Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Exploring the 'rule of thirds' in Second Life

Whilst doing a real life digital camera induction, I had some thoughts about creating some tools to help explore some of the conventions of photography composition, particularly a rule of thumb called 'Rule of Thirds'.
This led to making a HUD overlay, that presents a grid, dividing up the screen into thirds. ( if you change your screen resolution, edit the HUD so it stretches to the edge of the screen )
The lines and intersections of these lines, are regarded as the sweet points of balancing a composition.


A Rule of Thirds - HUD - used to aid balance of elements in a photographic composition


The Beach and Sea fall along the horizontal lines, whilst Angrybeth falls along the left vertical line.

Though its a simple tool, what excites me, is that it shows Second Life can be used to explore some photographic fundamentals... which if you are based at an institution that may lack a breadth of equipment to do this practically in Real Life, gives us a Virtual opportunity. ( thankfully at our college we have enough equipment, so each student can have a camera, but I know of other places where this resource can be a limited access )
Also I'm interested in using Second Life as an 'interdisciplinary' space, here the tool could be used by students exploring Game Art and Design, who may not traditionally do a project with photography or video , but maybe are exploring shotframing and composition within 'cutscenes' within a video game.
For those that dabble with a range of digital media, Second Life is a great place to reinforce ideas and skills of video / photography production that transfer well to 3D animation or virtual environments.