Lighting Studies - Portrait

Recently, I was on the hunt for the perfect shot to recreate for a lighting character pose in Unreal Engine, and I was thrilled to find this flawless portrait shot of the singer Janelle Monáe. The visuals in Janelle Monáe's "Dirty Computer" video are not only vibrant, futuristic, and visually stunning but also incredibly inspiring. As I explored the colorful and chaotic imagery of the video, I couldn't help but think, "This is it!"

For my workflow, I used Metahumans creator for the character. It helped me create a photorealistic digital human, fully rigged and complete with hair and clothing. I also created a custom 3D LUT and worked with the reference to help me with light and shadows. When in doubt, I switched my view mode to the black and white mode as a tool to discern the nuances of light and shadow levels.

It was my first attempt at lighting for a character and posing it, and while I encountered some challenges with the posing and color matching, I pushed through to create a result that I'm proud of.

Dirty Computer - an emotion picture* by Janelle Monáe.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdH2Sy-BlNE&list=PLd6pWDl8nMg-NdmGBfOE-Il0O1A0LANKj&index=2