A wonderful course, it really opened my eyes creating exciting compositions, and informatively introducing me to values and light and shade. I enjoyed watching Zac work and explaining his techniques and how he carefully and consistently examines his art to build and craft a piece. I'd like to see Zac do a short course on street painting with traditional mediums - his samples in this course look great.

I would not have titled this course "Lighting for Storytelling". It's more about composition with constant emphasis on directing viewer towards a focal point. Basically, you watch Zac develop a Photoshop painting for a personal project of his (don't recall him really explaining what the story is about, but maybe he did). He shows gathered reference (including a plein air painting he did), develops thumbnails as you watch, and takes one of those thumbnails through to a finished color version (albeit very abstract in a concept art sort of way). All basically in real time. So approximately 2.5 hours of watching him work. Which is quite instructive in it's own way. It's fascinating to see how he massages final concept art into being. He's not afraid to make significant changes to the very end. He really doesn't get into discussing "storytelling" or even the subject of "lighting" very much other than the feeling of light he is trying to create in this one scene. I would describe Zac's presentation style as very laid back and minimal. Sometimes a minute or three pass by without him saying a word. You just hear clicks, scribbles, and low level background noise. He even apologizes for his periods of silence at one point. The real instruction then is watching the brush move and the composition continually tweaked. We are reminded by watching him work to never to get too attached to our paintings at any point. Even in the late stages. This is really good advice that I need to better heed. He does drop in good tips from time to time and frequently reveals what he is thinking about as he working so hang in there and don't skip through parts. I just wouldn't watch it late at night before bed. At least not without coffee (ha!). It all results in a really nice digital painting at the end and getting to watch probably every brush stroke from a talented artist.

This is a great process video of how Zack lights his work, but I found it to be more of a process video of how he works rather than a course on how to light images overall. A bit disappointed.

This "course" is a good example of how some people are great at their craft, but probably shouldn't teach. I ended up skipping through the majority of the video because it was rather dry and dull. I gave it two stars because I did learn some things, but was hard to watch. :/

This course was a painting demo and followed Zac Retz as he painted one digital painting from value thumbnails to his finished piece. He had helpful information sprinkled throughout. This was very different from what I thought of when I read the title of this course. I was expecting a general overview of how he approaches different lighting scenarios for storytelling. I feel it would be better served with a different title or a more concise description of the course.