>>5881837>>5881838I do really enjoy the visual composition in your space animations Observer QM! I really liked your flat top-down shot of the Jupiter swirl flyby thing you did in your trailer etc. For me actually the best source is to watch avant garde cinema, but you even see it in mainstream films eg Villeneuve abstract landscspe shots in Sicario, Blade Runner 2049 etc. There are some directors who really understand cinematography eg Kubrick or Nicolas Winding Refn and I am always on the lookout for unusual angle or perspective shots in films (eg this GoPro style helm-cam gif knight visor shot from some German / Austrian tv series adaptation of Maximilian
>>5881006 I have watched it all now hehe) I wonder for instance if you could move the camera to a spacecraft wing and deliver a similar "GoPro action camera" style tracking shot eg following the view trajectory of a launched missile etc I remember the original Homeworld 1999 even did it in a cutscene (the recovered footage one where Taiidan bombers glass the planet)
Another type of shot I really like that evokes psychological depth and subliminally suggests inner mystery is the "doorway or framing shot" see these two images
>>5881824 note how the scene is framed with a strong foreground and background with figures that appear to be "looking through" spying upon or observing others through a frame or aperture etc.
I think this technique originally came from Surrealist painters, maybe influenced by Freud, those who wanted to suggest looking through interior worlds etc but you see it all the time in Refn (he often does shots of a corridor with an open door offering a glimpse into the next room beyond) or say the iconic reversed perspective final scenes of Tarkovsky STALKER (shot looking outwards with the audience/camera situated within the secret wish chamber) or videogames like Remedy CONTROL etc the Brutalist architecture.
I don't know if the visual framing doorway interior metaphor works quite as well in space (space is big lol) but it is fun trying to find and hunt down all these visual cinematography tricks for aesthetic appreciation. I know in Homeworld 3 the designers talk a lot about how they are filling the game with colossal megastructures just to create "space terrain" holes and tunnels and archways etc because otherwise it is just too empty and the lack of landmarks makes directionless void too disorientating
pic related is something I was going to use for my COSMOGONY quest it depicts the star trails effect shot action camera style from the International Space Station. I also think an underused visual language that is often neglected amidst all the videogame Unreal engine concept art renders is the actual look of science itself; often in my games and settings I try to incorporate diagrams or abstract mathematical charts from scientific papers - they often look really good and convincing in and of themselves
