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Smaug and Scale //
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels I was watching the second Hobbit movie on my iPad (it's available on the HBO GO app, if anyone is interested) and I noticed some interesting techniques that were used to make Smaug the Dragon look large (I don't think there are any actual spoilers ahead, unless it counts as a spoiler to tell you there's a dragon named Smaug in the film, which I already did, sorry).
One of the hardest challenges in creating illustrations, painting pictures and in creating movies is making sure that things that are supposed to be massive in size actually look large. If you don't include humans in scenes (or human-created objects that audiences can relate to in terms of size), it can be hard to tell what scale those things are and they can begin to look smaller and less imposing than you intend.
The film "Pacific Rim" faced a few challenges along these lines. The film mostly consists of battles between giant monsters and giant robots that take place far out in the ocean, away from any human made objects. The epic scale can get lost when it's just a robot and a monster fighting in ocean waves without things like buildings to show scale. So the film makers included helicopters in many of the fight scenes, because we know how big helicopters are, and seeing them in almost every shot placed near a robot or a monster helps reinforce how big these things actually are.
Anyway, back to "The Hobbit" and Smaug. There is a similar technique at work here, but in the case of Smaug, he lives in a cave full of treasures he's hoarded. So almost every shot we see of the dragon, you can see piles of gold coins, which help tell us how large he is, especially in shots where there aren't any humans to be seen (okay, technically they're not humans--they're dwarves and hobbits--but you know what I mean and I'm going to refer to them as humans in this post).
The film uses a good variety of techniques to help make Smaug look big (and the other characters look small), like shots looking down on every character that isn't Smaug:
And the film always films Smaug from an angle where you're looking up at him, which makes him look large and imposing:
Another technique that makes Smaug look huge is making sure he always has some surface areas that are light on him and some surface areas that are dark. When a character looks like he can't be entirely lit by one or more light sources, he starts to look really big.
This technique is also very useful when creating layouts. Creating alternating areas of light and shadow can be great for adding depth to a layout. The cause of the shadows can be trees, or clouds overhead, or buildings, or anything else that works.
I used to feel that when you're trying to make a character look large, you always want to keep the large character in the foreground to make sure everything else always looks small and stays in the background. But that approach can be very limiting, and there is a wide variety of shots in the Smaug sequence where this isn't the case. There are many shots where Smaug isn't in the foreground, and sometimes there are even people in the foreground while the dragon is in the background.
In these cases, it's helpful to make sure the camera is always looking
up at the dragon. He appears very large as long as the camera is low and looking up towards him. Also, I like that Smaug is centered and the human character is pushed to the edge of the screen. Compositionally, this makes the dragon powerful and the human much less powerful.
And being able to put humans in the foreground is very helpful, staging-wise, because the dragon is so massive that if you kept the humans in the background all the time, you would have a hard time seeing them at all. They would be pretty miniscule.
One other technique that the shot above utilizes is to make sure Smaug's skin is covered with lots of textures. Lots of little details on his face and body make him look big.
More interesting shots:
The camera rarely includes all of Smaug in the frame, as if he is so large that the camera can't fit him all in the shot. This is another great way to make him look big.
More alternating light sources to make him look like he takes up a lot of space:
This next example is hard to see (these are all iPad screenshots taken on-the-fly), but another interesting technique: the scene with Smaug takes place in a area that encompasses a Dwarf mine, so there are all sorts of mining equipment seen within the scene. Here, we see human figures in the foreground in these mining buckets. The line of buckets carries far into the distance, and appear next to the dragon so we can relate them to Smaug (who is in the lower left area of the frame). We know all these buckets are of one consistent size, and we can tell that the buckets (which are large compared to the human characters) are dwarfed by the size of the dragon, so this is another great shot where the humans can be large in the foreground and the dragon is relatively smaller in the background, and yet the dragon looks massive in size, all within the same shot.
Also, the dragon looks far away because of the fact that he has less contrast than the objects in the foreground. The atmosphere in this giant chamber is making the dragon look hazy. when things look hazy and far away because of atmospheric perspective (like a mountain in the distance), they look big.
Another example of making sure the camera looks down on the small human characters:
A rare full-body shot of Smaug. There's nothing human or man-made in the shot to relate him to, so the coins on the floor are a good reminder of how big he is.
Another example of keeping Smaug in an upshot. Yes, the human takes up more space than Smaug in the frame, but we are looking up at Smaug in a dramatic way, so he appears large and intimidating.
I hope these examples make sense and that everything is clear. Drawing things in their proper scale and keeping them that way can be very difficult. All of these techniques can be used to make buildings or statues look big, or landscapes look massive, or to give almost anything else size and scale if that's your goal. And these things can be used in a converse way to make objects or characters look tiny and small.
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Admittedly, it's frustrating to try to guide an art student and not have him/her pay attention. I have been hard at work showing someone how to improve an area in his artwork, only to turn around and find him off talking to someone else two tables down, checking a text message, etc. I love being an art teacher and will always show art students how to do something better, but you must pay attention in order to learn. Always remember that your teacher is sharing thousands of hours of learning with you, to make it easier for you.
