CG Master Academy – Art of Color and Light

Week 1: Value: Where visual development fits into the picture of an animation pipeline.
Difference between design and color.
– How visual storytelling enhances narratives.
– Designing a painting using a value structure.
– Ranges of contrast: High contrast, low contrast, show high/low key with different accents.

Week 2: Principles of Color and Light
– Lighting Principles: Key light, fill light, reflected/bounce light, ambient occlusion.
– Shadow Principles: core and cast shadows, contact points.
– What is Local Color?
– Color relationships: How colors interact with one another based on types of light, strengths, and temperatures.

Week 3: Micro and Macro Painting
– Texture painting and Matte Painting: the micro and macro of entertainment
– Micro: The effect of light on different materials, at a close range (Shiny, Matte, Translucent, Subsurface scattering)
– Macro: The effect of light on materials, at a distant range (Use of atmospheric perspective to create emotion)
– Different lighting effects used in cinema and photography to create scale and distance through atmospheric perspective.

Week 4: Designing and composing colors
– Enhancing the impact colors will have through design and composition.
– Design and composition principles: 1. Big/medium/small; 2. Foreground/mid-ground/background; 3. Golden thirds; 4. Scale by comparison; 5. Negative space; 6. Rhythm; 7. Flow; 8. Focal point.

Week 5: Color Harmonies in Time of Day
– Unifying colors for a time of day: 1. General sky color for time of day, night; 2. Color Temperatures (The warms and cools of each color).
– Creating focal point by contrast and color.

Week 6: Color Theory
– Color creates emotion: Generally accepted theories about color and the emotions they produce. Color schemes, How to achieve emotions needed for storytelling.

Week 7: Bringing a Painting to a Finish
– Taking a key to a finish: Taking a simple image and adding complexities.
Week 8: Bringing a Painting to a Finish
– Techniques for finessing and finishing an image.