Halloween challenge 2021 – WIP – Basement scares

That happened to me too ever since I was a kid. I used to live in an old house with a large basement that have a long staircase. There’s not a single window but a bilco classic as the back door.

I look forward to seeing what you making. @slenaerts 

Nice! I too, can recall similar experiences as a kid… must be a common thing: creepy dark basements. I like the vibe with the dim lighting in your first image already, looking forward to seeing it develop.

the floating eyes should glow, but not emit light

Eevee does that automatically, but in Cycles you can use the Light Path Node and add glow in the Compositor, for instance:

Just use Motion Blur for speed effect…

the color scheme should be dark/ not saturated with the aggressive reds popping out

You might wanna watch this tutorial for the ‘Sin city effect’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HZnT28ZMUQ

Gottfried Hoffman explains it for a film clip (with Motion Tracking), but can of course also and easier be done with a still image…

I just thought of something: that tutorial is pretty old and nowadays you can probably simply use Cryptomatte:

And while we’re  at it: here’s a better way to ‘de-saturate’ an image:

If you make the saturation zero in a HSV Node (or in a Hue Correct), then you are left with the Value and for instance ‘pure blue’ and ‘pure’ yellow both have a Value of one, but yellow looks much brighter than blue (for most, if not all humans) and the RGB to BW Node calculates the luminace (‘perceived brightness’) and shows yellow as lighter than blue, when converted to greyscale!

Did you know, if you have a bad feeling in your gut about something, like shadowy figures lurking in the dark basement, then you should be afraid, apparently because we humans only see a fraction of the light spectrum there is so much we don’t see.

Remember the phrase, ‘Trust your Gut’, and run for your life.