The Clown's Trailer

[anon41720500]

So, way back in 2005, I was in a ‘Layout and Background’ class (taught by a Mr. Laurence Schwinger) (http://www.illuxcon.com/schwinger.html) at the Art Institute of Philadelphia. One of the assignments was to design a line-art version of a clown’s makeup trailer.

I was still quite a rookie at the time, so my design wasn’t the greatest. I did get an ‘A’ on it, but all the grades back then were relative. Here’s what the lineart ended up looking like:

I also attempted to draw the same image from another angle:

I then attempted to color it (way back then), but had very little knowledge of how light worked. Mostly, I just laid down flat colors and then used another layer with multiply turned on to ‘light’ surfaces:

Because I knew very little about staging or cinematography/photography (or light and rendering, at that), it didn’t really turn out how I wanted it to. I kept the files and hoped for a better day.

Years later, I tried another rendering:

Still, even after over half a decade of study (albeit, filled with schizophrenia), it just didn’t look right.

Another period of time passed where I found myself unmotivated to create art (was mostly spent philosophizing).

Now, the time has come to finish this project!

I am going to use this thread as my way of motivating myself to work on this old assignment. I now realize that the entire trailer has to be re-mapped in plan and elevation views (blueprint mode), re-shot, re-drawn and, finally, re-lit – all with photographic aesthetics in mind. Part of the problem is that the foreground objects in the initial shot are not rendered properly in perspective, so it always results in failure when I try to light them. Also, I don’t have a complete understanding of the three-dimensionality of the space (as well as the mechanics of the camera shot).

I’m going to start working on the layout plans tonight! I WILL finish the Clown’s Trailer!

[anon41720500]

Okay! Finished the plan and elevation views. Next step is to either do an isometric or non-photogenic shot of the trailer to understand and study object distribution within the scene (so I can understand where light will pool). After that, I have to do some camera renders for the final shot.

The problem is that it’s a small trailer (18x11x7), so if I want to truly produce a shot within the trailer and use the various props as foreground elements, I’m going to have to shoot with a very wide angle lens (likely, a fisheye lens, which means 5-point curvilinear perspective). That’ll produce a lot of distortion outside of the 90 degree field of view. …which isn’t really desirable.

The other choice is to ‘slice open’ the trailer and photograph it from a distance, but that’ll make it hard to showcase the various elements of the room. Plus, you’ll feel very distanced from the shot in the end scheme of things.

Really, the design challenge is to shoot a small trailer without producing too much perspective distortion, yet showcasing the storytelling elements that exist within the room. Also, to establish effective foreground elements that can lead or trap the viewer within the painting. It is quite tough, when you think about it!

[Daze]

pretty awesome, and it looks like a lot of fun too!

[Tomasina]

Impressive @anon41720500! Looking forward to following your work.

[anon20613941]

That all looks really, really cool!

[anon41720500]

3/4 perspective with cut-away to interior:

I need to complete one more 3/4 shot from the other side and then I can start plotting out camera angles for the final shot.

[pob]

I like all your pictures - particularly the colored ones.

[shutterbug]

Damn. You have m4d sk1llz.

Seriously impressed. Keep posting.

[anon48059102]

How did you become so good with your art? You are master

[anon7022989]

3D and perspective is really hard… amazing work… well done!

[rogueone]

Love your work. Always did art at highschool and also did tech drawing to grade 10. Loved technical drawing with vanishing points and perspective. It was really cool and truly appreciate these works. Lighting is hard…but these days you put it in a renderer and pick a focal point and your there…but you have to learn all that software…

Very cool!

[anon41720500]

Thanks! I too was always active in art classes in high school, but didn’t have technical drawing classes until college. I became sick when I was there, so I finished up later at a more local university.

When I was at the Art Institute, I deliberately avoided doing work in 3D modeling and lighting classes, because I appreciated the old-school linear perspective approach to things. Perhaps it’s because I was nostalgic for days of old spent watching traditionally animated cartoons. I always dreamed of being the guy who did that kind of stuff!

In reality, it probably would have been wise to spend more time and effort in those 3D classes, as I could be using 3D as a reference for my drawings at this point. Instead, I’m forced to calculate all of this stuff out manually, which is laborious.

Like you said, lighting is hard. It’s, arguably, the hardest part of the entire process, as you’re emulating all of those bounces of photons within the mind (and understanding wavelength behavior for color, as well as specularity, lambertian reflection, ambient occlusion and energy absorption).

