How much art needed for compositors?

[David Marte]

Hello

I would like to know how much art training is needed for digital compositors or compositors in general. And if possible mention some in specifics.

David Marte

[luc]

hello david

Sometime the art emerge from hard work and perseverence, you mostly need a good sense of criticism for the artistic part. A good sens of observation, and a bunch of logik is needed to. Lots of compositor perform whit no particular artistic skill.

Noting is unreachable for a hard worker.

💡

luc
freelance

[kuban]

I didn’t have any art education before starting to compositing. Like some of the compositors, I was a 3D animator in the old times. So I had lots of ideas about compositing with computers, when I started to do that job. While I was working for years with art directors, I had a feeling of what is good composition, and what is the correct color to use. Because thousands of times, I saw art directors creating a composition from scratch. I saw what mistakes they see.

Ofcourse you might say, what if you have learned all of these at school? Ok, it could be. But I was a technical guy, who learned about art later. Here comes the big question.

Is it easier to teach an artist about computers, or is it easier to teach a computer guru about art?.. Most of the people say that, it is easier to teach an artist to use computers, then to teach a computer guru about art!

However this might be true, I think that people working in a team should come from different roots. Would you think a team just of very technical people, or just the reverse, all team is composed of artists. I think, a good team needs both of the person types.

If you ask me, there is not one ideal compositor model for all of the industry. But there is one important thing, to be a good compositor, you need lots of artistic skills. You also need lots of technical skills as well.

If you need to do compositing for the broadcast design, you would need lots of sense for typography, colors to use… But if you are compositing the layers in a movie like Matrix, I think it becomes more a technical job.

At last, there is not one correct path only, that a compositor should follow in education.

What is the correct path to become a good director?

[Anonymous]

VFX geek,

i was going to stray from this post, but decided to come back to it…

Artists have a definate benefit. BUT, if you take a class on color theory and another on luminance, you should be at the head of your game.

there are lots of issues when doing color composites as well as mono and duo tones.

Im serisouly thinking about doing a class on color theory now.

If you dont understand how nature diplays evironments, you can NOT begin to simulate them in the digital world.

Were you an animator or a modeler / surface / texture guy?

[David Marte]

Hey netviper

Actually, I am still in school. But, I’ve been reading and doing composites for years now, even before I started school. I am a compositor by heart. And I was wondering that if one day I ended in a compositing seat somewhere, I better know my craft from the ground up. In fact I’ve been collaborating with allot of animation students from my school (The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida) on their demo reels. I’ve been doing most of their vfx and compositing shots. I think that animators have a tough time compositing, because compositng is a very broad branch in fact it’s an art form. I already took a bunch of classes on color theory and design ect… I highly recommend you a book called ” Theory and Use of Color ” by De Grandis. ItÂ’s the perfect book on color for us compositors.

[Author]

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