LIGHTING

by Carman Chan.

Lighting for this project was interesting due to the toon shader. As mentioned before, using the toon shader was more like color picking for an illustration rather than having an accurate and realistic texture, and using lights to enhance and bring said texture to life. So the challenge for me was how to achieve an illustrated look with the lighting.

Bianca and I gathered lots of references for the mood and colors we wanted for the different parts of the film. We knew the start was going to be very desaturated, basically to the point of black and white, so I knew I can be a bit harsher with the lights, using bright highlights and a strong god ray from the window to my advantage to carve out the shapes I wanted.

The next part of the film was going to be "underwater" after the powerful waterfall and beat drop from the music, so of the colors and lighting of this scene had to match it's energy. We leaned towards a very bright afternoon, with vibrant colors, taking inspiration from coral reefs, that give the feeling of bursting with colors and life.

Finally, we reach the end. this point of the animation, the entire world is saturated with color again, but we didn't want it to be as electric as the scenes before, so we leaned towards a warm sunset/golden hour vibe.