Lighting and Mood

I want to light the environment during twilight. There are several reasons for this. Some are for visual reasons whilst others are creative.

Visual:

I chose this time of day because I felt it would allow for a lot of visual interest within the level. I feel I will have a lot of potential to create a stronger environment by exagerating things like long drawn shadows and strong highlights on objects. By pushing the lighting effects in this way I can add a lot of nice visual interest to the scene. The strong orange light will make the mansion feel hot and stuffy, further adding to the dusty, abandoned feel of the place.

Creative:

I believe setting the scene during the hour of twilight will evoke a lot of interesting emotion. There is a sort of poetic appropriatness about having the mansion bathed in twilight. The Gilded Age has long since ended and the mansion is past its glory days. The sun setting on the mansion is evocative of the sun setting on the good and bad of that era of history once and for all. It also adds a slight element of unease as darkness is quick to follow twilight, and who wants to be exploring a creepy mansion during the dark?

Here are some pictures I took of an abandoned house during the twilight:

With these lighting studies I feel you get a sense of the humidity. As the environment is set in America I want to emphasise the heat!