I’m frustrated with my work.  In most of my previous CGI pieces I started out with an idea that should be dynamic but ended up with something less exciting.  Most of my ideas have become medium to long shots of characters just standing there.  If I was directing a movie, this is when I would punch in for a close up to capture more of the emotion.

As an experiment, I’ve taken a previous piece I Was Fluid, Like Water and created a close up of the face.  It looks like a cropping of the previous image but that’s not how I created it.  I went back into the 3D space, set another camera in the exact position, and composed a new shot with a longer focal length.  That allowed me to create a new 10K render and not lose any of the small details like the stitching on the jacket.

The hair is still a problem, maybe even more so in the close-up.  I fixed it up a little in Photoshop but it’s still kinky and unrealistic.  The overall style is on the “doll-like anime” side with fake eyebrows etc. so maybe the kinky hair is OK.  What do you think?  Which do you like better, the original long shot or the close up?