As part of its digital cinematography virtual events earlier this year, Foundry partnered with the Academy of Animated Art for an in-depth online discussion on lighting dark skin characters.

Jasmine Katatikarn and Michael Tanzillo

Having previously introduced the subject in a webinar discussing lighting influences in digital cinematography, this conversation dove deeper into techniques with lighting artists/co-founders of the Academy of Animated Art, Michael Tanzillo and Jasmine Katatikarn. Before starting the Academy of Animated Art, the pair were senior light artists at Blue Sky Studios with a combined 20-plus years of working on VFX and animated films (Ice Age Films, Rio, Ferdinand, Peanuts).

Ok, let’s jump in…

Early References of Lighting Dark Skin
To understand what was amiss with lighting dark skin characters, Tanzillo went back to historical references from Rembrandt — he argued that this type of lighting works well on light skin characters. For many years, this has been the go-to reference for lighting techniques used in digital lighting.

Source:  Rembrandt: Self-Portrait, 1630, Nationalmuseum (Photo: Anna Danielsson), public domain

Rembrandt’s influences translated in the 20th Century in photography and film when photographing white people and replicating the bright skin lighting influences was very common. After a while, the photography process transformed from manual to mechanical, and instead of processing each image individually, the film would be processed and printed in a mass-production way, where photos were processed fast and edited in bulk.

To ensure the quality of photos is standardized and calibrated properly, a system called “The Shirley Card” was developed. Here’s one example of a “Shirley Card” type of photo designed to have standard values and calibrate a print, and in the middle it would have the “skin tone.” Therefore, the way the printing method was done pushed the skin tones to lighter values.

Shirley Card (Source: Kodak)

So what happened to dark-skinned people when they went through this process? The printers white-washed their skin tone and blew out the values in the image, which was not close to an accurate representation of these individuals.

This same problem occurred in films as well as they were designed to get a maximum range in the midtones, which was ideal for light skin but dark skin values were darker tones and the film was not set up to get the nuance of those values.

The First Drivers of Change

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, people asked film companies to look into this, and by the end of the ‘70s films started to shift to printing processes better for darker tones:

Lobby card for Tamango, 1958.(2013.118.142.7)

Strangely, it wasn’t the researchers at Kodak that pushed the changes in the film industry but complaints from corporations that made furniture and chocolate that were behind it. Chocolate companies complained they were not able to get the right brown tones in their chocolate, and furniture companies complained they were not able to get nuanced details in their darker wood to show their customers those different values. This led to the production of new film stocks, like Kodak Old Max and other Fuji products that helped better capture darker tones.

Continuing Progress
Imagemakers started taking advantage of the capabilities of the new films and were finally able to showcase the beauty of darker skin.

Ernest Dickerson, ASC, one of the cinematographers pioneering the lighting of dark skin, uses a few tricks for optimal results: makeup to help with showing reflection on their skin and place a highlight at 18% on the grayscale. After the ‘80s, his technique of lighting black skin tones was becoming more popularized.

Academy of Animated Art, Mathieu Grenier

In films like Moonlight, Twelve Years A Slave, Black Hawk Down and Dope, they used dark skin tones that focused on specularity in color to push the shaping of characters in really profound ways. Here’s an example of artwork created by students of the Academy of Animated Art that reflects the same principles:

More recently, the HBO series Insecure does a great job of shaping reflections and specular highlights and infuses beautiful color in the kicks and rims in these scenes by pushing in saturated light in these areas: pink, magenta and cyan colors. The Academy of Animated Art’s students also adopted this approach in their work:

Academy of Animated Art, Frederik Sallaerts

It doesn’t always take color to define depth. For example, Queen & Slim makes use of black and white tones and reflections and specular highlights to show texture and definition.

In Sorry to Bother You, the definition is not always done by adding lights, but by adding elements off-camera that can be reflected into the character’s skin tone like a bright card or a reflective object.

We’re starting to see this more in animation with Soul with getting the shaping in darker skin tones and specular highlights right and video games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Soul

In Conclusion
During the webinar, Tanzillo summarized the key take-aways for lighting dark skin:

• Using specular highlights and reflections
• Use a moisturizer for the actors not blending makeup
• Think reflections, not diffuse illumination
• There’s always an opportunity for color infusion to create depth