Entourage Demand Survey

[vizutilcompany]

Hello,

 

VIZUTIL is a website with high-quality 2D cutouts. We are looking to do another photo shoot and would like to supply what is in greatest demand. Please answer a few questions so that I may best craft our next photo shoot to meet your needs.

 

1. What category of work does your firm complete most often?

 

(i.e. Residential, Commercial, etc.)

 

2. What is the most common request for 2D cutouts from clients?

 

(Specifics about age, gender, ethnicity, etc. would be beneficial.)

 

3. What do you struggle to find for availability of the requests from question two?

 

4. What else would you ask to be considered for our next photo shoot?

 

Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

[John Dollus]

1. commercial

2. indoor young professionals and executives, multi-ethnic, 50/50 male/female

3. proper poses and appropriate clothing

4. some of your poses seem to be from a bit higher than eye level? either go all eye level or full aerial - in between is more difficult to work with quickly.

 

At first glance, your existing catalogs look pretty good - nice mix of ethnicity and (apart from some very bright colors that are easily changed) most have good wardrobe/grooming.

 

For us, the key is having entourage be generic enough to not take away from the scene. Try to stay away from trendy clothing. It becomes dated quickly.

When doing photoshoots internally, we usually ask for a day's worth of clothing options (casual at-home, shopping, office work, dinner at a restaurant and lounge/club). That seems to cover most bases.

[James Vella]

3D entourage only these days, 2D does not cut the mustard

[vizutilcompany]

1. commercial

2. indoor young professionals and executives, multi-ethnic, 50/50 male/female

3. proper poses and appropriate clothing

4. some of your poses seem to be from a bit higher than eye level? either go all eye level or full aerial - in between is more difficult to work with quickly.

 

At first glance, your existing catalogs look pretty good - nice mix of ethnicity and (apart from some very bright colors that are easily changed) most have good wardrobe/grooming.

 

For us, the key is having entourage be generic enough to not take away from the scene. Try to stay away from trendy clothing. It becomes dated quickly.

When doing photoshoots internally, we usually ask for a day's worth of clothing options (casual at-home, shopping, office work, dinner at a restaurant and lounge/club). That seems to cover most bases.

 

Thank you for your great feedback. This matches some of what we were seeing from our own clients, so it is good to know it is consistent. I appreciate the list of clothing options you provided, we will use that to help direct the models. I will also try to make sure the photographs are directly eye-level.

 

Thanks!

 

3D entourage only these days, 2D does not cut the mustard

 

Gotcha! I'll add mustard-cutting capabilities to our list of must-haves!

[James Vella]

haha! yes sorry reading my comment again it sounds a bit rude, my apologies. What I should have said is our studio is now using 3d models instead of cutouts for ease of lighting, rotation, distortion from camera angle, easy to change their clothes, if they are rigged pose/animate (not so often posing/animate).

 

Your stock looks high quality!

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

haha! yes sorry reading my comment again it sounds a bit rude, my apologies. What I should have said is our studio is now using 3d models instead of cutouts for ease of lighting, rotation, distortion from camera angle, easy to change their clothes, if they are rigged pose/animate (not so often posing/animate).

 

Your stock looks high quality!

 

Even the best 3d models don't look as real as high quality composites done with care. 3d is a lot better than it used to be but it isn't close to what can be achieved with composting.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Happy to see this post. I was not aware of your company prior to this.

 

1. Primarily tech office and residential condo with a solid mix of public spaces added in.

2. Mixed Race, Mixed Gender, Ages 25 to 55.

3. 40 to 70 years old. This category barely exist in collections available for purchase.

4. The lighting setups you are using have hard directional light that is creating hard shadows even though most of your people appear to be for indoor use. This will make them more difficult for compositing as often the hard shadow will need to be feathered to achieve a look that appears to be lit softer.

 

Your PNG's also appear to be graded fairly hard. Ii would be good to use a lighter hand on the curve so that the blacks and whites are not being pushed to their limits. The final grading needs to happen during compositing, not during masking. Keeping the base image contrast more flat leaves more wiggle room for final product.

[James Vella]

Even the best 3d models don't look as real as high quality composites done with care. 3d is a lot better than it used to be but it isn't close to what can be achieved with composting.

