Hi,
i made a fanart animation of toph but i am not satisfied with the lighting in the shot. I drop some still and maybe someone can give feedback or examples on how to do it better. Maybe you have just seen a similar shoot?
Took quite some time so i want to learn more about lighing animations.
In particular the first one, i think the others are looking good.
Won’t spoiler the final 
This is the current setup:
Just find a nice HDRI, rotate it until you get something that looks nice, and you are done. We’re not in 90’s anymore to manually place lights in these kinds of scenes. 
Yes especially because blender has no light linking but a hdri is lighting everything and for a moody scene its not the best choice.
If you really think that light linking is what’s needed for a good moody scene then you have no chance honestly
HDRIs are so diverse it’s very easy to find one that suits the mood you are after.
Anyway, you are saying you are not satisfied with the lighting, yet when you are given an advice, you reject it immediately. It’s really difficult to improve that way.
I tried it with an HDRI thats why i wrote it so fast. Its not that i have not tested it and i even might have here somewhere an image of it. Its brighten up the whole scene which is not looking better in my opinion but i can post the image here in a moment.
For a moody scene light linking is not needed but normal productions cant do without it.
For example i could have a little spark in the eyes which would make it better i think.
You just need right HDRI… If you want moody, it needs to have lots of contrast If you want spark in the eye, it needs to have proper HDR hotspots.
I love the illuminated tools set:
http://illuminatedtools.com/library/
The whole library costs $99 and contains whopping 320+ HDRI maps. They are not that hires to be usable even for directly visible environment, but they are amazing for lighting your scenes, with their diversity.
Here are previews of what the entire pack looks like:
http://illuminatedtools.com/library/ext/
http://illuminatedtools.com/library/int/
There are lots of them with enough contrast and interesting light scenario for you to find something that will look just great.
I’m not a fan of Andrew, find him longwinded and pretentious, but with that said there are probably some good tips and approaches in this playlist and I can’t be arsed to search for something better right now.
I don’t necessarily agree with Rawalanche that you “just need the right HDRI”. However I do believe it can provide a great base. Its very good to start out with a HDRI as a soft fill. From there you take control with key lights, fill lights, rim lights etc. You have many ways to control the HDRI from the shader editor but its not a requirement to use one imho.
I would also strongly recommend modelling something of a background (even if its just a curved plane) and add a fixed camera. You can’t really expect light to work in changing scenarios. Like a rim light is very much bound to a certain camera position.
GL
Thanks i will test an hdri with more contrast and watch the playlist. I am also not a fan of andrew but sometimes he has the best tutorials for a specific area…
I made some improvements to the lighting at the beginning with your tips. Thanks guys and you can see the final here: Toph Fanart Animation (Avatar the last Airbender)
