Lens flares: yes or no

[Hoptoad]

Adding lens flares to a film in post-production is commonplace -- even in cartoons.

I was recently re-watching "A Bug's Life" and the cartoon opens on an image of the sun and a huge, dramatic lens flare stretching across the entire screen. There are at least 21 circles of light in various colors and sizes (I counted).

When I saw all those translucent circles, my first thought was, "I could replicate that in Moho."

As the opening scene lasted a while (10 seconds), I eventually had a second thought: "Huh? How could there be a lens flare in a cartoon when there is no lens?"

Lens flares look pretty, and they can make a scene seem more real somehow. But, in a cartoon, is the visual appeal worth the obvious absurdity?

Maybe I'm experiencing LFBO (Lens Flare Burn-Out). I'm seeing spectacular lens flares in movies so often nowadays, they are no longer delighting me like they used to.

Have you ever used lens flares in your cartoons? Are you ever annoyed by digitally-added lens flares, whether in animated films or traditional films? Or do you love lens flares more than life itself and long for the day you can finally afford to hire a guy to follow you around and shine a flashlight in your eyes every moment of every day?

[Greenlaw]

Lens flares are super easy to do in a compositing program but you should be able to rig something reasonably convincing in Moho. Use additive for the light source since that's the brightest element in the screen. For the rings and other artifacts, use additive or screen....use transparency to dial in the 'strength'. Use screen mode if you want more of the underlying image to be visible through the effect.

(I just now looked at Moho's blend modes and noticed it doesn't list Additive like some other programs I use; try Linear Dodge, that might be the equivalent here. I'll have to look into this later.)

[slowtiger]

I just made up this rule: if the lens flare is your only camera lookalike effect - don't. If your whole film uses life-action like cinematography: use it. Also take care that the lens flare has to tell something as well - indicate a special bright day, or the protagonist idly looking into the sun, or something.

[Greenlaw]

Have you ever used lens flares in your cartoons? Are you ever annoyed by digitally-added lens flares, whether in animated films or traditional films? Or do you love lens flares more than life itself and long for the day you can finally afford to hire a guy to follow you around and shine a flashlight in your eyes every moment of every day?

I've been working in VFX since the late 90's and adding lens flares fx to scenes fell out of fashion for the longest time because it tended to scream 'cgi'. You do see the effect making a comeback now but it's usually a stylistic choice, like in recent Star Trek movies and shows. Because this effect is a natural optical artifact, it does show up where you expect to see them though, in both 3D and 2D animations. For 2D, I've seen it used a lot in anime productions, usually in title sequences with the bird fly-by trope.

As for me, I did apply lens flare fx from time to time during Fast and Furious: Spy Racers, mainly in the 3D parts I worked on but I think I may have used it in some of the hand drawn 2D 'back story' segments too. I used it more recently in other shows but I'm not sure these shows are out yet.

IMO, lens flares are not something you want to draw special attention to, so use it only where it's appropriate. In 'older' days of movie making they did everything they could to prevent natural lens flares from occurring. Then along came JJ Abrams...

[MrMiracle77]

Lens flares are a byproduct of small imperfections in the lens grinding process. Camera companies have had the technology to minimize or eliminate those imperfections since around the early 80s. While foreground lens flares have gained some re-adoption in the past 20 years (Joss Whedon intentionally looked for flare-inducing lenses in Firefly), background flares that bleed over into the outer edges of foreground figures are more common and more plausible with modern lenses, especially on sequences filmed at night. 3D works sometimes have this as a byproduct of 'High Dynamic Range' or HDR lighting.

That 'hexagon' or 'diamond' lens flare that you see in anime seems to be an affectation of that particular format.

In the 90s, you could just click on 'lens flare' in photoshop, then just drop a basic compass/disc anywhere you wanted in an image. It was so overused that adding a default lens flare to a picture became something of a proto-meme.

[slowtiger]

There's nothing wrong with lens flare per se, it depends on context. I've seen my share of experimental films glorifying light and (film) material, with minutes of creating beautiful lens flares. They also serve as reality indicator in SF movies (where else?). But most 2d animation design styles would clash with them.

[chucky]

Depends on the artistic context.
They can be totally out of place and gross if the style doesn't match.
If the style you are using is not realistic then either don't use them or stylise and simplify them appropriately.
There are some free (rigged) Moho lens flares in the Crustacea file in the Moho library.

[Hoptoad]

Lens flares in 2D animation reminds me of another film "effect" that may or may not work these days: the hand-held shaky camera effect.

The shaky-camera effect generally looks awesome in animated scenes, in my opinion.

