“The Family” CGI + Photography Photoshoot

Passion projects are my favourite. Lately CGI+Photography composites have become the ultimate passion as they offer flexibility and limitless creative potential. Sometimes the limitlessness can be daunting because there are so many directions one can lead the image in and so many of those may be wrong and do not work in visual composition nor story-frame.

Working with CGI artist Jaka Tavs has proven fruitfull during years of our collaboration as we’ve gotten to a phase where we understand each other well creatively and visually.

The idea for the latest image titled “The Family” was initially to create a “simple stock photo” of a mother and daughter cooking in a kitchen. To showcase to agencies and potential clients that CGI is useful even for simple mid-range shots.

As we progressed with CGI interior architecture we drifted away from the simple “mom&daughter” image to Star Wars type image with a more complex story. It seems there is just no way for us to create something simple. We will need to work on that in future.

Initial CGI positioning of interior architecture and characters.

Lighting the interior and characters was the next step. We wanted hard shadow low-angle sunlight to draw a realistic ambient. Since this would mean potentially unpleasant light to characters’ faces we later softened it a bit.

Initial sun light visible on the dummy characters.

After extending the story by adding the 3rd character - the son fiddling with a real lightsaber and unintentionally destroying kitchen counter - we started with interior decorating.

3rd CGI dummy character added to enhance the story and improve the visual composition.

Jaka continued with sculpting CGI damage to counter and adding many details inside and outside the CGI environment.

Next step is characters photography in studio with exact same perspective and lighting as CGI dummies. Both are crucial for making believeable composites.

Characters photographed in studio.

Characters were then clipped and composited to the CGI interior. Correct shading added to their feet and their grading was set to match the CGI.

Final composite.

Creative Direction: Jaka Tavs, Matevz Kostanjsek

Art Direction: Jaka Tavs, Matevz Kostanjsek

CGI: Jaka Tavs

Compositing: Jaka Tavs

Character Clipping & Smoke: Bojan Perko

Models: Brina, Nik, Zala