CGTalk New Forum:: Evocative
Evocative
By: Mark Snoswell:: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
How to create emotive images and animations
We at CGTalk are setting up a new forum that focuses on taking work that you already have and make it truly excel! This is both a personal crusade of mine to help everyone reach their maximum potential, and to also improve the standard of the digital arts community as a whole. We then want to show off to the world in a never ending stream of outstanding books, animations, shorts, film, etc.
The new forum on CGTalk is all about helping you to make your images and animations tell a story and evoke an emotion in your audience. This is a serious forum for anyone that wants to really excel in his or her art. I will personally moderate the forum and provide feedback and technical references.
Not only is this a great forum to improve the quality of your work, it’s also ideal for anyone who wants to get noticed and get their work into EXPOSÉ and other books we will be producing.
Beyond the technical
I want to help people really improve the appeal and quality of their creative work, both still and animated. When I went through the entries for EXPOSÉ 1, it was clear that there is a lot of talent out there in the technical areas of modeling and texturing. However, it was much rarer to see truly inspiring and expressive works of art, and I am not talking about just the aesthetics of fine art here. It’s much more about creating work with great appeal, and consequently, great value the viewer.
|
You, as artists really need to focus on evoking emotions in your work. If you create an image that evokes a strong emotion then you have created something that has great appeal and will generally be considered more worthwhile to view. Sadly a lot of digital, particularly 3D work is best described as “flat and boring”, technically good, but generally unappealing to the majority of audiences who may not understand 3D.
Evoking a feeling applies most easily to character work but for still life and mechanical work, the same principals apply. In every case, you need to think about what story your image is depicting. Sure, you have to start with the technical aspects of modeling, texturing and rendering but to do really emotive work, you have to go beyond the technical and make your images tell a story, they have to evoke a feeling, a memory, empathy or at least an evocative reaction with the viewer. This involves getting the right mix of pose, camera angle, color, lighting, atmosphere, etc. Everything has to merge together to tell the story and this all starts with you, the artist, thinking about, and knowing, what the story is that you are trying to tell.
Project - Emotion
Make your characters evoke an emotion. You can also do the same with non-organic characters, locations or still life. The basic principal is that you need to know what the story you are telling is about before you start! What inspired you to create this image? What are your characters feeling? What is the story behind the image? What is about to happen next? Build the anticipation. Why is the location or environment of special importance, what does it say, and what emotion should it evoke?
You need to clearly identify your story and motives first, then your image must do everything it can to support it. Your characters, their body language, their facial expressions, their eyes, the props, the setting, the lighting, the camera angle, the color and mood of the atmosphere, everything has to work together and have a reason for being there.
Okay, let’s talk about characters and cover the easy stuff first, Sex and humor sell.
|
