RE: Deli Team animation

Hi Gareth and Tony,

[Please read Final Gathering notes in RE: Jamie's project]

I like your idea, its a character animation project with clean lighting.  You have a nice little story there, quite an ambitious project!  Firstly I would suggest keeping your textures optimized (for memory reasons), so the right size for the object (seems obvious but I see massive maps for small background objects all the time), and don't go overboard with detailed textures, in can distract from the animation.

As this is a story piece, consider using lighting to enhance story points, perhaps a crack in the wall lets in a shaft of light which just happens to be lighting the prize winning ham :)  This would also add to the humor of the piece.  You can use lighting to hide, and reveal, with comedic timing.   Remember the set is the backdrop to story so keep it simple.  Think about the animation as a whole when lighting the environment.  I imagine a 1920's Delicatessen is quite dark at the back of the shop and looking towards the window it is really quite bright even on a dull day (when your in a dark room, your eyes similarly to film, would naturally overexpose a bright window).  It could be quite fun having characters coming through the front door silhouetted and glowing with rim light, again it could be used to enhance the comedy.  Sounds like you could do something cool with lots of red bounce light at the end when the shop is covered in tomato sauce.

If your project has a fair bit of facial animation you might want to start thinking about using light to accentuate your characters emotions.  For example to make a character look more scary,evil or conniving , add a light from below (it could be the bounce light off the worktop).  You can write these things into the script.  Get the animatic working and figure out where your light sources are in relation to the characters, and how you can use it to your advantage.  

I found some images in Pixar's 'The Incredibles' with a similar(ish) colour palette, as examples of adding interest and more importantly focus with lighting.  As you can see they are not really dramatic (apart from newspaper shot... this is actually a shock situation).  Having a dark surrounding with a bright light above really picks out the characters, who are the main focus.  They use light to draw us back to the characters time and time again.

An option you might want to try for this project is lighting for compositing.  So far no one has mentioned compositing in their proposal, but I think your missing a trick ignoring it.  I'll give some examples (of my industry experience) in another post as its too much to explain today.  Basically it would involve more planning, as you will need to render in layers, but you will have more control over the final look, and tweaks will be easy rather than heavy re-renders.  Personally I think it is more fun and more creative!

Hopefully this gives you something to think about, such an ambitious project is crying out for some special lighting.

Let me know your thoughts.

Tessa