I agree with you that it's too blue. It's also extremely bright to be night time. I'd tone both of those down. Also your set lighting doesn't match that of the background.

I don't think the poster board needs to be black, since you're going for a sort of cartoony feel; dark blue would probably be better, something in the navy range. It's a really convincing background, though, does a good job conveying the feeling of being outside.

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Thanks for the comments. I was going for a navy color. It wasn't meant to be that bright. I thought that the color of the posterboard would be darker in-camera, but it turned out that it wasn't.

The Dark and Starless Night (Background test) by rioforce, on Flickr

Here's my new background. I took a black posterboard and painted it dark blue. I haven't added stars just yet, because I'd like to know what you guys think of the color.

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Looks much better. I think adding stars again will definitely make it even better. I'd suggest trying to increase your depth-of-field a little. I realise this is to create the illusion of a very large and deep set but I would prefer less blur on the background.

Nighttime is dark. Very dark. This shot doesn't look like it's at night at all. It's a nice shot, but if you want it to look like night you need to actually lower the amount of light being cast onto the set. Tinting it blue isn't going to cut it. I shouldn't be able to see all those trees and bushes easily. In fact, most of the shot should be silhouettes. Obviously you need to be able to see the character, so splash some light onto him. But everything else needs to be difficult to see.

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You don't necessarily need to make the lights dimmer, you could also turn the exposure down.

I've done some experiments in the real world and night lighting is actually almost the same as day lighting.  The only major difference being that it's just very, very dim.

Though, obviously, you'd want to make it just slightly brighter than actual night, if you don't then you can't very well see anything.

I've found that muting the colour to some degree also helps.  Usually when there is less light colours are harder to distinguish, and they all blur into something similar, yet not entirely undefined.  I'd say around about half saturation.

One thing to try Rio is to have also a white key light to emulate the moon's reflection of the sun. Some nights the moon can be pretty bright. Most people choose blue as a "night color" is because when cameras were set to auto white balance, they would most often go for something "cooler".

Last edited by Gentry Studios (January 30, 2015 (12:30pm))

I didn't say they were the same, I said that they were almost the same.  It's just that night is much darker, day is much brighter.

On a night lit by a full moon, the angular diameter of the moon is around the same as the angular diameter of the sun, thus the size of the light-source isn't really changed.  However, the light should still probably be ever so slightly defused as during night there is often times a slight low night fog even if it is a clear night, but probably only slightly.

I say this because I once tried taking a long exposure picture of a moonlit night and was surprised to discover that the forest looks almost exactly the same in the picture as it looks during the day.  Of course, during the day you'd only need an exposure a fraction of a second, but at night you need the exposure to be five minutes.
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The sky through the leaves even looks sky-blue.  And the shadows are still relatively sharp.  However, diffused slightly because of the night fog, slightly because of the rustling of the trees due to the long exposure, and slightly because of the time it took to take the picture making the light source itself by blurred.

Night is also usually around the same hue as daytime, and is not actually particularly blue, as has been said.

i feel like stars need to be a little smaller looking, but that's just me. Also, I don't tend to like them so boke-ish. It's greatly improved though!