It’s no mystery why we put people in our designs. People are the fastest way to connect emotionally. You can evoke deep feelings with the right visual indications, turning a simple image into a source of awe or aspiration. We try to shape those feelings in architectural visualization, working on the perceptions that most of us share. While we are all circumstance creatures, using our experiential knowledge to guide us on a daily basis, many of our conditioning is the same. That’s why considering how you use people when creating visualizations of your designs is so important.
Entourage is your visual guide, alerting the viewer to your story or feelings. This story is sometimes one of use, an explanation of how somebody interacts or moves about a space. Other times, it’s abstract a little bit. Whatever the direction, a study of composition, conditioning, and narrative is the art of entourage.
Below are two sections explaining WHY we need an entourage and HOW do we add them into each rendering accordingly.
Why?
1. Builds a narrative
You can tell visual narratives without words with entourage, using the right people presentation to keep someone scanning around the image, or leaving with an intended takeaway.
Another thing to consider is how the various parts of an image play off one another, including all the mini-stories. We have put the narrative in the foreground many times. Because that’s where the eyes of most people go first, that’s where you should put your A story. However, each part of the image should either expand or in some way supplement that A story. For instance, if we were to show you an image of a playground, you might expect to see children playing around.
2. Evokes Emotions
Every entourage contains a lot of information, expression/body language, age, colors.
The gestures you choose should be in line with the expectations of a viewer. And we all have thoughts about the functioning of different situations or environments. Age can be associated with everything from maturity to over-the-hill, meaning it’s one of the fastest brand intent identifiers. There are complete studies on this topic, and you should read them, but consider this for our purposes: colors carry moods, draw attention, and tell your eyes where to go.
3. Consider the Future
Buildings can often live in the future for several decades, particularly when they involve central services such as transportation or infrastructure. So how do we, as artists of visualization, work with such a gap? Ten of years is a long time to come.
When we plot the future, we look at trends, trajectories, and what, especially on the street, is not currently being used in the world. It’s not always out and about what’s on the runway, but it could be in 50 years. Or think o
Google Glass. It didn’t work, but in time it’s likely the idea of some form of technological eyewear.
How?
1. Pick a style
There are two types of visualization: according to the occasion, we pick each entourage carefully. Usage allows you to remove the unknown from a view, relying on clear presentations of the attributes of an environment to do the heavy lifting. This can be particularly useful in entitlement projects where a neighborhood’s fate lies in the balance. It can be really soothing to show those bike lanes or a family hanging out on the grass, especially when it is shown in a positive light. Editorial, on the other hand, in a way that doesn’t always give priority to space at first. Most businesses look at fashion spreads, focusing on costumes or props to raise a mood. Those underlying feelings that connect with a larger idea of the brand of a building are what you’re following in an editorial push.
2. Use Custom Entourage
They want something unique when customers come to us. The fastest way to look commonplace is to start filling their views with a bunch of stock models they’ve seen before. That’s why we’re creating our own environment libraries using a green screen and the models we’re hiring for the job. It goes back to what I said about the brand ; some people in the viewer will evoke some kinds of feelings. Casting provides the highest level of control for an agency like us, which often handles branding and visualizations from top to bottom.
3. Compose and Place
So now you’ve got your characters, your story. What’s the next thing? It’s time to consider your entourage’s placement and integration— which is certainly not an easy task, as these decisions can have a direct impact on the architecture’s perception. Entourage positioning can make space look large or small, spacious or narrow, or even highlight key design elements