The Research of Lighting in 3D Children’s Animation
Foreword to my report:
First, I would like to explain why I choose the light effect of children’s animation as the topic of my report. When I was a child, 3D children’s animation has not yet appeared on large scale, so I mainly watch cartoons. The story of Snow White and Cinderella impressed me deeply. I am not sure what you will think of when hearing the words Snow White and Cinderella. Perhaps you will be reminded of the content of the story, the kind, and beautiful people will have a happy ending after all; perhaps you will think of the splendid scene of the seven dwarves digging in the earth for gems, or the scene of Cinderella becoming a pretty princess with the help of the fairy.
However, in addition to these beautiful memories, I also have two terrible memories. The first is, the eyes which appeared in the darkness when Snow White ran into the depth of the forest because she was chased by the hunter; the second is the door which was shut closely when Cinderella was locked in the loft by her stepmother. Maybe, I was still a child then and was easily influenced by these scenes. After watching the cartoons, I had had nightmares for a long while. And in my nightmares, I was in such scenes.
But when I watched stop motion animation, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, I was not frightened.
I made a lot of comparisons and discovered that, in addition to the content, the image also will influence the emotions of the audience. Two-dimensional animation creates the atmosphere through the color of the image and the design of elements, but three-dimensional animation will create the atmosphere through light effect. Children are more sensitive to images. When they see images, they will think of other things. So, my purpose is to research images that are suitable for children, that easily attract their attention, by using the appropriate lighting technology. I sincerely wish that each 3D children’s animation will provide beautiful childhood memories for children.
When I watch the animation I watched during my childhood again, I find that these scenes that impressed me when I was young are not that perfect, but they made me a really happy childhood.
Now let me tell you the confusion I had when I was thinking about what to research and the advice from my teacher.
My confusion:
Many film companies have studied the effect of lights in traditional three-dimensional animation, like Hotel Transylvania. The methods to arrange the different colored lights are diversified. But obviously, if we merely explore the light effect, we can not produce animation with distinct features.
I recorded my favorite scenes in Hotel Transylvania. But I do not find them innovative. They are similar to illustrations and oil paintings. And such images are liked by both children and adults. Children like many things, not only warm color lights (warm colors make people feel warm).
Cool colors are also very pretty, and are suitable for children.
Kids nowadays have too many light effects to choose from. Some kids are cool and like gloomy images (I liked watching Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride when I was a child, although I am not cool).
In the beginning, I wanted to create a warm color animation, a child story of warm lights. But now, I wonder if a wide variety of color styles will be more impressive. So I have been thinking about what light effect will make animation more innovative.
Teacher’s advice:
With regards to a particular style of lighting, you do not have to stay in 1 style throughout. Lighting is dependant on the scene and the context within that scene. For example in frozen the lighting changes throughout as the story progresses. When Elsa leaves the castle to be on her own the lighting for everywhere Anna goes is dark and cold blue until she meets Sven where he literally has a torch for her in the darkness as they are fleeing the wolves. When they finally escape the wolves the lighting becomes brighter and they meet Olaf where now the lighting becomes even brighter and warm. This is a very common theme with lighting in children’s films where the lighting is reflecting the characters’ feel as they progress through the story and the people that influence them on their path.
Conclusion:
I have been trapped in the wrong direction: I tried to design the plot and images for the light effect. But as a matter of fact, the light effect should serve the story. After figuring this out, I no longer think too much about which color system (warm color and cold color) is better, but focused on the story itself.
During the process of report research, I first think about the outline, the major problems. Because of the limit of words, I will conclude the concept of animation light on the topic. Although some contents are not included in the report, I want to record them in my blog, so that I can arrange the project contents in order and produce follow-up contents.
- The importance of lights in children animation;
- How adults and children feel light effect differently;
- The lighting technology used in 3D animation;
- Study of the light effect of existing 3D children animations.
I will talk about these four problems in my blog.
1.The importance of lights in children animation
We know the main audience of children’s animation is children. I searched the keywords children animation lighting on Google Scholar, but there was no literature directly related to the keywords. Luckily, I found Positive Cartoon Animation to Change Children Behaviors in Primary Schools(Iamurai，2009). According to the paper, the animation will have an influence on children’s social personality and psychological status.
Light is an important component of animation and is the major artistic vehicle used to convey the content and create the atmosphere. According to some scholars, children receive information from images faster than adults, so the application of light in children’s animation helps to convey the implied meaning to children, contributes to the formation of artistic style, and reveals the connotation of the animation. So when children watch the cartoon, they learn what courage, strong will, kindness are.
