jake88
Sr Member
Yea you nailed the ILM look for sure. I think its the base coat misting that really brings it all together. Fantastic job!
ILM workshop painting style. Discussion and tips
- Thread starter NAZGÛL
- Start date
Yea you nailed the ILM look for sure. I think its the base coat misting that really brings it all together. Fantastic job!
PHArchivist
Master Member
Beautiful example of how a quality paint job trumps all else (scale, physical accuracy, etc.).
Voodoocaster
Well-Known Member
I am not sure if the following has anything to do with replicating ilm painting style but i would like to post it anyway
I always wonder how much reflected color of the surrounding space is seen in the colors of the models.
1/1 scale objects take reflected colour of their surroundings quite a bit (blue of sky,brown of earth,green of gras etc.)
To make a miniature apear larger and fit in their "natural" surroundings you can aply distant perspective and paint it: hazier, bluer grayer,lighter,and/or more neutral in colour compaired to their full scale counterpart.
Do you think at ilm they aplied /followed these kind of scale color rules/tricks?
I also wonder how much blue of the blue screen or the surounding color is present to a certain degree in the colors we precieve in photo's(movie stills) of the miniatures.
Did the painters at ilm took this into account when painting the miniatures?
Do you think they enhanced these reflected colors or counter ballanced them by mixing opposite colors in the mix.
I know they decided to paint the tie-fighters less blue to give them more contrast against the blue screen
So,..what is the color of star wars space
I am of the opinion that in the end when we display the models at our home or some place other than star wars environtment our colors will always be scaled to a scale model that was scale- colored to look like a full blow space craft/vehicle in a scale colored space/environtment color:lol
This all sounds like a joke ,but,..i think we should take this in account when mixing our colors.
Are you making a replica of, a miniature in a movie still,a miniature in the archives or a miniature that looks convincing at home infront of a whatever colored wall?
I always wonder how much reflected color of the surrounding space is seen in the colors of the models.
1/1 scale objects take reflected colour of their surroundings quite a bit (blue of sky,brown of earth,green of gras etc.)
To make a miniature apear larger and fit in their "natural" surroundings you can aply distant perspective and paint it: hazier, bluer grayer,lighter,and/or more neutral in colour compaired to their full scale counterpart.
Do you think at ilm they aplied /followed these kind of scale color rules/tricks?
I also wonder how much blue of the blue screen or the surounding color is present to a certain degree in the colors we precieve in photo's(movie stills) of the miniatures.
Did the painters at ilm took this into account when painting the miniatures?
Do you think they enhanced these reflected colors or counter ballanced them by mixing opposite colors in the mix.
I know they decided to paint the tie-fighters less blue to give them more contrast against the blue screen
So,..what is the color of star wars space
I am of the opinion that in the end when we display the models at our home or some place other than star wars environtment our colors will always be scaled to a scale model that was scale- colored to look like a full blow space craft/vehicle in a scale colored space/environtment color:lol
This all sounds like a joke ,but,..i think we should take this in account when mixing our colors.
Are you making a replica of, a miniature in a movie still,a miniature in the archives or a miniature that looks convincing at home infront of a whatever colored wall?
Voodoocaster, good points about how models reflect the surrounding environments. And while I can't speak for what happened at ILM during the filming of the miniatures I can give you a little bit of insight into how we painted, lit and shot models back in the "good ol' days"
Blue spill and reflections from the blue screen were always a major concern and problem when shooting models, either motion control or high speed (explosions). Any blue or blueish tint on the model could create "holes" in the matte and the only way to fix them was to hand rotoscope every frame and then shoot a secondary matte on an animation stand. A time consuming and not alway 100% effective fix! This is why the TIE Fighters were repainted grey since even a slight amount of blue could be a problem, As the film stocks and their compositing experience got better ILM was able to got back to a bluer tone on the TIE.
There were really three types of blue problems on shooting models (and people, etc.) Transmission, reflection and spill. Transmission would be blue light that passes trough transparent things like cockpit windshields rendering them "invisible", which is one of the reasons the models had not clear cockpit glass. The other problem with cockpit glass would be reflection, even if you didn't see the bluescreen through the glass it might bounce a reflection of the screen at just the right angle creating a "hole" again in the matte. This is also why models had a matte finish so they would't reflect light again.
Blue spill was a much harder problem to combat. This is basically when the blue screen acts like a big blue soft light casting blue light on the surface of the model. If the model was a light color, light white or light grey, this blue could register on film if not dealt with properly during stage photography.
The first way to prevent this would be to have the blue screen a good distance back from the model, at least 20 feet was the rule of thumb we used, 25 would be even better. Since the intensity of light falls off by the inverse square of the distance traveled (I think I said that right!) even though the camera could see the blue screen very well, the amount of blue light actually falling on the model and bouncing off the surface would have little effect, of course depending on EXPOSURE.
Exposure was the other major control used to reduce blue spill. Making sure the screen was not "too hot" for the foreground object being shot. For example, if the model was lit to an exposure setting of f8 (at maybe 1/2 to 2 seconds per frame), we would light the blue screen to the same f8 exposure. This wasn't alway possible do to the use of transmission (backlit) bluescreens which would sometimes require shooting the blue screen on a separate pass from the "beauty" lighting pass on the model with a different exposure (same f stop, faster shutter time).
