Take a look at the image above. Which dot did you look at first?
The image is perfectly balanced. So it’s actually difficult for me to know where you’re looking. If your native language of reading runs from left to right, you probably looked at the left one first and if you instinctively read right to left, you probably looked at the right one first.
But in design, we can’t leave that amount of choice up to the viewer. We need to be able to direct them so that they can follow the story that we want to tell them.
In this image, I know EXACTLY where your eyes are going to go first! Put simply, the difference is emphasis, which is simply choosing what portion of the image or design is important to be noticed, i.e which part carries the most story, and putting the audience’s eye there.
Emphasis is such an important element of design because it relies so heavily on human input. So far in this design series, we’ve covered balance and contrast. And whilst these are important, nature finds its own balance and finds its own contrast. But emphasis HAS to be human-directed (if you’ve played with AI image creation, notice how it struggles with emphasis, even when you’re telling it what to emphasize!). We can all appreciate the beauty of a sunset, but that’s not design, and it’s not storytelling. Those things need a human to direct them.
Emphasis in Action
Like contrast, emphasis can be created in lots of ways - through line, shape, color, camera movement, sound, the eye line of a character, and so on. In this example from LOTR, the emphasis is on the point of contact between the two armies. Just like in our example of the two dots, the God rays serve as lines telling our eye where to look. The pointed formation of the attacking army re-enforces that, and the area where the armies will collide is brighter than the surrounding area. The eye is in no doubt where to look. My only quibble would be that building in the background, since it has a lot of contrast within it, which could be a distraction from the emphasized focal point. In reality, the camera is also moving towards the focal point, pushing the emphasis!
Using emphasis to speed up your VFX
Emphasis is so important in VFX because so often we’re seemingly recreating reality, (although in truth we’re not, we’re creating an illusion of reality) which can be time-consuming and therefore expensive to do.
We can save a huge amount of time by asking ourselves - what is the purpose of this character, this design, this shot? And how do we emphasize that? Where do we want the audience to look? If the emphasis works, then that’s where the audience will be focused. And that’s where we put the majority of our time in order to deliver efficiently and effectively.
One of the reasons Hollywood visual effects is so inefficient and expensive is that you have so many artists working on the same shot at the same time that the emphasis becomes muddled. The person working on the explosions wants the emphasis to be there. The person working on the environment wants the emphasis to be there. The person working on the lighting wants the emphasis to be there and so on and so on!
If you can develop the skill of looking at your work in context, prioritizing based on the story, then you will find you can get work done much more quickly. You’ll also find audiences are very forgiving. Your VFX can be really weak in areas that aren’t emphasized. No one’s looking! But by contrast, they’ll be much more critical if you let them down with bad VFX in the areas that are emphasized. If nothing is emphasized at all, you won’t know where they are looking, and therefore you can’t direct them, and they will become disengaged with your work. Which would be bad. OR… great for a shot of someone getting lost in a crowd.
Remember - these aren’t rules, they’re tools!
I hope you’re having a good festive season, and putting emphasis on being merry and filling yourself with food.
Happy Xmas!
