THE ATTIC (Process)
Project Goals:
1) Creating a stylized project with vibrant colors
2) Exploring painterly style textures
3) Creating a short storytelling scene
Preparation:
Textures
Using the environment asset The Attic, I decided to create new texture files for a more stylized, cartoony look. The normal maps were created with paint strokes and the roughness was kept to a relatively low value so that the normal map will react based on the light, giving an interesting indirect specular reflection.
Base Color Maps
Normal Maps
Lighting & Compositing:
The concept and goal of the lighting process was to use strong colors to accentuate the cartoony style. I chose a pinkish shade to represent the time around late night to early morning, when people are asleep, to make the ghost character's emergence convincing. The strong pink color was also selected to give a beautiful but also slightly ominous feeling.
The main light source is the moonlight pouring through the window. A directional light was used to effectively create the shadow, while the area light created the atmospheric volume of the moonlight.
For storytelling purposes, the wooden plane model and the light coming from the screen right door were set to be lit up as the story progresses.
To prevent having too many lights that may hinder the story, the ghost character was not lit by additional lights but was color graded along with a glow node to have an emphasis on its presence.
Moonlight as the main light source (emission layer)
Slight glow effect on the ghost character
Final look after adding background illustrations