Another trick that would be done was to mask off areas of the blue screen not actually seen right behind the model with black duvateen to cut done on blue spill from the unused areas. The shooting stage would be set up often with as large a screen as possible, often bigger than needed on some shots,
If blue spill was still a problem another fix was to try to wash out the blue light hitting the model by adding yellow or orange gels to the white lights being used to illuminate the model. The end shot of the model would look orange or yellow but this could be compensated for with color correction during the composite. This was a less than desirable solution as it was very difficult to judge the lighting of the model elements during dailies.
Since the spaceship models would often be shot in a variety of scenes, in space, in atmosphere, running the death star trench, it is unlikely they were painted with a particular environment in mind. They would have been painted and then evaluated under tungston balanced lights (same type of lighting used on stage) both by eye but even more importantly, on film. However, landscape and environment models that were only seen under one type of lighting might very well have been "scenic painted" to have a particular color tone implying a certain type of lighting.
Blue spill and reflections from the blue screen were always a major concern and problem when shooting models, either motion control or high speed (explosions). Any blue or blueish tint on the model could create "holes" in the matte and the only way to fix them was to hand rotoscope every frame and then shoot a secondary matte on an animation stand. A time consuming and not alway 100% effective fix! This is why the TIE Fighters were repainted grey since even a slight amount of blue could be a problem, As the film stocks and their compositing experience got better ILM was able to got back to a bluer tone on the TIE.
There were really three types of blue problems on shooting models (and people, etc.) Transmission, reflection and spill. Transmission would be blue light that passes trough transparent things like cockpit windshields rendering them "invisible", which is one of the reasons the models had not clear cockpit glass. The other problem with cockpit glass would be reflection, even if you didn't see the bluescreen through the glass it might bounce a reflection of the screen at just the right angle creating a "hole" again in the matte. This is also why models had a matte finish so they would't reflect light again.
Blue spill was a much harder problem to combat. This is basically when the blue screen acts like a big blue soft light casting blue light on the surface of the model. If the model was a light color, light white or light grey, this blue could register on film if not dealt with properly during stage photography.
The first way to prevent this would be to have the blue screen a good distance back from the model, at least 20 feet was the rule of thumb we used, 25 would be even better. Since the intensity of light falls off by the inverse square of the distance traveled (I think I said that right!) even though the camera could see the blue screen very well, the amount of blue light actually falling on the model and bouncing off the surface would have little effect, of course depending on EXPOSURE.
Exposure was the other major control used to reduce blue spill. Making sure the screen was not "too hot" for the foreground object being shot. For example, if the model was lit to an exposure setting of f8 (at maybe 1/2 to 2 seconds per frame), we would light the blue screen to the same f8 exposure. This wasn't alway possible do to the use of transmission (backlit) bluescreens which would sometimes require shooting the blue screen on a separate pass from the "beauty" lighting pass on the model with a different exposure (same f stop, faster shutter time).
Another trick that would be done was to mask off areas of the blue screen not actually seen right behind the model with black duvateen to cut done on blue spill from the unused areas. The shooting stage would be set up often with as large a screen as possible, often bigger than needed on some shots,
If blue spill was still a problem another fix was to try to wash out the blue light hitting the model by adding yellow or orange gels to the white lights being used to illuminate the model. The end shot of the model would look orange or yellow but this could be compensated for with color correction during the composite. This was a less than desirable solution as it was very difficult to judge the lighting of the model elements during dailies.
Since the spaceship models would often be shot in a variety of scenes, in space, in atmosphere, running the death star trench, it is unlikely they were painted with a particular environment in mind. They would have been painted and then evaluated under tungston balanced lights (same type of lighting used on stage) both by eye but even more importantly, on film. However, landscape and environment models that were only seen under one type of lighting might very well have been "scenic painted" to have a particular color tone implying a certain type of lighting.
I don't know but I would suspect through very careful (and painful) camera tests and lighting. Pearl paints don't reflect light so much as split the light light micro-miniature prisms and refract slightly different shade in slightly different direction. Also pearl paints are available in a number of different color "ranges" so it might have been possible to get one without any blue in it.
The cool thing about pearl paints are that when you look at the painted surface each eye sees a different color shade and it gives the surface an illusion of depth. That's why still photos, or motion picture shots, of pearl painted surfaces never look as good as it does to the eye.
You might look up the (very) old Cinefex article about ST:TMP and see if it talks about painting and shooting the Enterprise.
The cool thing about pearl paints are that when you look at the painted surface each eye sees a different color shade and it gives the surface an illusion of depth. That's why still photos, or motion picture shots, of pearl painted surfaces never look as good as it does to the eye.
You might look up the (very) old Cinefex article about ST:TMP and see if it talks about painting and shooting the Enterprise.
robn1
Master Member
The Enterprise wasn't really painted with pearl paint. It was iridescent/metallic paint with panels in different colors that created a pearl like effect. They avoided blue spill problems because Trumbull used front light/back light matting, he only used bluescreen for things that weren't repeatable. When ILM did ST2 they dulled the finish with clear flat spray to control spill, and also used a lot of yellow fill light.
Similar threads
