RE: Holly's Pin-Up Project

Hi Holly,

This is a cute project! A great way of showing off your modeling and texturing skills.... but I think shading is going to be key to getting the look for this project. Everything is possible, that is why I love this job :) Time is your only constraint (and that means money too!)

The photo you have taken has flat (front on) lighting which is more like the music video, but the Elvgren designs have a bit more contrast in them with a clear bright light direction, and sharp but unusually warm shadows. If I were you I would take influence from different aspects of each.

The poster compositions are amazing so I would go with that style, and the skin looks soft and luminous almost like wax (look at incredibles pictures to see their subsurface scattering). The dark edges on the stockings you should be able to do with a shader by inverting the fresnel effect. Spend time working on your shaders, give yourself plenty of time, and start lighting early.

I prefer the Elvgren posters for their lighting, but the warm desaturated colours with hits of red and the flatness of the backgrounds works well in the music video. The lighting should be relatively simple for this scene, you will probably want the key light coming from the left, with a bit of fill and virtually no rim light. If you want the background to be flat, perhaps light it separately (on a new layer or in a new scene) with front on lighting. You might want to consider using a matte-painting for the background. You can build basic 3d models, place them in your scene and then instead of texturing, paint over them in photoshop. This is a valid and often cost effective way of working particularly when there is no camera move.

If you want, you could do quite a lot in post-production, to really make your image sparkle. Once you have gone as far as you can with the texturing, shading and lighting, take your renders into photoshop and do some paint work. Most magazine images are touched up so I don't see a problem doing it here. On your final render, render it big as if you were going to do a high quality print (this might be a nice idea).

It sounds like you have lots of ideas already, these your just my thoughts. I hope you don't mind but I took a few minutes to paint over and crop your photo to show you what I mean, and to give you ideas for lighting. My background lies in traditional painting and sometimes I find it helps to paint out your ideas on top of early renders. Its quicker than doing it in 3d and you can show the director a few different styles/colours quickly to help them make a decision if they are not sure what they want. I've seen art departments paint over renders too when they want to show the lighting artist explicitly what they want. Give painting a go yourself...it is a hassle free way of experimenting.

First I examined the composition, if you look at the Elvgren posters they cut off objects (similar to Degar paintings/sketches of dancers), it adds to the voyeuristic nature of the shot, and gives it an impromptu feel (although it is obviously staged!). Also I felt that because she is turning and looking to screen right, the composition was unbalanced, you feel she needs more space on the right to look into. A way around this was to bring the left side in, so that she is more central (but she doesn't feel like she is central), proportional to the whole there is now more space on the right. I have given the background sky a bit more context, with a horizon which helps frame the model and a vignette overall (brightness down and a touch of contrast) to draw your eye to her. I have changed the blue hue slightly so that it is warmer and happier, which is something you said you liked from your influences. I also painted out some of the clouds which overlapped with her, as I felt they were distracting from her shapes.

I kept going trying to match to the posters....I brought up the skin tones, making it brighter and more saturated, towards a redder hue. I also saturated the reds in her lips and her belt. I contrasted, brightened and saturated the skirt so it has a bit of interest. I have painted white over her top, keeping to the middle, so that she looks more directionally lit, but the edges stay dark. I also painted in a few shadows, and added edge shadow to accentuate her shapely body. Her stockings are transformed, and have that sheen you want, just by painting a bit of flesh colour (with a soft brush) over the top. Finally I desaturated the wood colours and foreground objects, to match the colours of the music video.

Now when you look at the image as a whole your eye is drawn to your model because she is framed (like your Elvgren designs), and with her brighter colouring she stands out from the background. I would definitely think about adding more objects in your composition, I like the suitcases. Remember they can be at the edge of the frame- cut off, if you can get something into that left corner(maybe aeroplane with banner?), it would fill the gap a bit. Maybe look at more Elvgren images to get ideas?

Hope this helps and is enough to get you started. Let me know how you get on.

Tessa