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Contributor Tips: Spring Awakening, Minimalism, and the Color Red

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We’re approaching the end of the year, so it’s time to say goodbye to the holidays and focus on new beginnings. Try to think ahead and spend the long winter nights creating spring-themed illustrations and planning photo shoots for the coming season. Try composing some minimal music and templates for holidays that await us in early 2017.

We also have three new shoot briefs for our video artists — Young at Heart, Home Delivery, and LGBTQ+. For even more video-shoot ideas, check out our past briefs from November and October.
 

Music: Minimalism

Think minimal, new, and clean for the new year. As goals and lists are reviewed, people dig deep to think about what they want to do in the days ahead. We’re decluttering and making space for new habits and gadgets to help with the habits. And we’re all thinking that this time we’re really going to follow through. Help people out with some clean, minimal, mindful soundscapes.

Meditation Piano Loop by MatthewTanner

Clean and motivational is not to be confused with corporate inspirational; we’ve got plenty of the latter.

Corporate Technology by EfeDemirMusic
 

After Effects: Red Is the color

Chinese New Year is just at the end of January, followed by Valentine’s day, so red will be the color of the next few weeks. We only have 4 templates for Chinese New Year and a few Valentine’s templates, so we’ll be looking forward to more!

Chinese New Year Slideshow by Onbothsides

Parallax-themed templates sure look great. However, for now, we’re already saturated with various takes on the parallax template. Try to create something else now.

Parallax Slide – 3 versions by AEBlocks
 

Photos: Waiting for Spring 

Here’s something to look forward to: Spring — the season when snow is slowly melting down and nature is waking up. Shooting nature doesn’t have to be boring and images won’t get lost deep in our database. Try to catch spring nature as it is — blooming, fresh, and inspirational. Take your favorite models to the nearest forest between blooming wild flowers and create something peaceful, original, and creative. Let your models literally stand like trees. There’s a lot of time before spring starts, so take advantage of it, think about your upcoming spring shoots, and plan ahead.

Forest Nymph With Roots In A Long Skirt
Forest Nymph With Roots in a Long Skirt by ponomarencko

Don’t shoot images of nature without any clear idea and concept. Look for new points of view, new scenic places, new model poses — think outside the box and let your models do something unusual. You can add some light highlighting in post-processing to increase desired effects, but be careful about the amount and avoid too many changes, which could lead to less possibilities for buyers to use the concept.

Girl Drinks From A Cup, Magic Smoke
Girl Drinks From a Cup, Magic Smoke by kladyk
 

Illustrations: Awakening

While you’re getting through the long winter nights, draw some spring-awakening themes in the form of floral elements and animals. The trend is still leaning toward watercolors and similar traditional styles.

Watercolor Floral Composition
Watercolor Floral Composition by Zenina

One category where floral won’t make it big anymore, however, is backgrounds. We are currently inundated with this type of content, so we can’t recommend investing too much time into these — unless of course they are absolutely stunning and will stand out among all the competition!

Polish, Slavic Folk Art Art Heart With Flowers On Black - Wzory Lowickie
Polish, Slavic Folk Art Heart With Flowers on Black by RedKoala

Looking for more ideas and inspiration? Check out Contributor Tips from previous months here, and see which media was the most successful last month in our monthly Top Sellers collection.

Top image: Watercolor Floral Pattern by Zenina