Lighting and Background

Without raytracing shadows

To start with, I wanted to have a purely black background to emphasise all character movement and keep with the dark mood and aesthetic. However, without shadows the character and ball almost look like theyre floating so thought maybe a very subtle shadow would ground it a little more. 

Trying to sort out the shadow on the ball:

For some reason, in this scene only, the shadows on the ball just dont want to cooperate. No matter how I change to raytracing options or the settings of the lights the shadow remains the same pixelated mess. I really don't know what to do and am awaiting feedback from the facebook group. Fingers crossed there is a easy solution. 

Anyway, apart from that mess I am very happy with how the last lighting example is looking and will apply the same sort of setup to the rest of the animation.

Example of the running scene lighting:

Such mood, many feels. Wow.