Hey, Eric here with 30 by 40 Design Workshop, today we're gonna do a quick video on my overhead
sketching setup, a lot of people have been asking: what do I use?
how do I set it up?
I thought I'd take you to the other side of the lens and show you a couple of really simple
ways I use to do this.
Okay so this is kind of my preferred setup here.
DSLR: this is the 70d I also have the 6D mark 2 - then it's a tripod and this is the Manfrotto
055 this has a center column which moves up and cantilevers out and that allows me to
position the camera directly over the work surface.
Now this has a video head on it the video head allows me to tilt the camera up and down
but you don't need something certainly this fancy though.
The important thing with this is getting the camera directly over the work surface and
you want the plane of the camera’s sensor to be parallel with the work surface here
and the reason for that is if you were to tilt this camera out of vertical plane here
it ends up skewing the work surface.
You can see - as you're recording - this is actually upside down, so when I get this into
post, into Final Cut Pro, I'm going to end up rotating this 180 degrees so it looks like
it's right side up if you skew the camera like this it skews the work plane of the work
surface and then when I rotate it 180 degrees it looks like it's upside down it looks awkward
it's difficult to watch.
Now one of the other reasons why I like using a DSLR is because I can put a lens on here
- a zoom lens - that allows me to change the framing of this.
This column here allows me to bring the camera far enough away from the legs that I can capture
a fairly large work surface.
If you only have access to a small tripod, like this, oftentimes you'll get these tripods
free with a - with a camera purchase and you want to mount your camera in here you're gonna
need to find a way to tilt the back leg up so you can position your camera like this
so that it's not capturing the front two legs here.
Having the center column is nice because it allows you to counterweight and counterbalance
this so that your camera can be very far away from these legs and it gives you a lot of
working room.
The other components of the tripod that make this work you can see I have a bungee cord
here and if I didn't have that bungee cord you can see how the center column and the
weight of the DSLR just basically unweights the entire tripod so all this does is keeps
it from tipping over and I have a chair there with a backpack that has some stone samples
in it so it's acting as a counterweight.
That allows me to move this camera very far forward and I don't have to worry about the
field of view here.
Changing the field of view with a zoom lens is really nice it allows you to focus and
recompose and also it helps with the diversity of shots that you can get because you can
get real tight shots and real wide shots of your work surface here.
Okay so the next component here is a light.
This is the Aputure 120D this is a daylight balanced single source LED light this is paired
with the Light Dome that is creating this large diffuse light element here which is
nicely illuminating this work surface.
When you're thinking about lighting you want to think about the direction of light and
also the hand with which you're sketching.
So being a right-handed person ideally this light would be coming from this side I want
you to be able to see it that's why I've positioned it here.
If you're left-handed this is a great direction because it illuminates your work surface without
casting a lot of shadows on to what you're actually drawing.
It may actually be counterintuitive but you actually do want some level of shadow on the
drawing.
If you were to completely diffusely light this work surface so that there were no shadows
it's actually gonna appear unnatural.
So you want to evenly illuminate the surface but you also want to have some directionality
to that light.
If you don't have access to a light like this and this is a pretty expensive light, you
can just position your desk near a window or a door.
So natural daylight is the best light source you can possibly find but it can be difficult
to control that if you have bright direct sunlight and the shadows are very harsh you
get a very contrasty look.
So what's nice is being able to have some diffusion membrane you can actually hang a
piece of paper up in front of that if the bright sunlight is too much or you can control
it in some other way with some Mylar, sheeting, or something like that.
Okay next we're gonna talk about work surface here.
This is one of my all-time favorite work surfaces this is the self-healing cutting mat made
by Alvin.
It's got two colors there's a green side to it which I don't use very often and the black
side here.
I think one of the best cases for choosing this cutting mat as a surface is it helps
you to align the field of view with your camera's sensor so having these gridlines allows you
to tilt and turn and make sure that you're perpendicular to the field of view in your
lens.
Think about contrast when you're choosing a background.
With the Kraft paper I really like the black the black also works well with white or cream-colored
sketch paper there's also natural wood surfaces and textures, there's melamine, MDF, there's
MDO, there are veneer plywoods, there are tile samples, there's the concrete floor,
which I absolutely love.
Neutral surfaces that provide contrast to your sketching media are really the best that
you can find.
So this setup is probably the top of the line setup.
You have an expensive tripod, you have an expensive DSLR, you have an expensive lens,
you have an expensive daylight balanced LED light, but you don't need all this gear to
record an overhead sketching video of yourself.
Let's look at another option.
So the less expensive alternative.
Now this is a friction arm.
Now I use this for recording things above my drafting table here so I have my computer
set up here but this is also a great place for me to just sit and sketch and also I can
record my computer screen if I tilt it the right way.
So you can see, right here, this is a friction arm that's mounted to the loft framing member
and I'll show you how I did that in a minute.
So the difference here is we have to use a much lighter weight setup to work with the
friction arm.
The friction arm is essentially a floppy articulating set of joints: there's a joint here, here,
and here, and there's a c-clamp on one end.
You have the ability to take the c-clamp off which exposes this threaded screw here and
this can be screwed into a threaded nut which I've then drilled into the framing members
up here.
Now that threaded nut can be drilled into Homasote, it can be drilled into wood paneling,
it can be drilled into a 2x4, that you just sort of prop up somewhere, so it's really
versatile.
But the way this friction arm works is that there's a crank here and when you crank down
on this it locks all of the articulating joints for moving.
The c-clamp allows you to mount these friction arms almost anywhere.
So you can see here I used the C clamp just to mount to the tip of a microphone boom that
I picked up on Amazon these boom arms are about 15 dollars each, I'll put all the links
in the cards for all of these materials.
Pair that with the friction arm and a mount for your smartphone and you have a really
simple quick effective way of recording your process.
Interesting thing about the friction arm is that allows you to get into places and capture
perspectives that you wouldn't be able to capture with the DSLR because the DSLR is
so bulky.
They make larger friction arms but none so large as to hold say a full frame 6D Mark
2 - like I'm recording on here.
So really these are geared toward sort of smartphones and smaller sensor cameras.
But they actually work fine just for documenting your work in a real basic fashion.
So these are inexpensive enough that you can grab three or four of them and position them
all around.
And chances are you probably haven't even noticed them in the studio.
I have one on the opposite loft, I have one here and then I have one on a light stand
which just allows me to mount a whole series of cameras and capture process, that's what's
cool about these that you know just popping your cell phone in one and hitting record
is so easy now that really there is no excuse not to record and document your process.
Alright so I hope this video was helpful I hope you found something here that you can
take and go make things with.
Gear is not important at all, it is what you do with the stuff you have on hand.
So please go out there and make things and we'll see you again next time.
Cheers my friends!