the awkward spaces visible in the previs renders and detract from the peripheral objects as focal points within a composition. I want to be able to flatten the room as a vignette to the main focal points of the butterfly and the lamp so a constant level of detail throughout the frame will help control the movement of the eye throughout the frame.
This is the starting point for the image above. It’s a still shot from the previs environment. All the objects are simple proxy versions and only have basic colours applied. The lighting is basic yet is close to the way I want the lighting to work within most of the shots. The key lighting will be from Horstmann, it will be the main shadow caster and will vary slightly in colour depending on the mood but generally will be a warmer tungsten to give warmth to his character against the colder blue ambient lighting. I think each scene will be treated slightly different depending on the composition but generally this will be the starting point. I also want to have strange incedental lighting throughout, perhaps as oddly lit areas in places where there will be no logical source, almost as reflected light bouncing from objects out of sight. I’m thinking of building up the scenes with more glass objects to enforce this idea of light moving around the scene in a strange and unsettling way.
The following images are a selection of the main reference images used to build up the concept image above. They are all found off the internet at different times throughout the pre production phase, mostly google search results. The Lamp is from the first time I think I saw a Horstmann and Hadrill lamp, I found it on Ebay and instantly fell in love. I bid on it but soon realised that these lamps don’t sell cheaply.
As well as compositing parts of reference imagery together there is also a good amount of digital painting involved, mainly adding highlights in the correct places and working into the image to make it believable. Because i’m using my old PC at the moment I’ve not created any special brushes, so all the paint and clone work was done using Photoshop’s simple brush presets.
Just some quick environmental concepts for the music box project… Nothing special here… Just some initial ideas.
This is a portrait of Philip Glass… His work has inspired me through many pairs of shoes and his track ‘Cue 2B (Piano)’ from the Candyman soundtrack is the main inspiration behind ‘A Seige of Colour‘. The idea for the film was originally a kind of visual interpretation of this piece but seems to have continually grown beyond the timings of the music and may need something original writing specifically for the film… Perhaps using this piece as a starting point.
Anyway… The image above was digitally painted in Adobe Photoshop using a couple of standard brushes and a Wacom graphics tablet, it took approximately 3 jugs of coffee from start to finish. The main reason for doing it was to take my mind off the visual treatment of the butterfly and completely focus it on something else… “Maybe I can’t see the wood for the trees” I mutter to myself. Well… I think I’ll start thinking about the butterfly again tomorrow, hopefully the back of my mind will have had some ideas.
Feel free to download the high-res version here:
http://www.luniere.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/portrait-of-philip-glass-by-aaron-bradbury.jpg
Portrait of Philip Glass by Aaron Bradbury is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Well it’s always nice to paint. I’m not really sure to what benefit painting a brownish mess is going to have on the development of the butterfly character but I think it’s good for my soul so what’s done is done.
I seem to have a hard time breaking away from making everything a desaturated mess of browns… The butterfly character should be dripping with colour, it’s kind of in the title. I’ll just have to put on a red beret and get digital… Think R,G,B, think Pantone.
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