Lights, camera, play: pro techniques for making game visuals pop
This post from a Senior Video designer offers practical tips and experience-backed advice for making the view impression you desire using lights, shading, camera techniques, and more.
Our department produces a huge amount of content: commercials, playable ads, banners, and elements related to store design. Ultimately, all of this content (and the elements that make up our creatives) should serve to attract precious viewer attention while making them want to download and play our games.
Hello! I’m Alesya Pavlova, Senior Video Designer with the creative team producing MY.GAMES advertising materials. I’ve been creating advertising content for more than six years, and in this article, I want to share my experience (as well as some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way) to help you make your images richer and more interesting.
Skills from many other fields (such as photography, film, and painting) can be useful in game development. At MY.GAMES, we have top-level professionals who combine their knowledge to achieve a great result and provide our players with an exciting experience.
Preparation comes first
Before you start, define your goals.
In an ideal world, we’d complete the entire pipeline in the best possible way and in the shortest possible time — but we must also try to be realistic.
To successfully achieve our goals, we need not only a clear vision of the end result, but also proper planning and consistent execution of steps towards this goal. It’s important to remain flexible and willing to adapt your methods as circumstances change or new challenges arise.
Considering the composition
In our work, it’s important to attract the viewer’s attention within a very short period of time. So, we need to affect their instinctual response by using simple silhouettes and shapes. The environment should support the main concept as much as possible while drawing gaze to the main focus, while also conveying the desired mood.
In this example, we direct viewer attention with a bright foreground and a brightly lit character who clearly stands out against a dark background. Then, with the help of light accents, we direct attention to the next most important character — the lurking enemy. (We also enhance the accents using some additional techniques, which I’ll discuss in more detail later.)
Lighting and shade
Light is a complex topic, so I’ll discuss the simplest (but most effective) techniques. The key thing to remember: light creates an atmosphere, shapes the mood, and directs attention. Let’s see an example using a theater spotlight:
This technique is simple in execution, but it does its job perfectly. It concentrates viewer attention on the primary subject, while perhaps adding an extra touch of comedy and cartoonish atmosphere (since a spotlight could appear anywhere, for example, on a house, on the street, or in an office, places where this would otherwise be unexpected).
Let’s note a technical nuance here: if you leave the background at the default level of brightness while also brightening the objects under the spotlight, you’ll burn the image — the objects will become too bright, the contrast of faces will be lost, and the colors will seem unnatural. To avoid this, we don’t have to recreate an actual light beam. Instead, it’s much easier to simply darken the entire area outside of our spotlight.
With this example out of the way, let’s look at some practical light and shade tips with examples, starting with backlights.
#1: Backlights
I add backlighting whenever I want a more cinematic look. Additionally, backlighting helps perfectly place an object into an environment, conveys a mood, and emphasizes the characters, whether it’s city lights at night or sunlight in the early morning.
It’s also very important not to make a mistake with color: I suggest ensuring the backlight’s color is lighter than the main light source so the object or character will not get lost in the environment.
In the example above, we have a romantic scene with a late night phone conversation, initially the “night” was only visible outside the window, but we used a spotlight and added backlighting along the edge of the character, thus achieving a more playful mood and the desired atmosphere; the lights of the night city seem to touch our character, and the effect has also separated her from the background, concentrating the viewer’s attention on her.
Here’s another example: this time, our backlight emanates from the lava, thereby emphasizing its “hotness” and danger — it’s so hot and bright that it has illuminated everything around it. Further, specifically in this example, the backlights act as guides that frame the character in trouble and direct our gaze to the rest of the characters.
#2: Light beams
I often add light beams when an action in a creative takes place outdoors. The beams create depth across multiple planes and also compositionally indicate where to look. To create an additional sense of atmosphere, we can also add dust particles flying by in the air.
#3: Vignettes
Vignettes are not unlike spotlights, but they have more blurred edges and technical nuances; it’s a darkening effect applied on top of the screen. These are often used in gameplay videos and people like to add them to all sorts of “mysterious” locations, like dungeons.
In the example above, the darkness adds to the sense of “gameplay” — the light follows the character, and we immediately understand that we’re playing as this character interacting with a main object; there is additional intrigue because we don’t know what awaits us in the darkness below, we must go down there to uncover it.
#4: Silhouettes
It’s important to remember that the silhouette of a character or object is a very important part of the composition. The clearer and more contrasting the silhouette, the better the character and action of the character or main object will be parsed, as demonstrated below.
#5: Air
In painting, “air” is a visual element that the artist uses to give space and depth to a picture. This air (which might be blue skies, white clouds, or haze) creates a sense of distance between objects and makes the picture seem more realistic. Air helps us understand how far away objects are on a canvas and how light and color change with distance. Most importantly, this technique directs the viewer’s gaze and highlights and outlines a character or object.
Here are some ways to use air to implement perspective:
Camera
Next, let’s look at some practical techniques with the camera.
#1: Breaking things down into planes
When there is an out-of-focus object in the foreground and a character (or other elements) behind it, we can convey a sense of depth and three-dimensionality in the scene. This makes it more engaging because the viewer feels like they are inside the scene, rather than just looking at it, and this can also create the feeling that they are almost spying on something or someone.
At the same time, the out-of-focus object doesn’t attract attention and acts as a kind of frame that helps us focus on the character.
#2 Motion editing
Timing is especially important to us, so sometimes, instead of spending a lot of time on a long character action, I use motion editing.
In the example above, we see that the character is flying on a vine through the forest — if we were watching this in reality, we’d see how she releases the vine and flies the entire distance from the top of the trees to the ground. However, in our example, we only see the moments when she releases the vine and lands. This is all because one movement began in one frame and ended in another, and our brain imagines all the action between these two frames. We can take advantage of this effect to make the animation more dynamic while also saving time and effort needed to make additional animation.,
#3: Camera effects
Camera shakes can emphasize the weight of a character, or the force of an impact or an explosion. It’s as if the “operator” of our virtual camera is also shaking from the impact.
We can also implement direct interaction with a camera, for example, the camera shattering when hit by the ball.
We can use Dutch angles: this is a film/photography technique where the camera is tilted to the side so that the horizontal line is not parallel to the ground. This gives the frame an unusual and dynamic look. This can create tension, instability, or emphasize an important point in a scene.
Summing up
These are just some of the visual techniques I use in my work. Of course, it’s important to remember that each game has its own unique features, and it’s important to tailor your approach to them, taking into account the specific gameplay and visual style. I’d like to offer the caveat that all of these should be used in a way that appropriately fits the style of the project. (For example, if the project has the most minimalist visuals possible, then adding various complex effects to the picture will be seen as being out of place.)
