ways for bad dream effect?
Drekkan
Posts: 458
in The Commons
Am doing an image of something happening of a bad dream scenario but am wondering what filters or techniques to use to give it this dramatic "bad" effect. I thought about just having a black and white filter but it seemed not really "bad" or dramatic enough. Can anyone think of ways to do this effect? perhaps with an picture example if you happen to have one. What might you think would work best? what colors or filters? Thx.
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Depends on the level of "bad dream" you're looking for. I'd think some sort of foggy and dark vignetting around the edges, maybe like looking through a broken window that's kinda smoky or sooty. I hate to suggest any sort of image editor filters (for personal artistic reasons, and for reasons concerning what I believe 3D software should be capable of itself), but you might find something in Ron's line of filters and actions that fits the bill (I think there's a Smudges).
Alternatively, if there's a really high level of "bad" for the dream scene, then maybe a more dark reddish vignette, like when you're neard death in a video game and the camera is done up like an eyeball with ruptured vessels around the edges.
Or maybe a bunch of dark jagged shapes, like some Tim Burton trees or angular spikes.
At least that's how all my bad dreams are framed.
I guess it depends on how you see bad dreams
movies traditionally blur edges but mine personally are very vivid and real with colour smell and taste etc,
individuals vary a lot in how they dream, in the days of B&W TV monochrome dreams were common
In the days of B&W TV, monochrome everything was common lol
But yeah, some dreams are as real as real life, which indicates alternate dimensions and timelines, and that you share consciousness with your other self in those dimensions and timelines. Every have that dream where you're at work or in school and half the day goes by, then your alarm clock goes off and you wake up, tired from already putting in a half-day?
I had one where I was eating an apple at lunch. Have you ever considered how much effort you expend when eating an apple? Yeah, I woke up and my jaw was tired, because I had been eating an apple in a dream.
And then there was the one where there was a wall of energy that separated the dead from the living, and it ran along a wrought iron fence (or the fence generated the field, I wasn't clear), and a massive spectral steam engine train had busted through the gate, but the gate slammed shut as soon as it was through. The place I worked was right up against this fence/field/barrier, and we could see these various monsters just on the other side, but I don't think they could see us. Or maybe they could, but either didn't care or just had a different way of expressing their reactions to us.
So anyway, they were largely humanoid, not like Aliens or fantastical beasts, and there was a a slender male with half his head missing, accompanied by his little sister, who had a metal post for a head with a big red crystal for an eye, almost like a stoplight. They would wander to and fro in the woods on their side of the barrier. Then there was the Hulk-ish figure who would walk up to the barrier, press his face into it like he was looking into a window, and then turned to walk away. He got about 20 feet away then suddenly turned back and ran as fast as he could into the barrier, smashing it.
My co-workers were freaking out and screaming and ducking for cover, and the one guy and his little sister with the fence post head came into the building, and she started vaporizing people with her laser-beam eye, including one woman who was carrying her newborn baby.
The only part that didn't make sense was that she brought her newborn to work. I mean, who does that?
Yeh ok we kinda getting off the topic here but maybe I didn't make it clear enough but I meant in the general sense of how a "bad dream" would look in movies or pictures/art. Not so much a personal bad dream experience but common artsy ways to give off that "bad dream" vibe.
Some kind of blur effect, bloom effect, colored lightning in the red- blue spectrum, fog, well that's what comes in mind...fish eye distortion...
K thankyou guys I will experiment with some of these cool things.
Also consider doing things like lighting faces from below, a traditional film thing for making things look creepy.
There are a lot of tried-and-true cliches that the movie business has used for over a century to telegraph that a certain sequence is "only a bad dream." If you're doing a single illustration rather than an animation I don't know if you need to resort to that particular bag of tricks.
Instead, you might want to show things slightly askew. Not necessarily only with so-called Dutch angles but also with the scenery you choose to use. Look at some examples of paintings by di Chirico or some of Munch's work where perspective gets distorted. Surrealists and expressionists often created artwork that evoked both dreams and nightmares so I would look at them for inspiration. Having the dreamer dressed in pajamas or nightclothes can help to communicate to the audience that you're showing a nightmare and not just a horror scene.
I don't know if they work in Iray, but Marshian's Kaleidoscope can help make once straightforward scenes quite strange by using mirroring effects.
https://www.daz3d.com/kaleidoscope
This can create unusual lighting in the mirrored images as well as the illusion of endless hallways, which is pretty nightmarish to me.
You can play with the scale of objects to make things look "off" somehow. Maybe your nightmare is about someone feeling oppressed by work, so their computer would seem unusually large in the render and the windows in their room could be smaller or have bars in them. To a degree, I'd recommend checking out some of William Mortensen's photos for some inspiration here. Also search for George Tooker's "Government Bureau" painting for some inspiration.
All mentioned above, but in various combinations:
In post-work try adding a a grunge map set to overlay with a low opacity and then softly mask it out in the middle and focal areas of your image.
If you have FilterForge, it has some great "horror" filters and the lomo (short for lomography - Google that for some cool examples, or check out an example of how to create a similar effect in Photoshop at https://www.sitepoint.com/create-lomographic-photography-effect-photoshop/) filter is especially great for weird and scary dream effects.
In postwork have the image very slightly transparent, with a scene of the character asleep underlaid. Possibly apply the opacity shift using a patterned mask, which I think is a bit easier for the brain to process while still giving the same effect. Like it's just on the edge of a transition.
Marshian answered that question here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/881631/#Comment_881631