Exploring Shot Composition Basics with SL

I've played with creating some Photography Grid HUD's before, and I thought I'd refine it into a post comparing two classic principles.

Rule of Thirds



The Rule of Thirds, is the division of the frame into equal thirds vertically and horizontally. The intersection of the lines are considered focus of interests, and the lines themselves can help balance out the element of the shot.



The focus of interest here is the face - which falls into the topright intersection. The body ( mainly head and spine ) falls on the right vertically third. and the ground lies along the bottom third.



The Final Shot -
more info on Rule of Thirds here


Dynamic Symmetry



Dynamic Symmetry is based on the Golden Section. Draw lines diagonally from each corner of the frame, then draw lines perpendicular to the first lines that go back to the opposite corners. Again the intersections of the lines are the hotspots of interest.



Again the focus of interest is the face, falling into the top right intersection. The body falls vertically between the two areas of interest, and the ground runs through the areas of interest on the bottom.



The Final Shot.
Some further info on Golden Section / Phi 1.618 here -
and quite a creepy video on Golden Mean here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zWivbG0RIo

With either principle of composition, it is important to keep things simple - particularly having only ONE focus of interest.

Personally I prefer the dynamic symmetry layout - which seems more visually exciting when applied to a HD video framing.

Design for Digital Media - End of Year Show 2009 in Second Life

Now open to the public - The Collective Island is host to the Leeds College of Art's - End of Year Show for the BA(Hons) Design for Digital Media course..



In the studio building, you can find examples of Development work and Screenshots from Final Year Project work, plus links to their web-portfolios.



Streaming in the second room of the studio building, is a 15 min showreel of Moving image work... on it you'll find a Personal tale about Epilepsy, 3D Animation, and Music Videos...
plus its got a nifty reflective floor... :)



The big part of the SL exhibition is the work of Jetsunami Duell ( Rob Kirk in RL ) - who's built a half sim medieval city inspired by the Discworld books. It is designed for Virtual World Community Role players, as opposed to being a game level. The work has its own distinct look - with all textures been hand rendered... giving it a cartoony look...

The Show will be up for several weeks, but once is gone - it'll be gone... wiped clean for a new semester of teaching.

SLURL - http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Collective/189/33/36

Exploring Blue Mars

Blue Mars by Avatar - is another MMORPG/VW environment on the block. Eventually giving developers a big set of tools to create a wide range of online experiences. Blue Mars creates a unified login system, allowing your avatar to move between diverse Virtual Spaces using the same tech.



Montage of the Blue Mars demo spaces, showing how the technology can be used for a community spaces and games. It uses CryEngine 2 for the graphics, giving some impressive shaders for high quality graphics in a VW. Lots of potential for developers to create rich environments and online game content.

For Educators, this is no SL replacement in terms of casual idea development and experimenting.. it is a Dev Heavy technology, but has bags of potential for some Serious Games, or creating visually rich virtual campuses.

Also its now a good opportunity to consider bringing in students/staff on Games Design / Digital Media courses to help develop content for other departements.

Its hard to judge how useful Blue Mars will be based on these Demo's, as ultimately you can create whatever space you want, so its now down to some exciting developers and community building stuff going on, if it is to succeed.

Of the short time I've played with it , and looked at the other BM preview tools, my vibe is that it is more comparable with Multiverse - http://www.multiverse.net/index.html , than Second Life.

Also if you want to get a good feel for Blue Mars - you could also get a copy of Crysis for your PC ( which you can find in the bargin bin now ) - as it comes with the Sandbox Editor modding tools, that allows for machinima making too. - here's an example - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R_i-0lZoj4