【Shoost Tips】 Fundamentals of Attractive Composition - Part 1: Understanding Eye Level and Perspective Lines

Hello, everyone!

While creating various scenes with Shoost, I'd like to explain some important points about composition. Since this will be quite substantial, I'm planning to split it into three articles!

This first installment is about eye level and perspective lines. These are essential elements when determining your layout, so please use this as a reference. Let's get started!

What are Eye Level and Perspective Lines?

First, let me briefly explain eye level and perspective lines.

Eye level refers to the height of the camera or viewpoint - essentially where the viewer's eyes are positioned. It serves as a reference line indicating the height at which the background was photographed.

Perspective lines are the lines along which floors, walls, and other elements converge as they recede into the distance. They have the effect of guiding the viewer's gaze toward the vanishing point.

By understanding these two elements, you'll be able to place characters naturally within backgrounds.

Matching Eye Level with Your Character

Once you understand the concept of eye level, let's think about the camera height and the character's height. First, let's determine the camera height from the background.

Identify the approximate position of the eye level from the background, and consider the camera height based on furniture and other objects in the scene.

Let's estimate the rough size from a typical Japanese door and calculate the camera height from there. Since the eye level is about halfway up the door, we can roughly estimate it at about 95cm.

Since we've already determined the character's height, we now know both the camera height and the character's height. Let's use this to position the character.

It becomes clearer when you actually place the character near the door. As you can see from this positioning, the eye level is around the character's waist area.

If you want to move the character toward the foreground from this position, you enlarge them while keeping the height aligned with the eye level. If the camera is at waist level, enlarging it further would result in a close-up of the waist area.

By understanding eye level this way, you can create well-balanced compositions with your background. Of course, the perspective will change if the character is sitting or standing on a platform.

For streaming setups, you'd typically assume the character is sitting, so it's good to adjust accordingly with that in mind.

Using Perspective Lines to Guide the Viewer's Gaze

Next, let's talk about perspective lines.

Every background has a vanishing point. It may be within the frame or outside it, but there's always a vanishing point somewhere.

The human eye naturally has a tendency to follow "lines." Our gaze is naturally guided along perspective lines toward the vanishing point.

Therefore, if you align your character's position with this point, attention will naturally be drawn there. Conversely, if you place them in a different position from this point, the focal points become scattered, making the composition feel less cohesive.

By aligning your character with the background's perspective lines or vanishing point, the character naturally becomes easier to view.

Conclusion

As you can see, just being mindful of eye level and perspective lines when considering your layout can create a sense of cohesion and improve the overall feel of your composition. Matching the eye level is especially important.

It might feel a bit difficult at first, but simply being aware of these two elements will create cohesion across the entire screen and improve the quality. Please give it a try!

Next time, in Part 2, I'll explain "Color adjustment"! Stay tuned.