Sam & Julia is a 3D realtime preschool TV series I worked on as a lighting supervisor at ©Studio Manette.
All the lighting and compositing were made in Unity.
In Sam & Julia, most of the time the action takes place inside closed environments in which light would normally not go through. But as a preschool series, the environments could not be too dark.
That's why we used a lot of light cookies to fake the passing of light through off-screen windows.
It was a great way to create a warm and miniature look.
The apartments of the Mouse Mansion were open rooms with no fourth wall. So we used this configuration to make the sun shine inside and bounce all around the interior.
The lighting of establishing shots was key to the miniature photography of the whole series.
The night shots had to be reassuring to children, which means not too dark and still colorful.
Some episodes had specific lighting due to different weather conditions.
See below some of the different environments of the series. I participated to the 3D modeling and texturing of the sets.