The lighting in children’s animation is produced by using 3D software to simulate real light in real scenarios. The research of Hartstein. et. al(2018) shows that lighting, when reflected on the retina, will have a long-standing effect on children’s cognition. Therefore, to make children mentally pleasant during watching animation, animators must pay attention to the light effect design in children’s animation.
Traditional 2D animation and real people’s TV plays cannot produce the visual impact of light and color similar to 3D animation(Lighting in Animation: a Dive into the Hand-drawn, 2020). Light design helps to highlight elements in children’s animation scenario, such as color, layout, light and shade, shape, strength, and scope of shadow, etc(Cho, 2005). Since light can be designed freely via the 3D software, lighting design will help animators of 3D children animation create more diversified art effects.
2.How adults and children feel light effect differently
The colors of lights in children’s animation have an obvious appeal to children. But for adults, they are less attractive. Children’s cognition, analysis, and selection of things are greatly influenced by the visually influential and high saturation colors. One of the features of psychological development during childhood and adolescent years is that they lack the ability to concentrate. In comparison with words and music, colors are more easily perceived by children. Therefore, while making children’s animation, animators tend to use vivid, colorful lighting to attract children’s attention. Children’s perception of colors will form a simple, specific pattern; when they see a specific color, they will think of a specific thing(The Effects of Colors on Children, 2017). Such a mechanism implies that we can use the specific effect of color to help children perceive the emotional response of the animation(Zhang, 2018). Children respond to colors in specific ways, for example, red stands for enthusiasm and liveliness, and purple stands for mystery and elegance. While watching animation, children’s emotions are influenced by the colors of the lighting(The Art of Lighting: A History Through Time, 2020). In 3D children animation, lighting directly creates the atmosphere of the animation. For example, bright and warm colors will generate a safe and cozy atmosphere; while dark and cold lighting will help to demonstrate the uneasy emotions of the figures. Li and Yu(2017) support the idea that the color design in the animation will help children understand the contents and emotions of the story.
Love, Death & Robots：
Big Hero 6：
By comparing the complete pictures of Love, Death & Robots(Adult’s Animation) and Big Hero 6(Children’s animation) in the arena, this paper briefly describes the differences between the lights in Adult’s Animation and Children’s animation. In a similar environment and plots, we do not need to consider the character image and the design style of scenes, only need to observe the lighting design objectively.
The lighting design in Love, Death & Robot adopts a large number of cool lights to decorate the scene. On the ground, you can also see the ground reflected light produced by purple light projection. There is also a white top light illuminating the characters in the picture. Against the dark background, the white light tightly locks the two characters who are about to fight like a rope. This large area of darkness and cool color formed a strong sense of oppression. The plot of this picture is that men and women control the two monsters to fight with each other by thinking, but the deep meaning actually hides women’s resistance in the face of sexual violence. This kind of violent plot and repressive lighting atmosphere is obviously not suitable for children to watch.
Big Hero 6 is also a scene where two characters control robots to fight, but compared with Love, Death & Robot, the visual impression of the whole picture is not so depressing. Big Hero 6 has two main light sources that are red and blue. There is a red light on the head of the robot on the right, which can be regarded as the red light representing the robot on the right and the blue light represents the robot on the left. Based on the picture, we can see that compared with the large area of blue light, the area of red light on the right side is much smaller. This also means that the robot on the right is not as powerful as the robot on the left. Although part of the black background is used in the picture, the audience can still see the light and shadow of the characters in the background under the illumination of the light source. This greatly reduces the children’s fear of the dark background when watching. Compared with Love, Death & Robots, Big Hero 6 has brighter lights and warmer colors. When children watch the picture of Big Hero 6, they will not have negative emotions such as oppression and fear.
With the development of 3D animation lighting technology and the art of image creation, children’s emotional response to lighting also becomes diversified. Children’s emotional response to the visual design of lighting in children’s animation can be positive or negative. For example, red light helps to create a feeling of enthusiasm, but meanwhile, it can also remind people of violence; blue light creates a sense of tranquility, but meanwhile, it generates an effect of sadness and neurasthenia; green light symbolizes life, peace, and security, but it also can be used to create a feeling of coldness and weirdness; white light will make the picture clean and tidy, but excessive white lights will make the picture depressed and full of constraints(Mikellides, 2012). Children’s emotions and psychology are more fragile than adults’, so while designing, we should take children’s psychological bearing capacity into consideration. While designing the light effect for children’s stories, we should avoid using a negative lighting atmosphere. And while we explore the lighting effect of children’s animation, we need to think about children’s mental wellbeing, children’s aesthetics, and how to effectively attract children’s attention.