But in a feature film (not animated), when a scene looks like somebody recorded it while staggering over a pile of rocks, that effect is losing it's charm for me.

I realize that shaky video is intended to look real and in-your-face, like documentary videos filmed in the trenches of a battlefield, but in a 100+ million dollar action movie, filmed in a world where fancy, high-tech camera stabilizers exist? Such shakiness could not happen by accident -- and so I notice the shaky camera effect. It jumps out at me.

I guess that's my problem with lens flares in cartoons: they jump out at me.

[Greenlaw]

Again, it's all about context. Hand held motions suggest POV of a journalist or another character in the scene. Years ago, we did a series of Call Of Duty cinematic commercials, and each one was animated 'hand held' to suggest the POV of an unseen soldier. I've used it elsewhere in films and tv for 3D and 2D animations. (More recently, I used it a lot when I was working on Fast & Furious: Spy Racers, again for 3D and 2D scenes.)

Sometimes I'll use handheld camera animations in fully CGI shots to help sell the idea that this is a real location and that a real human was on-site to shoot it. Some of my shots for The Asylum movies were animated this way. Because of short deadlines and tight budget, occasionally my work in these movies needed a lot of convincing.

Effects like these are not by themselves good or bad. They're just tools and tricks to help add realism to a scene, and it's up to the artist (or whoever is in charge) to decide whether they're appropriate for the work or not.

Edit: I just re-watched my Asylum reel...hadn't looked at it for a few years. Yow! I used hand-held shakey cam all over the place.

[Hoptoad]

Some of my shots for The Asylum movies was animated this way.

I watched your special effects reel. Eww! My mild fear of chainsaws has been upgraded to a phobia. FWIW, I think your usage of shaky camera seems appropriate and just right (not overdone).

Context is definitely vital for effects, but I think another issue is How Far Do You Crank The Special Effects Dial. The difference between "the right amount" and "too much" of a special effect is not a science. Mistakes are possible.

I am reminded of the film grain effect. If the context is justified, the film grain effect can look cool in contemporary video -- even though its existence is preposterous. But if someone uses too much of the film grain effect, the result may be distracting.

I'm now thinking about maybe, possibly trying to use a lens flare in my next cartoon project, as a personal challenge. That's one of the nice things about animating: numerous opportunities to do something new.

[Greenlaw]

Context is definitely vital for effects, but I think another issue is How Far Do You Crank The Special Effects Dial. The difference between "the right amount" and "too much" of a special effect is not a science. Mistakes are possible.

I always approach these things like any animation task, by imagining what's motivating the action even when it's happening off-camera. In this case a person is holding the camera so I think about the size weight of the gear and how the environment affects the person holding the gear. As with any animation, it helps to act out this stuff before animating it. If it helps, think of the camera as a character and not just a device.

Same with a lens flare: what is the light source, where is it, and how bright is it? What kind of lens are you shooting with? For example, lens flares from sunlight look very different from lens flares from headlights on a car, and halogen headlights look different from LED headlights, and so on. Think about what's going on in the scene first and then think about what extra things you may need to add to make it convincing.

[Greenlaw]

Some trivia...

One fun aspect about my time working with The Asylum was that I was given a lot of freedom to design and execute my shots the way I wanted. The two zombie animal scenes are good examples: both of these were shot in my backyard--the open arm is mine (you can tell by my watch,) the frozen corpse is my wife Alisa, and the footage was shot by our child Sienna.

For the effect, the human bits were still images that I animated using mesh warps in After Effects and/or Fusion. So Moho users take note: you can do the same thing using Moho's mesh warps.

The animals were stock footage provided by the studio but I painted and tracked the rotten 'zombie' flesh bits on them. I guess technically you could do that in Moho too, but it's easier to do this sort of thing in a dedicated compositing program like Fusion or Ae.

Oh, and to keep on-topic I animated hand-held camera motion for these shots too.

I created these two clips for Z-Nation TV promos. Not sure they actually aired because I haven't had cable TV since the late 90's, but I think they turned out nicely for how quickly they were made.

[chucky]

On the topic of grain, it's not preposterous yet.
Unfortunately, current compression methods often force the use of grain to reduce artifacts like bands and blocks.
Streaming can really get cheeky so anything that can trick the compression is welcomed.

[Hoptoad]

Ah, I didn't consider that aspect of film grain. I stand corrected. Thanks for the information.

[slowtiger]

Recently I've heard that streaming services compress films so much that there's no grain left, and add artificial grain in the player again. Didn't verify this yet, but if so, it would be a serious intrusion into the director's intentions.