posing/composition advice

#1

Hi all,
I´m in the stage of planning out my composition of the last project I´m working on.
As you can see, it´s an homage to Peter Jackson´s King Kong battle scene with the three t-rex.
So I´ve done my models and I know quite well the kind of image I´m looking for, dynamic, with strong composition lines but also I would like a somehow wide descriptive shot.
Here are some very rough render tests I´ve done, just looking for a good siloutte/pose to start to work on. Right now not bothered too much with the environment.

I would really appreciate any critiq, advice for the poses of the charcters even if it means to start from scratch.

imagenes gratis

#2

I like the first shot the most, it’s nice to see the characters up close. The angle is interesting though I would try a variation that’s a bit lower in order to really feel that the creatures are towering over the viewer.

The Dino on the left might need to move a little. Since his silhouette is close to Kong but it doesn’t intersect, it becomes hard to tell if he’s in front of Kong or behind him. I think he needs to either overlap him a little or be clearly behind him. If you push him way back, even without overlapping, he would get smaller in the composition so it would give the viewer a spacial clue to where he is.

I do like the composition possibilities with the dinosaur tail in the second shot. If you go for a wider shot like that, there’s some cool possibilities there too. It’s a shame Kong gets a lot smaller in that shot though.

Nice work!

#3

Hi JValdes,
thanks a lot for your inputs. I´m still trying to find a good pose/composition, dynamic and descriptive, so your feeback leads me to some directions I´will consider and explore.
In the meantime I´ve been playing around with some other ideas.

For these two sketches, I have “borrowed” a shot from the actual film, even if I´ve tried to change the pose and angle a bit.

These ones are some other test renders, just for the pose (not to much work on the lighting, environment, textures…), some are closeups as I agree with you that a closer shot it´s very tempting to show up all the textures but these ones still feel a bit too static to me, maybe slight variations on the head of the t-rex would give it more dinamism but I don´t know.

Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestion, critiq or comment

#4

In these two sketches and the first test render, I think there’s interesting action happening but the camera angle is a bit flat. It’s almost as if the characters are side by side on a fighting game.

I think playing with the camera angle will help. Since these are big creatures, try some low angles. That would exaggerate their size. Also low angles make the subject feel more imposing and powerful which would be a good thing here.

The last render adds a bit of perspective so that one works better, I think. Since one of the characters is closer to the camera than the other, that creates some strong diagonals in the composition. You could try curving the dino’s tail a bit like in the second image from your first post, that might look nice. Also, having the tail pointing straight out of the frame like it is right now will lead the viewer’s eye out of the picture, curving the tail a bit would help fix that.