Welcome to the final part of this Design for Visual Effects masterclass!
This week, we’ll be talking about hierarchy. Like all of these design concepts, hierarchy isn’t particularly difficult to understand. In fact, it’s quite obvious. The trick is just being aware of these tools, making sure you use them, and sharpening your skills in using them.
Understanding Hierarchy
When we talk about hierarchy, we’re just saying:
Not all parts of your design, or not all parts of shot composition are equal.
Some are more important than others; Mona Lisa’s smile is more important than the trees in the background. Everything in the painting serves a purpose, but it’s ordered into a hierarchy.
Not all parts of your design, or not all parts of shot composition are equal.
Some are more important than others; Mona Lisa’s smile is more important than the trees in the background. Everything in the painting serves a purpose, but it’s ordered into a hierarchy.
Both of these images of the Mona Lisa have been edited. In one, I did a major change – I flipped her arms around, completely changing the bottom quarter of the image. In the other, a tiny change to her mouth. Which did you notice first? Clearly, not all details are equal!
This becomes incredibly important in VFX, because it can be very time-consuming to make everything look believable and photorealistic. If we hone our skills in prioritization, (another word for hierarchy, really), then all of the time that we put in will make a difference to the end result.
Even in huge budget VFX, your time is a limited resource. You need to learn to put it where it matters
Establishing Priorities
So the question is:
How do you reliably work out the hierarchy for whatever it is that you’re working on?
My recommendation is to step outside of the visual sphere. Visuals take a while to create, so just use words!
Describe the purpose of the character or the shot, whatever it is that you may be designing, in a few words, to a short paragraph. That’s your goal.
e.g:
“This environment should be dark and sinister with lots of places to imagine horrific things”
“In this shot, the green screen needs removing, and the character needs to be integrated seamlessly over another plate”
“This robotic character was designed by the Russian Secret Service in the Cold War, with the intention of being a honey trap for enemy agents. It should be very attractive, but make you feel slightly uneasy.”
Whether you’re at the start, middle, or end of your project, every step can move you towards or away from your goal, or neither. In VFX, a huge amount of time is wasted by making changes to make something “better”, as determined by a certain lead or supervisor. But “better” should mean “closer to your goal”.
There will always be a thousand things that you could change to accomplish that, BUT most of the time there is ONE thing that is at least slightly more important than anything else. So find that.
You can also take the opposite approach and say “What about my design or image actively works against my goal?”, and strip that back. This is worth doing as you’re past the halfway point in your work, and helps you strip back the messy half-thoughts and false starts, and leads to clean, tight work.
Examples and Applications
If you’ve been playing with AI, you’ll notice how similar the “goal” is to an AI prompt. I gave Midjourney a prompt to create the “sinister environment”, and it’s a nice start. But it doesn’t fully hit the goal. I don’t see “lots of places to imagine horrific things”. What’s the most important change that you would make to this to get closer to that goal?
If the goal was green screen integration, the problems would be very different. But the process is the same. If the person isn’t fully integrated with the background, you haven’t hit the goal. What is the ONE thing that will get you closest? Is it that the colours don’t match? Is it that there is “green spill” (reflection from the green screen) visible from the green screen on the person? Is it that the person is too bright, too blurred, or not blurry enough? Normally it’s likely to be a combination of those things, but you always want to be hitting the highest priority thing.
Prioritization in Practice
In the video we released this week breaking down a shot from “Doctor Who”, I touch on a couple of areas that I would have liked to improve. I think I could do that for every shot I’ve ever worked on!
I never hit everything that I want, but I always force myself to stay at the top of the hierarchy ladder. When I run out of time, everything that hasn’t been addressed, never gets addressed!
If I was hopping around addressing whatever took my eye, as is common when you’re not focused on hierarchy, I would have put in the same amount of hours on the shot, but it definitely wouldn’t look as good!
VFX isn’t about perfection. Most art isn’t. It’s about getting stuff done, especially if you have bills to pay!
Stop and Step Back!
One thing that I wish I could do with my artists and students is have a buzzer that goes off at their desk at random intervals with an announcement that says “STOP! Are you doing the most important thing right now?”
And if the answer is no, then… there better be a good reason for that. If not, well the buzzer can also electrocute.
One thing to bear in mind with hierarchy is that the priorities are constantly changing as the work develops. What seemed vitally important in the start suddenly becomes less important as the work progresses. In this way, it’s kind of like surfing – the wave is always changing, but you’re trying to ride it the best that you can. Inevitably, you will get pulled down into the sea of details. And when that happens, you need to pick yourself up and then get on top of the wave again.
Surf the priority wave….don’t be this guy, all he’s going to achieve is wetness.
That’s it for the Design Masterclass Series! Let me know what you’d like covered in future newsletters, and I will place it at the top of my Hierarchy Ladder.
See you next week!
