[ceenda]

Hi there.

I'm working on some new pics and really want to give the viewer an awe inspiring sense of scale. A lot of artists (including many on this forum) seem to have mastered the whole sci-fi scale thing.

What makes the difference between a ship that looks like a 200 mile long monster and a childs toy?

I thought for a while that it might be about perspective. However, if said spaceship is in the sky and I have the model ship in my hand I only need to move the model close enough and it will resemble the big ship's perspective.

Here's an example. I was looking at spooge's website again(who doesn't ? ) and there is a pic there of a futuristic city with lots of spires on it.

Is it the detail that makes the scale seem so awesome? spooge could do a picture like that in one of his 10 min sketches and I don't doubt it would still have the awesome sense of scale.

So, any advice on scaling up my pics?

[Chapel]

I'm pretty sure it just has to do with the type of detail you put into the picture. The closer the object more detailed.. the further away the less. Also, it helps to put something that the viewer can relate to. i.e. a person, dog, car, whatever. Perspective may have something to do with it also. Then again.. I haven't really drawn anything huge.

[Svanur]

I think detail should do it. More detail, more it doesn't look like a toy. And like Chapel said, put something that people can relate to.

[-incarnation-]

everything the guys here have suggested seems about right, but there is another point i think you should consider.

Remember whatever your creating with this huge sense of scale should be designed accordingly. A gargantuan space ship does not just look like a very big fighter. If you dont know what i mean, look at the super star destroyer in star wars and compare it to the tie fighters or x wings, the super ships arn't just very big verions of the smaller ships, but the design reflects there massive size.

pretty obvious but just a tip

[el tigre]

ceenda, three point perspective totally helps suggest huge scale. Things get smaller on all axis x,y and z. It looks cool and I think thats what Spooge does, but I remember it being F***in' complicated.

Spoogey, Spooge ol' buddy, ol' pal! Please tell him wot I'm trying to say. :�

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Does anyone know the secret formula? :�

[extralobe]

another trick is to try to make use of atmospheric perspective.. when you look at something that gets farther and farther away from you, the air scatters and discolors the light. so close up, things like fairly bright and vibrant, but further away, they are fairly whited-out.

hope that helps (and i hope i'm not talking out my ass)

[Sumaleth]

I think there are many things that give Spooge's images that "massive" quality and it's really a combination of everything that makes it work so well.

One would be the 'impression of detail'.

Really I guess this is two things; one is being able to paint the impression of detail - that is, detail is that "looks" right but isn't 'scientifically perfect' (which tends to not look right for some reason). The other is being able to judge how much and what size to paint it for an object given it's size and distance.

Other things include depth of field ("fogging" in simple terms) and, possibly more importantly, lighting and shadowing.

If you were to take a small household object, scale it up x100 and then drawn both objects with 'outside lighting', the lighting and shadowing would need to be painted differently for each object. I can't really explain why that might be (possibly the increase in bounce lighting), and intuatively I guess you'd expect to simply apply what you learnt in the Cube exercises yet I do believe there would be subtle differences in the way you would paint the lighting.

I suspect that Spooge understands the differences, whether intuatively or academically.

Sumaleth.

[Chapel]

I'm pretty sure spooge closes his eyes and goes into a trance when he paints.

[Fred Flick Stone]

There are a whole number of things you can use to get scale. The use of repeated objects in space, on closer another further away. With this in mind, there is a rule of thumb that helps composition. The use of the foreground, a middle ground, and a background. By braking space up into three distinct depths, you are creating interest, recession of space with objects to cue the eyes with, and you have an opportunity to break up space with values-this is a tricky one to explain, but it is kinda like, you never want even numbers of objects in a painting, always an odd number. So with depth, you can break up the painting into light-dark-light, dark-light-dark, step down of light to dark from front to back, or the reverse, and so on. Even numbers start to create an uncomfortable pattern, I am not to sure of the psychology behind this, I should read up on it, then chatter away here.

