Everyday Design Tips

Make your work Mo’ Betta

KNOW YOUR STYLE

When you’re working on any project it’s always an excellent idea to figure out what look you’re going for before you

dive in head first. Get in the habit of looking at great 3D work every day. Get on Pinterest and pin the things that you like!

Build up that repository of awesome things and it will be easier for you to nail down a direction for your project.

When you’re doing client work always keep in mind who your client is and what they’re trying to accomplish. At the end

of the day no matter how cool it looks, if it doesn’t convey the client’s message it’s not going to fly.
 Everyday Design Tips
Make your work Mo’ Betta

VALUE STRUCTURE
This is one of the most important principles of design. If you don’t have good value structure then everything feels flat

and very blah and like it’s on the same plane. A good way to see if your piece has good value structure is to turn it into a

greyscale image. If it all looks like the same shade of grey, then you’ve got a value problem. Try using brighter or darker

tones of colors to give your piece good value structure. And because we’re in a 3D world you even have the option of using

different lighting techniques to add contrast and visual interest.

When your values are good the objects in your scene have more definition and not everything is the same shade of grey.

And when you have bad values everything feels flat and if you look at the greyscale image all of the colors will look the same.
 Everyday Design Tips
Make your work Mo’ Betta

HIERARCHY (KNOW YOUR HERO)

It’s easy to load up a scene with cool stuff, but if you go overboard the viewer doesn’t know where to look! Make sure

you keep your focal point in mind, the “hero” of the shot should be where your eye naturally lands. If the movie is about

Batman you don’t want everyone looking at Robin! So take a step back every once and a while and come back to your

project with fresh eyes. If you feel like something is tugging your eye away from that hero then it needs to get changed.

In this picture your eye goes directly to the GTV logo, and it’s obviously the most important object in the scene...

But with a couple of small changes your eye no longer knows where to look. Is the cassette tape, tv, or the logo

most important? You can’t tell.

NOTHING IS 100% BLACK OR WHITE

That’s right, nothing you will ever look at is 100% black or white, everything has a slight tint of color to it. When you use

pure black or white in a piece it can feel to stark and distracting, so add a hit of color to it. It doesn’t need to be a lot, you

only need a pinch to make it feel better. As an added bonus this will make it easier to composite later.
 Everyday Design Tips
Make your work Mo’ Betta

RULE OF THIRDS
There are a lot of different ways to compose an image, but one of the easiest and most common is to use the Rule of

Thirds. The basic idea is that you break your image up into a simple grid using lines and then put your subject along

these lines where they intersect. This helps create a more balanced image that feels more natural to the viewer to look

at. Cinema 4D makes this very easy to do by using Composition Helpers.

In this image the shapes all feel disjointed, and your eye doesn’t know This time the objects are placed at intersecting points on a Rule of Thirds

where to focus. grid. The shapes feel much more connected and it’s easier for your eye to

move along them.