Dramatic lighting as a narrative element in the process of 3d animation production: A case study

Innovations in information technologies for nearly half a century has effected our daily lives and forced us to transform and change in many ways. At present, artworks that can not be produced with the traditional tools or techniques have started to be produced by using new and modern technologies of today. Animation has been one of the most affected art form by these developments. Due to the recent development in technology, computer animations have become insaperable part of our daily lives. Animation applications are now being perceived as a new art form that turns fantastic worlds into reality. This new art form, like a cocktail of many tastes, accommodates various artistic elements such as creativity, imagination, meaning, color and story etc. The title of this dissertation and the application is "Dramatic Lighting as a Narrative Element in the Process of 3D Animation Production: A Case Study". It aims to examine how lighting, which is one of the vital elements of traditional cinema productions, can be applied in 3D animated films and also, how it can be adapted to the storytelling. The study consists of four chapters. The first chapter of this study is about meaning, importance and the characteristics of 3D animation as well as description and explanation of each production stage. The specific terminology of each stage and the major techniques that are used during production process are identified and discussed. The second chapter focuses on dramatic lighting in the lights of current literature. The functions dramatic lighting are discussed in detail. The techniques that are thought to have contributed to storytelling have been tried to be reflected with the examples selected from 3D animation films. In the third chapter, digital lighting tools are discussed and differences of each tool with the similar ones in traditional cinema lighting are tried to be mentioned. The chapter also examines the effects of dijital lighting tools on the 3D production process The fourth and the final part of this study is a case study. An animated short film has been made in order to show the the contribution of lighting as a narrative element in the process of 3d animation production. Keywords: 3D animation, lighting, cinematic lighting, visual storytelling, dramatic animation, animation.