About the lecturer: Guan Feifei, senior game artist of Tencent Interactive Entertainment NEXT Product Center, producer of "Rainbow Falling".
Lead
A good picture gives us a far more profound impression than a text, so if we want to make a good game, like making a good movie, we need a good script, a good actor, a good material background and a good post-production, these elements are indispensable. We will be a game as a movie in the production, how to use the most effective visual performance to present the gameplay, plot, promote the whole story more tense, so that the game world view has a complete framework, I hope that this sharing, can bring you some inspiration.
Let's think about it first: two people sit down and A tells B a story, and in the process of telling this story, usually the picture they produce in their heads is different. If the storyline told is reduced to a flowing picture, and everyone feels empathy in this picture, then listening to a story is the art of time, and watching a picture is the art of space, and the movie or game is actually a combination of the two. If this large text version of the game method description is turned into a picture to explain, even if it is not full or mature, the audience will be attracted by the picture.
The visual elements of the film
When we want to express the plot of the story, what do we do? First of all, the story has ups and downs, and the visual can achieve the same purpose. Visual structure supports the story structure, that is to say, if we want to tell the story completely, so that the audience or the player can experience emotions from it, the visual structure bears a large part of the weight. So what is the visual structure? The visual structure is composed of many elements, and building a lot of elements like building blocks forms a visual structure that can be used to match the storytelling.
First of all, let's understand the visual elements of the film, which are divided into space, lines, shapes, colors, tones, movements and rhythms.
1. Space
The classification of spaces is relatively simple, and I define them as five categories: deep space, flat space, finite space, blurred space, and open space that breaks the border limit. This time, we mainly analyze three types of basic spatial forms, taking the movie "Budapest Hotel" as an example, we analyze the spatial representation of the above three pictures.
The first picture, flat space: When the characters are in dialogue, most directors will use the flat space to highlight the main body of the characters, so that the audience can see more character expressions and detailed dialogues.
The second figure, between the plane space and the depth space, is called the finite space.
The third diagram, deep space: Deep space is defined as the illusion of presenting a three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional screen. The advantage is that it can focus more on the whole scene than on the characters. How do we create a deep space?
The creation of deep space
Perspective, which is divided into one-point perspective, two-point perspective, and three-point perspective.
In the movie "Clockwork Orange", a classic shot in the film uses a little perspective: whenever the four protagonists go out in the middle of the night to commit a crime, a little perspective scene in the picture will take the audience to a strong visual impact situation, indicating that something bad will happen next.
The movie "The Lady of the Past", the whole film is a typical example of deep space, as shown in the picture is a scene of two points of perspective, and the two disappearing points in the picture bring visual diversity, perspective and strong display.
In the movie "The Shape of Water", the use of three-point perspective, as shown in the picture, the director describes the environmental characteristics of the protagonist's work in the narrative process, which is a deep space through multi-point perspective through one scene after another, so that the audience can understand and realize that the place where the protagonist works is a very special and huge laboratory when watching. This is the strong visual impact brought about by the three-point perspective, comparing the smallness of the characters in the scene.
Color, this is a screenshot from the movie "Mad Max", the foreground in the picture is warm, the background is cool, although there is no too strong perspective, but the depth of the space can be clearly pulled out.
Overlapping, it is a bit vague in concept compared to the first two keywords, it relies on layer after layer of superposition, revealing the depth space. The three female characters in the movie "The Adventures" contrast with the male characters in front of them through the overlapping placement of the characters, while creating an effective depth space.
Details, the definition of details is the difference in the degree of detail of objects far and near, and it is also an important clue to shape the depth of space.
The movie "The Revenant" also forms a clear distinction in the details of the focus through the contrast between the foreground characters and the characters in the background, creating a depth space. In photography, the application of one point and multi-point focus of the camera, the hair in the foreground of the character and the details of the skin, including the details on the gun and the characters in the background, form a good virtual and real contrast, so that the space is created.
Proportions, proportional relationships are the contrast of the sizes of the positions that constitute a depth cue. For example, the size of the spaceship in Star Wars, through the contrast of its size, the contrast of the background and the foreground, pulls out a deep space.
Position, because of the living habits we think of the lower position of the object will be relatively close, fixed screen, the height of the position will also present a depth clue.
Summary: Through these depth clues, we can accurately create an effective depth space, and at the same time, we must include all the elements to allow us to create a depth space accurately and without making mistakes. If there is no sufficient depth clue, even if you shoot in a deep space, it may look flat.
Flat space versus limited space
Flat space, emphasizing the flat sense of the two-dimensional screen, expresses the opposite of the deep space. In space, there is no perspective scale relationship, the color is similar, and there is no overlap between objects, and there is no need for the distance of the position, which is the most appropriate way to create a flat space.
In order to make the picture more flat, the director deliberately added a mirror to the side of the background wall with a circular pattern, and the mirror reflection caused the circular pattern on the wall to become flat, and the deliberate allocation of the art design also effectively created a flat space!
The movie "Flower Street Killer King" is a typical representative of the limited space, the exterior scene in the following figure, because it tries to avoid the side of the object, the objects are almost all arranged frontally, the house is flat, the front of the car parallel to the ground towards the camera, the whole picture has no perspective line. Although it is an outdoor scene, its flat sense is still very strong. Effectively weakening the perspective line of the picture will make the lines of the entire scene become very unified, which is also an effective flat space.
Summary: The depth of space is an important visual element, many people say that the depth space is more interesting, the plane space is boring, this is actually just a more simplistic cognition, in fact, the contrast relationship between the strong and the weak, the depth space is stronger, and the plane space is weaker.
How to use contrast and similarity is the most important issue for us to use various elements, and what kind of space to use is the easiest to reflect the sense of picture, which will be determined by the plot.
For example, to make a sitcom or a warm love drama, the audience needs to focus on the characters themselves, to pay attention to their interactions, and we can use more flat space and limited space. Another example is to shoot an action scene, the focus is on the action rather than on the subtle language, then you need a very powerful depth space to express the visual impact.
All in all, how to make a film bridge or make a game level with a narrative, how to flexibly use these spaces is what needs to be seriously considered and discussed in the early stages of art, planning and procedures.