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About instructor
Former program director at Barcelona Academy of Art. Passionate about teaching craft and exploring the inner game of art.
LESSON NOTES
Check out the "Assignments" tab to get the assignment details and share your work!
ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![Maria Bygrove]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![@tonyhcf]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![Kristina Gehrmann]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![@marq777]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![@rfrimpong3]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![@kotka]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![Vin]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![Samuel Sanjaya]()
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![Martha Muniz]()
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![Romain Decotte]()
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![Dorian Iten]()
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![@flugmodus1]()
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![Brayden Copley]()
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![Félicia Gagnon]()
Overview
In this project, you will learn to connect the lighting on a person or object to the environment that is creating the lighting. We'll do this by analyzing movie stills.
Steps
- Download an image from film-grab.com.
- Choose three elements in the image (a face, a piece of clothing, an object, etc.) and create a light probe representing each element. Show the lighting conditions at the location of the element and represent the material. Be especially aware of specular reflections on the material.
- Upload your image.
You can draw or paint the light probes digitally or traditionally. Choose the medium you are most comfortable with.
Meet these Challenges
- Create at least 3 light probes.
- Consider the light effects at the position of your chosen element in 3D space.
- Create at least one material that shows specular reflection.
Duration
This project should take 30–90 minutes to complete.
Examples
How to Build a Light Probe
- Draw a circle.
- Estimate the light direction.
- Draw a light line 90° to the light direction and through the poles of the circle.
- Draw the terminator ellipse along the last line, estimating the angle of the ellipse.
- Add a shadow tone.
- Add the dark halftones to create form.
The middle one was kinda tricky until I realized that there are two light sources in this scene (I think) - a stronger warm one coming in from the left and a cool, greenish from the right.
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9mo
Great studies! With the middle image, the two light sources show up pretty well, though with the rightmost sphere with the darker wood, I think it would benefit from more contrast created by a darker shadow and stronger influence from the colored light sources, due to the surface material appearing more reflective/glossy. But great work capturing the subtleties across all the spheres -- keep it up! :)
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9mo
Good observations! After blocking in the main color and highlight/shadows, watch out for the edges as well where the light will start to fade out again as the sphere curves away from the light source, to maintain the three-dimensionality of the sphere. Going in with a soft brush to soften the edge can really make the lighting environment feel more believable.
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1yr
It's definitely a fun assignment, and these are awesome! Good work :)
Getting back into this course after a bit of a hiatus. I'm probably wrong in areas but I did my best.
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1yr
Hey there! I see that you're applying warm light/cool shadows (and vice versa), which is a good principle to think about in these studies. Though taking a closer look at the original images, you'll still see this principle being applied, but to a lesser extreme. For example, on the old man, his shadows appear actually more purple/pink. They aren't fully desaturated and cool, but they are still cooler than the base warm tone.
Another quick tip, for the black and white image, this is a great way to study the reflectivity of objects. Something metallic, like in this example, has much higher contrast with bright highlights and dark shadows.
You show a lot of thought and great choices throughout the assignment, I hope you find these tips useful. Keep up the good work :)
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2yr
Nicely done! And great film choices too :)
Just watch out for some materials that are more matte and less reflective, so they don't reach as bright of a highlight. An example here would be the brick wall, which isn't really shiny and is mostly in shadow, so the brightest point would end at the duller green color. But overall, great stuff! Keep it up! :)
Not sure I chose a good image, I feel like I may have misunderstood the light direction in this one... maybe? It's the red blazer that confuses me, because when I look at the values of the fabric and their cast shadow especially, seems like there is another light from the left. A bit unsure. Very valueable exercise which I will revisit often.
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2yr
Yeah, often times movies use multiple lights to fill out the lighting in the shot, and you can tell this is the case here by the multiple shadows seen underneath the red light/button. That said, I think you pinpointed the main light source as it hit your selected materials quite well and did a great job with the assignment. Something to look at the next time can be the complexity in flesh tones -- like here, for example, there's a shift in rosiness in his cheeks, adding a bit of red, and the shadow becomes more grey as it gets closer to the wall. This is a really great (and fun) assignment, with new observations to learn each time -- keep up the good work :)
Hello, I like this assignment. Here is my result, I appreciate for any feedback.
Thank you.
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2yr
Nice work :)
I did a bunch of these, It was a very interesting assignment, I also apply this on my personal stuff, and it helped a lot with the shadings ! Any feedbacks/critiques will be greatly appreciated
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2yr
Good studies! I like how you did it in both digital and traditional, though I would encourage you to continue pushing the value range in the traditional studies. In the image with the blue background, you could even strengthen the core shadow as it goes downwards, and the first image (with the explosion) could have more transitional half-tones from shadow to light.
They overall have the proper direction for shadow, but you may want to check upon the red and black sections of Deadpool and the yellow dress. Especially when it's something with a more even lighting situation like the girl in yellow, the light probes would have about the same direction (from one end of the terminator to the other), even if the curvature/amount of lighting present varies.
Hello,
Here’s my light probes assignment. Pics 1 and 3 done on Procreate and 2 on Photoshop. @Dorian Iten, it was lots of fun and a nice opportunity to try out digitally on both - thanks.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Romain
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3yr
Nice! 👏
Really good colors, values, and terminator ellipses on all of these!
A few notes:
In image 1, on the head, the specular reflection is a bit too bright.
In image 2, the light comes a bit more from the top. See the cast shadow of the nose on the cheek.
In image 3, on the jacket, the form light value is a bit too bright.
These are nitpicky notes. ;) Great work overall!
Sometimes the lightsource was easy to see ... other times it was just plain guessing. Cool exercise though. Would love to hear feedback from you guys :-)
The only one that I'm really not happy with is the shiny one from the ring location. I found it difficult to get the highlight to have enough contrast with the center light without ending up with dirty lights.
Ouf! That was a hard one. Even with tips on how to find the placement and direction of light sources, I had a lot of trouble visualizing them and figuring out how they would interact with surfaces. While searching for images, a lot of movie scenes turned out to have several different light sources, which was confusing and made me change my choices a few times. I think I ended up picking an image with very simple lighting, which helped, but even then, I'm not so sure about my answers.
