Magical Light

One of this week's challenges that the mentors gave me was enhancing the lighting of one of the Hero shots; for this, I decided to research many elements to make it more magical but still keep it looking real and make it look better. I worked with a lot of methods, but the ones that I developed further were:

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1. We are creating light rays to enhance the light coming from the side of the chest.

2. Chromatic Aberration - to improve the look and make it less CGI.

3. Dust - That did not work, so it was an experiment

4. Using the Bokeh and Kernel filters to enhance this - I explored at least 6 or 7 kernels, but the videos below are my favorite.

5. Glow—Enhancing the sprites with glow makes them look too fantastical. I tried to tone it down, but I decided not to include it in the end.

6. Flares - animating flares in the cans and coins.

I wish I had more time to work on more ideas and experiences, but I decided to keep my research focused on the ideas that all the people around me recommended. One thing I wish I had had was to include and explore flares a little bit more because I believe I was scratching their surface. Below, I have 11 tries that I developed to enhance the lighting. These were some of my favorites or some that did not work, including most of the realistic options, but this is a filter from the 25 different lighting-enhancing videos I had.

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This challenge was significant because my thesis is based on Magical Realism, and I have been exploring how to portray magic and have done a lot of research about it. This made my head spin in a million ways, but in the end, I believed it gave me the wings I needed to improve my compositing and learn from all of the ideas my professors, my classmates, and I had to enhance this plate.

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PLEASE SEE THE ELEMENTS GO TO FULL SCREEN... IN THE LITTLE TABS, YOU CAN NOT SEE THE ELEMENTS AT THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.