Children and adults receive information in children’s animation in different ways. Adults have the ability to make judgments. They can accept or reject the information in the animation according to their own value. However, for children, children animation is their way of observing and receiving external information. Children’s psychology and emotions are more influenced by lighting than adults’. Children’s emotions and psychology are more fragile than adults’, so while designing lights, we must take children’s psychological bearing capacity into consideration. Blood, violence, etc should not appear in children’s animation. While designing the light effect for children’s stories, we should avoid using a negative lighting atmosphere. While designing the lighting effect for children animation, children’s mental health is the design element that must be considered. I want to create a lighting effect that conforms to children’s aesthetics and attracts children’s attention.
3.The lighting technology used in 3D animation
The lighting effect of 3D animation is created by computer software. In the 3D space constructed by computer, the virtual light source is created by 3D animation software, and lighting effect that conforms to aesthetics and physical laws is generated. So far, it’s impossible for 3D animation software to simulate the diffuse reflection of the light source, so it’s very important to choose the appropriate kind of light and location of the light in the animation. By testing the level of light and shadow, the direction of light, and diffusion of light on the basis of the correct light setting, animators will achieve the physical logic of light and create the desired atmosphere of the story(Dimitrijević, Letić, and Obradovic, 2013). By increasing the illumination intensity of the picture pixel, the basic render engine can create ambient lighting similar to that of the advanced render engine. For example, using Global Illustration and Skydome is a frequently adopted algorithm for creating environmental lighting in 3D space. Skydome is mainly used to create the light of the sky. When Skydome and HDR images are used together, the lighting based on the color of the picture will be created. Global Illumination can be used to calculate all the lights of the scene. The advantage of Global Illumination is that it can process direct illumination and indirect illumination. When we combine these two algorithms with Directional Light, Point Light, Area Light, Spotlight, etc, we can create a real illumination effect (The Ultimate Guide to Lighting Fundamentals for 3D, 2019).
4.Study of the light effect of existing 3D children animations
After the light is created, we have to think about light rendering. Light rendering is time-consuming. Luckily, I can use the rending farm of the school to test the light, so a lot of time will be saved. By studying the data on light rendering of Disney, I learned about the technology Disney used to produce and render light.
While rendering the light of Disney’s children’s animation, Hyperion Renderer is used. The path tracking technology in Hyperion Renderer simulates the interaction of real lights. The essence of path tracing technology is the simulated light and the models in the 3D space interact, by which digital images are generated. The path of light is calculated by tracing the path of light bouncing between objects in the scene. Under normal conditions, it’s impossible for the computer to render billions of lights at the same time. The calculation of Hyperion Renderer applies to the lights captured by the camera only, the rest of the light paths in the 3D space will not be calculated. By integrating the lights spreading in the same direction into one path, the efficiency of rendering is enhanced. However, multi-bounce lights will create subtle and not-so-subtle lighting effects. Also, the technology can help us capture effects such as refraction and glossy reflections, and produce images with indirect illumination(Disney’s Hyperion Renderer, 2019).
Ahtohallan in Frozen 2 is the first environment composed completely of ice created by Disney Animation, and the first glacier that was rendered by the path tracing technology of Hyperion Renderer. In Frozen 2, a magical scene was presented: the lights move from the rough entry wall to the smooth architectural interior. The reflex of light on the glacier is the major source of illumination in the glacier. Multiple scattering nature revealed artifacts produced by non-physically based shading choices. In the past, Disney Animation would reduce the loss of energy by increasing the numerical value of surface albedo. But in Frozen 2, Disney Animation developed new methods of calculation. A brute force random walk method [Heitz et al. 2016] was not suitable for the production of film animation. Based on the brute force method, Disney Animation pre-calculated the amount of energy lost in rough dielectric reflection and transmission, and the energy lost was re-injected during the rendering of the final stage. Therefore, light energy remains constant during the movement, and the weakening of light is reduced. Disney Animation integrated this technique into Ubershader(Burley, 2015), eventually, physically plausible diffuse frosted ice, shiny clear ice, and naturalistic blends between them were created. In the glacier scenes, the bouncing lights are key to presenting the external image of objects and are a major source of background illumination. In Frozen 2, the frozen effect is produced for the locked zones, this will help to regulate the reflection of indirect lights in the cave. Therefore, the lights in the animation created an artistic and dramatic atmosphere(The Look and Lighting of “Show Yourself” from Frozen 2, 2020).
