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NadnerbD β Light Flight
Published: 2014-12-06 08:08:21 +0000 UTC; Views: 34068; Favourites: 2248; Downloads: 2070
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I've been fiddling with this thing on and off for almost three weeks now. I made a ballpoint sketch at work that I decided I needed to turn into a digital art, so I did. That's about the story of this. Except for the part where I got really indecisive about the color adjustments at the end and have a whole folder of variations on this with funny green under-lighting.Related content
Comments: 175
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Just wanted to let you know that I really admire what you do with lighting and shading! Hope you keep up the great work!
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this is beautiful it immediatly sent me back to summer and i could feel the cool wind on my face and the birds churping
such a magnificent peice of art work.
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Right up there with HTTYD. (flight scenes I mean)
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Aaaahhh, the lighting is so beautiful, I love the way the light shines through her feathers!
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it... it looks like a photography, how can you be so good?
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I have this urge to reach up and poke her tummy as she flies by. (Which would earn me a hoofprint on my forehead.)
Great work on this.
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No matter who many times i see this picture, allays amaze me the way you did the larger feathers with the sun effect.
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Holy mackerel! This is amazing! From the thumbnail, I thought it might have been one of those SFM pieces or something because the lightning in this just made it look so incredibly three dimensional! Once again, an absolutely amazing piece you did here!Β
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Like this. Just like this. Gotta do a surprise huggle right there in the air.
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Aaannddd... Poke the belly! *tactical belly poke from below*
This looks incredible! Like it could be a photo of a figure suspended in air.
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Ohmigosh. Β That lighting's incredible <3 Β Her wings look so silky and bird-like, whoa~ Β Amazing job!
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Where is the underlighting on her stomach and legs coming from? I gotta know, because you really seem like you know what you're doing.
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The ground. I won't claim that I got it exactly right, but this is pretty much what you would get in this situation. With the sun directly overhead like this, the ground becomes a significant soft semi-directional light source.
I went looking for some pictures that would support my assertion, and this is the best I got from a half a minute of googling. The under-lighting is much more subtle than mine, but you can see that the lightest (and warmest/least-bluish) areas on the bird's belly is the part facing directly down. This would be much more pronounced in certain conditions, like for instance if there was snow cover on the ground, or if she was flying directly above some significant clouds, which would probably be the only reasonable explanation for the lighting in this picture.
Basically, the principle I was following was that in an environment with lots of surfaces, like, pretty much anywhere on earth, the darkest portion of a shadow (ignoring ambient occlusion on complicated objects) tends to be the portion near it's edge, because the opposing side will be lit by the opposition surge off the environment from the light that's illuminating the non-shadowed half.
For clarity, I drew a ball floating in the clouds . Because I'm lazy.
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Applying opposition surge outside of astronomy is certainly an interesting idea.
I also understand the theory with light reflecting off the ground (though I really
can't see it no matter how hard I look at the photo you sent), and I have toΒ
wonder: how far from the ground is she? meters? dozens of meters? hundreds?
Just wondering, as ukulilia and I were looking at this piece and trying to agree
on who was right about what you intended the underlighting to be from when
you drew this.
Thanks for such a thorough reply, and even going as far as to illustrate it!
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Well, I don't think it's actually particularly relevant, but when I drew this I imagined her being pretty damn high. Like.. I dunno, airline cruising altitude. (32,000ft?) In theory altitude shouldn't make a significant difference to the power of the underlighting, since the ground is pretty wide, so as you ascend, you're farther from any one point on the ground, but also exposed to more ground area. In practice there's stuff like more atmosphere being in the way, and scattering, so it'd probably get bluer and more diffuse. Also probably other factors I'm not thinking of.
The under-lighting is intended to be reflected sunlight from whatever's below her, but as you've noticed, it's super exaggerated, so either she's above the frozen north, or I just pulled a lot of extra light outta my ass. I didn't really have a particular location in mind when I drew this, it was just supposed to be Celestia.
I'm having difficulty finding reference photos featuring the exact lighting conditions I'm looking for, but this seems to at least bear out that it's quite possible for ground light to be significantly brighter than blue sky.
Oh yeah, and who was right? I'm curious where y'all thought my crazy light was coming from. You probably gave it more thought than I did.
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Wooow...!!! This looks truly gorgeous...!!! Love it!!! 
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t-the lightning...
the light... ning.... effects combined with shadows...
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Fantastic how she looks so soft and real.
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The lighting is superb! Very realistic O-O it's amazing
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The lighting is amazing; I think it's fooling my eyes as they try to adjust themselves when I look at this!
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I've not much to add to what's already been said. A beautiful subject with a sublime expression; lovely composition, texture, and lighting (the overlap shadows on the primaries/secondaries in particular is a nice touch, and I rejoiced at the absence of lens flare). Very nice!
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You're lucky, I almost put a lens flare in here, but I was lazy, and didn't feel like finding a way to make one that didn't obscure anything cool. SAI doesn't have any of the render effects and fancy stuff that Photoshop does, so it tends to keep me to simple painting techniques, which I like.
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