Aerial artist creates detailed light painting with help of five drones

Light painting with drones is a fascinating art form. In essence, it comes down to carefully programming the waypoints and then taking a picture of the movements of the drone with another camera and a very slow shutter speed. Children of Darklight aerial artist Frodo Álvarez takes the genre to a whole new level with his detailed light drawing of a soccer player.

Aerial artist creates detailed light painting with help of five drones

Álvarez has been engaged in light painting since 2009. First for the hobby, but since 2015 also professional. He regularly uses drones to be able to work in the third dimension as well. Because of that experience, creative agency Creartys soon came to Álvarez with the question of whether it was possible to draw a football player in the air.

For the project, Álvarez enlisted the help of UMILES Drone Light Show.

“They did an excellent job programming the drones. The challenge was that we would have only four or five attempts to frame the scene, get the ball shape right, play with depth and perspective – depending on the distance from the camera on the ground – and properly illuminate the drawn lines,” Álvarez tells PetaPixel.

“We only had four attempts because of the drone batteries and the curfew at 11 PM because COVID restrictions,” he continues.

In the end, it took five drones to make the drawing to obtain the correct exposure. Thanks to the multi-color LEDs in the drones, the figure could be given multiple colors. The drones had to be carefully programmed so that they could repeat the drawing perfectly for each of the four attempts.

More articles about drone light shows and aerial art can be found here.

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This article first appeared on dronewatch.nul and is written by Wiebe de Jager who is also a DroneXL contributor.