Although I found that Disney used its own software, I learned from the literature how they produce and render lights. This also increased my knowledge of light generation and rendering. I believe only by accumulating knowledge can we make innovation.
In the children’s animation Coco, multi-color lighting technology is used to produce the magical and gorgeous world of the dead. In this animation, death is no longer dark and scary, a happy and cozy world of the dead is created. In Coco, while depicting the world of the dead, a large quantity of purple and blue are applied. By using these two colors, the mystery of the world of the dead is exhibited. But in addition to blue and purple lights, large quantities of orange, yellow, and pink lights are also used. The pictures of the light effect that is different from the real world lead to color alienation. Such color alienation makes death warm and interesting. Reasonable design of light colors will not make children feel depressed but will help them generate positive emotions and get involved in the story(Yang, 2018). In the 3D space of Coco, lighting technology highlights the style and distance of the space and uses the cultural elements of Mexicans to form the psychological space that conforms to the background of the story(One Billion Assets: How Pixar’s Lightspeed Team Tackled Coco’s Complexity, 2018). By analyzing the design of lighting in Coco, we know that using different forms of color language and expanding the forms of color expression will not make it difficult for children to understand the picture and content; in contrast, the complex lighting model of different locations and colors will attract children’s attention easier.
The lighting design in children’s animation is the key visual effect of children’s animation. It helps to build and enrich the background of the animation and illustrates different cultural concepts in the story. When a foreign culture, which is greatly different from the local culture, appears in the animation, lights of the colors of the foreign culture can function as the theme element that distinguishes the background of the foreign culture from that of the local culture. In some countries, parents don’t want their children to take part in activities that involve death, because they think death is colorless and not lucky. Therefore, in children’s eyes, death is black and white, and scary. In Coco, the story is set in Mexico and happens during the Day of the Dead. Local Mexicans put a lot of Marigold, candles, and food on the table, and decorate the table with beautiful flowers. In Mexican culture, these will open the door to the world of the dead, help the soul of the dead to come out of their space, and reunite with their family members of the real world(Arredondo and Casillas, 2019). In Mexican culture, death means more than departure, they believe that their family members will always be with them, death just changed the way they company them. In Coco, a film created by Pixar, staff used colors typical of the Mexicans to create a 3D space and established a space full of contrasting colors. The animation uses the colors of lights as the key, helps children get rid of the old way to understand color, and makes them understand and indulge in a different culture in the context of Mexican colors.
By arranging these data in order, I gathered the data on children’s animation lighting. There is still a lot of knowledge about the light design in 3D children animation, I will be glad to explore and learn them in the subsequent study.
Reference:
Cho, J. S. (2005) ‘A Study on 3D Animation Emotional Lighting Style’, In Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference, 3(2), pp. 153-160.
Disney’s Hyperion Renderer (2019) Available at: https://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/hyperion/ (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
Dimitrijević, Miroslav., Letić, Jelena. and Obradovic, Ratko. (2013). ‘LIGHT AND SHADOW IN 3D MODELING’, Machine Design, 50709(3), pp.1821-1259.
Hartstein, L. E., LeBourgeois, M. K. and Berthier N. E. (ed.) (2018). ‘Light correlated color temperature and task switching performance in preschool-age children: Preliminary insights’, PLOS ONE, 13(8).
Iamurai, S. (2009) ‘Positive Cartoon Animation to Change Children Behaviors in Primary Schools’, International Conference on Primary Education, pp.1-6.
Lighting in animation: a dive into the hand-drawn (2020) Available at: https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/lighting-in-animation (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
Li, Z. J. and Yu J. (2017) ‘Talking about the use of light colours in the stage lighting design of children’s theatre’, Consumer Guide, 22, pp.11.
The Art of Lighting: A history through time(2020) Available at: https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/art-of-lighting-history (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
The Effects of Colors on Children(2017) Available at: http://renketkisi.com/en/the-effects-of-colors-on-children.html (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
The Look and Lighting of “Show Yourself” from Frozen 2(2020) Available at: https://www.disneyanimation.com/publications/the-look-and-lighting-of-show-yourself-from-frozen-2/ (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
The ultimate guide to lighting fundamentals for 3D (2019) Available at: https://dreamfarmstudios.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-lighting-fundamentals-for-3d/ (Accessed: 3 January 2021).
Zhang, G. J. (2018) ‘Study of the lighting aesthetics in animated scenes’, Chinese Journal of Multimedia and Internet Teaching, 6, pp.18-20.