Strike a Pose

In the beginning of this module we were asked to pose the demo model into some poses to illustrate certain emotions and moods. However the twist was that we had to do it from our own reference images. So basically we had to try and act out the emotion ourselves, take a picture of that and then pose the model according to the reference imagery. So I picked Exhaustion, Hunger, Tiredness, Surprise and Shame.

Exhaustion

Tiredness

Shame

Hunger

Suprise (I look soooooo surprised)

To be honest I did this assignment ages ago, when it was briefed, but I did not publish it because I felt I could do better. So I did. I came back to the images I did before and redid it, I took lighting into consideration, as well as camera angles. 

So here is Exhaustion. When I was acting this out I thought about exhaustion when you have your shoulders hunched and your hand are almost dragging on the floor. I made the character look up to light giving it a slight feeling of hope, I also put in another point light behind his back to outline the silhouette and separate it from the background.

So here is Hunger. When I am hungry I have the same pose as tired only grabbing the empty belly, so that is what I did with the model. As for lighting, I've put in a spotlight to have something runing through the composition, in this case a shadow. Once again there is another source of light from the back separating the characters shadows from the background. The camera is positioned to the left because left/right composition gives a feeling of moving forward or back. In this case forward. To the fridge.

SURPRISE!!! So I figured to put in another object so the character has something to be surprised about. Also I wanted to light the characters face from the same angle the surprising object appears.

When I was posing for shame, the first thing I thought of to cover my face or eyes. I consider that to be the natural reaction for many people when they are ashamed. So kept that in mind while posing the character, however I took it a bit further. I imagined that when you are ashamed you want to "run away" from the situation and/or just blend into the background and disappear. That is why I made the lighting very soft and tried to blend the character with the background. For that I used the indirect lighting and physical sun and sky. There is also some spotlight there because the shadows of the feet were blending with the ground too much. The composition logic is the same as in the previous one, positioning everything to the right side to give it a feeling of moving forward.

This one is pretty simple. Tiredness I imagine as seeing the first rays of sunlight after a whole night of work. I think that idea really come through in this one.

Overall I enjoyed this exercise, so much that I did it twice! It gave me a deeper understanding of how lighting and camera angles can help exaggerate an emotion or mood, and it was just a good chance to play around with those things and see for myself how they change the setting of the scene.