The Gnomon Workshop – Creating Cinematic Compositions for Production

Art Director and Visual Development Artist, Francesco Guarini, details the art of visual storytelling for production and shares how to create successful cinematic compositions. He walks through the theory behind great shots in cinema and discusses the importance of lighting, including its effect on an audience. Francesco also teaches how to develop your ideas, transforming them into production-ready black-and-white visual development paintings.

Throughout this workshop, you’ll learn about the fundamental compositional influencers, including how to recognize them and how to use them to tell your stories most effectively. You will also gain an understanding of the importance of balance and tonal values in composition, as well as how they all come together in a successful image.

Following Francesco's workflow and thought processes, you will discover how to use the power of Photoshop and Blender combined to produce highly detailed paintings in a short amount of time. Starting from a blank canvas, you’ll follow Francesco through the production of a variety of ideas before moving into Blender, where he shares how to create basic blockings of those ideas. In Blender, he continues experimenting with lights and cameras, before jumping back into Photoshop where he discusses his rendering process, step by step.

This workshop is suitable for any artist level working, or aiming to work, in the entertainment industry, from beginners looking to understand what composition is all about to professionals looking to strengthen their knowledge.

Project files provided with this workshop include JPG sheets of all his steps, from rough sketches to the final paintings.


Duration: 116 Minutes

Format: HD 1920x1080