View Full Version : forest night scene critique
05-02-2006, 03:01 PM
My main source of light is from the moon, but I also have an orangy glow from a fire in front of the trees. Feel free to critique!
05-02-2006, 11:50 PM
When you do a night scene, typically things don't have to be dark to portray darkness. All you need is high contrast. With that said, you could use a blue light to fill all the black and all the part that's lit by the fire could be bright. You can also have splotches of light and dark to further push the contrast.
Here's some more info:
05-03-2006, 01:23 AM
I've updated/added/changed a few things. Does this help, or is it still too dark? Is there anything else anyone would suggest?
It's actually lighter right now. Try increasing the contrast of the image. Also the blue light from the background isn't really showing up on the trees in the foreground. Show a little blue there to make a better connection between FG & BG.
05-03-2006, 07:01 AM
The colors give the scene a "storybook" sort of look, which is great if that's what you're going for. You could push that look further, and also add to the sense that it is night time, if you added some contrast. Try putting some things into silhouette, so they are just black, or to help with the directionality put one side of the tree trunks all the way to black but illuminate the other side. Rim lights (lights that just add a bright line along the edge of something) are great for giving definition to a scene while it is dark, or kickers (a thicker edge along the side) can help show the roundness of a back-lit tree.
The "fire in front of the trees" you mentioned isn't working. The red light doesn't look as if it comes from a fire because there's no directionality (no sense of where the fire is located), the light doesn't seem to be decaying with distance from the fire, the light is very uniform and doesn't look flickery or blotchy, and the shadow cast by the reddish light looks crisp and tight, not soft like a fire shadow.
Try to make areas like that hole in the tree get darker where the light would be blocked; probably you just need some more shadows in the scene.
05-03-2006, 07:01 AM
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