APP Home (AOI): Compositions and Drawing Characters

Storyboard Tutorials

Having been inspired by the storyboards I analysed, I wanted to research further into their composition methods to figure out how they made their scenes trigger emotions as well as create depth.

How to Create Depth in Four Ways

According to the Storyboard Tips from Dreamworks (http://nofilmschool.com/2013/09/storyboarding-tips-dreamworks/), they have listed four ways to create composition:

• Avoid flat staging
  This basically means to have a point of perspective, and it's generally better to use more than one (they have advised to use three vanishing points). 

• Use grids
  This will allow me to figure out where to place people instead of having them dotted randomly that it almost looks as if they're floating in mid-air. The grid will provide a sort of ground, and this will help me work with my perspective point as well.

• Use foreground, mid-ground and background 
  This means placing objects at different 'levels' in order to create depth. For example if we were on the Westminster bridge looking at the Big Ben, the Big Ben will be in the far background, the cars on the bridge on the other side in the background, the cars on the our side in the mid-ground, and we're at the foreground. 

• Group multiple characters
  This wouldn't necessarily apply to my illustration as I'm not doing a storyboard, but if I was I could make it easier by grouping multiple characters together and labelling them so I know where each one is as I move onto the next board.

Composition

I went onto Google and soon collected a small list of various compositions, drawing sketches beside them to help me to understand them a bit more.

However what I couldn't really understand was the golden ratio; it was quite difficult to see how it actually works, but I think it follows a smooth curve...

Picture Tutorials

When I looked at another website, Drawing and Composition for Story Telling (http://www.floobynooby.com/IPUB/comp1.html), I came across a little table of storyboard terminology. Even though it might not be relevant it's nice to see that there are actually different names for different compositions. Besides, I could use one or two of these compositions in my piece!

I then came across another interesting diagram that discusses the importance of having a good pose, and that if it's easily read as a silhouette then it's perfect. I'm hoping to incorporate silhouettes into my design so this was really helpful advice!

As I found that website so useful, that I scrolled down further to see what else they had about drawing characters. As you can see in this tutorial here, they briefly cover the importance of movements and how important it is for each character to appear different by how they act. They also stress not to use 'wooden' poses because they lack expression, and it's actually easier just to draw quick and smooth curves instead. 

I noticed that the anatomy of these characters is very stylised yet very effective! I would really like to try out their curve technique that they use as the base for the pose. 

Here they are explaining more about the line technique shown previously, and this actually looks a lot easier than drawing the figure first! This is what I would call 'gesture' drawing. 

Using Silhouettes: Jan Pienkowski

This idea of using silhouettes then reminded me of one of my inspirational illustrators of all time: Jan Pienkowski.

I've noticed that there is a strong use of colour within his paintings that bring out the silhouettes even more, and these silhouettes are so defined that – even when blacked out – it's easy to tell what they are doing and how they are interacting with each other.

I would really like to do something with silhouettes because, as shown here, they immediately create that fairy tale atmosphere. I would like to portray London folktales within my illustration to show the 'magical' side of London, so by using silhouettes I could create more of a focus on these characters because I hope to do a rather detailed background of London. This might also bring up connotations of Pienkowski's work that he did for Fairy Tale books and further strengthen the magical feeling. 

This reminds me of one of my previous projects where I drew influence from Pienkowski, as I had previously noted (in that project) that he has tells stories within his images. Perhaps I could draw inspiration from him again for this project? 

Overall conclusion of research:

Despite me not actually doing a storyboard, I found these tutorials really helpful because they do cover drawing characters in general. I now know that it's easier to base the character's movements on such 'lines drawings', and I've now got the idea of using an interesting composition as well as (possibly) using silhouettes for my characters.