Atmosphere is another major key to depth. If you happen to be lucky to live in an area where there is a lot of space to see out into, look around. See how wvwrything becomes hazy, bluer, a bit more purple in the backgrounds. You have particles in the atmosphere, H20, CO2, smog, etc. Smog neutralizes color, makes atmosphere look brown. Natural atmosphere gives things in the distance a bluer look to them. But think about it like this, these particles exist around you right now, you are just too close to them to see em effect your immediate surroundings, unless you are in a very dark, dusty room with one sunlit opening into the room, then you can see the atmosphere in front of you. So, as more space sits in between you and the object you are looking at, more atmosphere is going to effect the objects you see.

Another thing to use is the amount of detail you imply. Foreground objects, unless they are in rapid movement, will tend to have more detail focused on them. Lets take a car for example. We put the car in the foreground. We can at this point, add the dividing lines between the fender panels, the doors, the windows, the trim around the lights, the details in the hub caps.
Put the car in the middle ground, you might see the dividing lines for the doors, but probably not. The only thing you will be denoting are the major shape differences. The wheels, the light shapes the window shapes, etc. with a bit of secondary detail to give a sense of volume, but not detail.
Put the car in the background, and the only things you are going to see are the biggest shapes, the silhouette of the car, the wheel wells, the windows, maybe the lights.

Another thing to help this recession is the use of the number of values you iuse in an object.

Por Ejemple...The car again, in the hub cap of the car, we will use 5 values. three light values, two dark values, this is the car in the foreground. Now I am going overboard on the number of values here, but it is to illustrate the point.
Now, put the car in the middle ground, and that same hub is now only going to get two or three values, two in the light, one for the dark. This obviously means less attention to detail, because we are describing less, because of space and atmosphere.
Now put the car in the background, and the hubcap now dissapears into the wheel well value, or is a graphic shape against the wheel well, one value used now.

Another way is the usage of colors. In the immediate foreground you would use maybe three or four colors to describe big shapes and their details based upon light and shadow. As you recede into space, the atmosphere neutralizes many of these colors into other value families, grouping colors into one color family. This is based upon the recession of volume of that color, plus atmosphere, and lighting...
So, back to the story, go to the middle ground, and we now only use three of our original five colors, the ones gone are the ones closest to another color family that dominates the area. This means, in our foreground palette, we have say, red, yellow, green, blue and brown, as we move back, the brown and red start to merge together, as they are part of one color family, the blue and green start to blend together, and the yellow stays its own family.
We finally move to the background, and now our yellow starts to blue out with atmosphere, leaning into the green-blue mixture, and the brown-red family also blues, becoming more purple, both leaning toward a cool tone, eventually becoming one value and hue. Wow, technical, I hope to get some visuals to accompany this for you to help out a bit also.

There are other things you can do also, but I am going brain dead, and need lunch.

Ceenda, I really hope this helps you out. I will try and be more thorough next time, with visuals as well. I am just too happy to get back to the forum. I think I'm turning Geekinese...

[WacoMonkey]

Hey Ceenda,

Here are a few tricks I know of:

PERSPECTIVE: Use of the proper perspective is important. Make sure when doing large objects in the distance that you use the proper 'lens'. ie. make sure your vanishing points are pretty far apart so the image has a 'telephoto' look to it. Choosing a low angle (worms-eye view) with your horizon line near the bottom of the image helps to make things look monolithic.

ATMOSPHERE: as extralobe and Sumaleth suggest, fogging or 'aereal perspective', making the object fade into the background like distant mountains.

FOREGROUND OBJECTS: Have your mega-object partially occluded by something else that we already recognise as really large, such as a skyscraper, or 747 or clouds, etc... If those objects are clearly in front of the subject, the mind gasps in wonder at the massiveness of that object.