I think creating the models of the clown’s trailer should help with emulating the behavior of light within the environment. That and figuring out the camera angles is going to be the most aggravating part. At this point, I am kind of stumped about how I’m going to shoot this thing and make it look good.

It is FUN though! It’s addictive and it’s nice to be finally returning to this.

[anon41720500]

Thank you for the many kind words, all!

@anon48059102,

If you’re interested in checking out the world’s best primer for linear perspective, I highly recommend ‘Handprint’.

https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/tech10.html

I spent years studying his entire collection of notes. I still have to study his stuff on light and the eye.

[anon41720500]

Didn’t feel like doing technical stuff today, so I created a quick grayscale ‘marker’ sketch of the trailer interior. There was no planning when it came to the camera angle. I was simply messing around with station point locations and seeing what happened to object distortion as a result.

The viewer is 6 feet tall and you are located within inches of the front door. The angle on the camera is very wide, causing massive perspective distortion (the room doesn’t look like the blueprints or 3/4 view as a result).

As per lighting, I’ve lit the scene at night, but am exaggerating light from, perhaps, the circus, which is coming in the front door.

[anon41720500]

Okay,

So, I started losing some resolution to this project. Mostly because my new design of the trailer isn’t identical to the original design. It changes the direction of things and I don’t like that change. Henceforth, I’m going to reverse engineer the original drawing and find out the exact dimensions and layout of the initial trailer, figure out what went wrong with the foreground objects (clown mannequin/fish/feather area), then re-shoot the scene with proper perspective, which finally, should allow more accurate lighting to be achieved.

I used one of the tiles on the floor as a base. I assumed it was a perfectly square tile, receded its 45 degree measuring lines, found the 45 degree measuring points, then figured out that the maximum circle of view on the image is, roughly speaking, 134 degrees! That’s a huge circle of view (angle of the lens used for the shot).

Realistically speaking, if I’m going to use that wide of a lens to view the trailer, things should be drawn in 5-point curvilinear perspective to avoid planar distortion.

NEXT: The deconstructed plan and elevation of the original perspective drawing! (will take a while!)

[anon41720500]

Okay! I reverse engineered the original drawing and extracted the plan out of the perspective image. It turns out that the original trailer is smaller than the re-design. Also, I had to modify the sink area because it was originally drawn incorrectly in perspective. The sink is smaller now. The booth part is small and there were other issues I won’t get into. This is as detailed as I’m going to get with the blueprint stage.

[anon41720500]

So here’s the hard part (for me, it’s hard!). I’m going to light the trailer in the same way that I did several years back – with no atmosphere in the surrounding environment (to avoid ambient Rayleigh Scattering (blue light from the sky)). Essentially, the trailer is floating in space and we have one giant beam of light from our star (the sun) entering into the trailer. That minimizes the amount of calculations I have to perform.

I was thinking about it today. The problem is one of pure descriptive geometry. The star sends light into the room and provides a constant flow of energy, like wood provides fuel for a fire. The HARD part is the intersection between the sun and the floor/bed. Light will bounce in every direction imaginable and the initial surfaces (tile floor and bed) will absorb a percentage of photon-energy/wavelengths based on material quality/composition. The hard part is figuring out the intersection between the shape created after the initial bounce WITH the objects in the trailer. …and again, it is pure descriptive geometry and computational physics.

Making a model helps, but this is where I always fail. I try to move too fast and I fail to make accurate calculations. Also, I have to consider exposure (adaptation of the camera to light), lambertian reflection and color perception. It’s a LOT… and I’m going to have to take a break and do some studying, then calculations to test out various algorithms.

For example, at what rate does the bounced light lose energy as it travels through space? Does the light from the light shape on the ground bounce with equal energy in every direction or is the strength attenuated in certain locations within the shape? There’s so many questions to answer and the amount of study I could pour into this is nearly limitless.

Oh, and finally, the question of aesthetics: How do you shoot what you’ve lit so it looks ‘good’?

[anon41720500]

Whoops!

I under-scaled my drawing by one foot, which is creating problems with stabilizing other views of the trailer in proper perspective.

Also, I don’t understand the interior curvature of the trailer on its 4 corners. That’s actually going to be important when I try to make calculations for light bounces. Sadly, I must restart. AGAIN.

Oh well; at least I’m learning!