 

Interesting opinion. I dont want to derail the thread, but have you have a looked at the latest photoscanned people?

 

 

 

If your entourage looks better than this in future I would definitely be interested!

[vizutilcompany]

haha! yes sorry reading my comment again it sounds a bit rude, my apologies. What I should have said is our studio is now using 3d models instead of cutouts for ease of lighting, rotation, distortion from camera angle, easy to change their clothes, if they are rigged pose/animate (not so often posing/animate).

 

Your stock looks high quality!

 

It was not taken offensively. No worries! We are considering 3D models in the future but are first working to build our client base.

[vizutilcompany]

Happy to see this post. I was not aware of your company prior to this.

 

1. Primarily tech office and residential condo with a solid mix of public spaces added in.

2. Mixed Race, Mixed Gender, Ages 25 to 55.

3. 40 to 70 years old. This category barely exist in collections available for purchase.

4. The lighting setups you are using have hard directional light that is creating hard shadows even though most of your people appear to be for indoor use. This will make them more difficult for compositing as often the hard shadow will need to be feathered to achieve a look that appears to be lit softer.

 

Your PNG's also appear to be graded fairly hard. Ii would be good to use a lighter hand on the curve so that the blacks and whites are not being pushed to their limits. The final grading needs to happen during compositing, not during masking. Keeping the base image contrast more flat leaves more wiggle room for final product.

 

Hello,

 

I am glad to make more aware of our company!

 

Thank you for the feedback. The elderly age range is certainly one we are aware is needed. We do use two forms of lighting (direct and flat) to account for indoor and outdoor use, but I will also talk to our team who is in charge of photographing in the next shoot. Similarly, I appreciate your comment on the grading. We will certainly keep that in mind when we are setting the next package up.

 

Thanks!

[M V]

1. Higher Education

 

2. More diversity - "Too many white hipsters" This is a huge issue and I think thats why websites like http://www.nonscandinavia.com/ are so popular

 

3. I struggle to find college students, not many sets out there. I also like it when you have 2 or 3 people together talking. if you try to stage that with random people, it doesn't look right. I find that your eye always gravitates to them, especially if they are having a good time laughing or smiling. People like that junk!

 

4. Sitters taking from every 15 degrees. Archvision did this and I see VizPeople including a few sitters are different angles. Its the biggest pain in the butt to get a sitter at just the right angle.

[vizutilcompany]

1. Higher Education

 

2. More diversity - "Too many white hipsters" This is a huge issue and I think thats why websites like http://www.nonscandinavia.com/ are so popular

 

3. I struggle to find college students, not many sets out there. I also like it when you have 2 or 3 people together talking. if you try to stage that with random people, it doesn't look right. I find that your eye always gravitates to them, especially if they are having a good time laughing or smiling. People like that junk!

 

4. Sitters taking from every 15 degrees. Archvision did this and I see VizPeople including a few sitters are different angles. Its the biggest pain in the butt to get a sitter at just the right angle.

 

Thank you for your response. I can add college-aged students to the list and that includes dressing them accordingly, of course. We definitely like group shots of two or three people together too so we will be doing more of that in our next shoot. We will try to get more pictures of our actors in different angles, too.

 

Thank you!

[Justin Hunt]

We struggle to find good quality seated people for restaurant shots, especially when we do food courts.

Whats becoming more apparent these days is how much our clients hate people on mobile phones.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

We struggle to find good quality seated people for restaurant shots, especially when we do food courts.

Whats becoming more apparent these days is how much our clients hate people on mobile phones.

 

+1 on this as well. We typically end using custom shot stuff for foreground of restaurant scenes as the existing libraries don't cut it.

[vizutilcompany]

We struggle to find good quality seated people for restaurant shots, especially when we do food courts.

Whats becoming more apparent these days is how much our clients hate people on mobile phones.

 

That's an excellent request. Thank you. We are certainly seeing more requests for real conversations between people, not people sitting alone at a table on a phone.

[JWEST]

More people of colour please, the African market would buy these up in a second since its the main request for the type of people in all of our visuals.

[vizutilcompany]

More people of colour please, the African market would buy these up in a second since its the main request for the type of people in all of our visuals.

 

Okay! Will do. Have you looked at our current packages? We have some people of color from our first shoot and will look to increase the diversity in our next shoot.