DETAIL: Scale detail accordingly. The eye recognises certain details like cutlines, bolts, pipes, panel break-up, etc... making these things denser on larger objects immediately lends scale. Conversely, be careful not to 'overdetail' smaller objects. Large surfaces are usually made up of many pieces because it is difficult to manufacture large panels. This gives the eye a human context to reference scale from.

CROPPING: Showing just part of the object tells the eye immediately that this object is too big to even fit in one view! As in the thumbnail below, you can have just a detail of the object in the forground to compare to something of human scale (the car, or some figures running around) and then repeat the object in the background. Make sure the object incorporates some detail that is clearly recognisable from the foreground so you associate the two as the same. Notice how even the more distant ship is still cropped - making it seem even bigger.





The image below shows how low angles make things even more massive - anything looming over you immediately gets a sense of dramatic size. Note also hav the foreground skyscrapers and the helicopter lend scale. You already know that the buildings are big - this one dwarfs even them! the larger building also has a lot more intricate detail and structure, suggesting that it needs more to support its massive size. the building in the background repeats the structural pattern, showing just how high the building goes up.



Hope this helps!

Phil.



[This message has been edited by WacoMonkey (edited August 22, 2000).]

[Fred Flick Stone]

There you go ceenda, visuals. I think I set that one up...nice entry Mr. Wacomole...

[ceenda]

Thanks to everyone for the replies!!!

Fred: Excellent stuff! Very technical ... I think I know what you mean.

WacoMonkey: Those are great tips, well illustrated too!



[This message has been edited by ceenda (edited August 22, 2000).]

[spooge demon]

Thanks guys, now I know

YOu can summarize atmospheric perspective as "things moving to the middle" Values and colors are skewed toward the neutral.

Fred's description is accurate, so it is a lot of particles that you are seeing in front of your object. If there is a colored light, or the particles themselves are affecting color, you have to take this into account as far as not moving to neutral gray.

Wacommonkey those are great tips!

thanks

[MaLoRuM]

HRMM i thought this also might be helpful, I found this picture on a Camaro website, and thought about this Post. This picture has not been digitally enhanced at all, and i think it really shows a distinct difference in foreground middle ground and background and how the colors are affected in each section.


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[WacoMonkey]

I like this one better

[Danny]

Aah.. I love these kind of threads... Interesting pointers..

I'm currently working on a series of paintings that are exactly along these lines. Massive open spaces, intense perspectives etc. It's actually pretty tricky to pull off compositions containing extreme depths and scale.
One image I'm working on contains a trail of gigantic pilars receding into the distance. I wanted to experiment with what would give me the most impressive sense of scale and grandness. So I set up a simple 3D scene and started shifting about the geometry to see what would happen. I was surprised to find out how tricky it was to get it just right. Experimenting with camera lenses, distances between individual objects, generally the formula required for a proper perspective effect surprised me when analyzing the setup from orthographic viewpoints. Lesson learned; Experiment with your setup, placement of individual elements can make or break a believable perspective composition (even more so than normal).
Another image I'm working on features this large field of golden crops. Again with a lot of depth and panorama. I noticed here that individual details of (in this case) the crop straws should start blending towards an average colour as they recede into the distance. Kinda like how a Gaussian blur works in *theory* but without the blurring factor. I guess this is more evident within the digital medium than when actually looking at the real-life equivalent.
French 17th century landscape painter Pierre Patel did some awesome stuff worth looking at. (Painted ancient ruins featured in beautifull countrysides) Sadly only visible at Parisian museums.. unless someone knows where reproductions can be found?!

Danny

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[iska]

Great thread! It has already inspired me alot...

I'd like to add something about the DOF (or FOG). You could try use photoshop's filter, "noice/dust and scratches" on the far (OFCOURSE, faded.. like 50-90%).. also (blur/Gaussian blur) is somewhat ok, again, faded 40-80% or something... experiment!

rule nr.1 about photoshop filters.. DO FADE THEM

--iska