TEACH YOURSELF | How To Add Feeling Through Composition

Artistic know-how does not need to be expensive or attained at a school like CalArts. That's why I research free online advice on drawing and encourage my readers to do the same. You can take your education into your own hands.

For this post, I explore the relationship between composition and feeling -- which is, of course, essential to understand for filmmakers. Conveying emotions through visuals is part of what makes filmmaking so exciting and creative!

My hope is that these handouts and videos, which I share below, can inspire students to learn the fundamentals of composition and feeling -- without paying a fortune!

Lines represent feelings

Here is a handout that was shared by Mark Kennedy on his blog Temple of the Seven Golden Camels. These illustrations, originally from the book Creative Illustration, show how different shapes connote different feelings. For instance, horizontals and verticals are calm, whereas diagonals are full of motion and tension.

(Source: sevencamels)

So depending on the mood of the piece you are working on, different lines and how they divide the canvas will aid in conveying that feeling you’re going for.

Brad Bird did a handout on how to add depth to your storyboards/compositions.

Pace and staging characters 

Here is also a video that analyzes the pacing of the camera moves in Brad Bird's movies and how such adds to the story of each film, respectively. Toward the end, there is a brief mentioning of symmetric vs. dynamic filmmaking.

Brad Bird- Playful Cinema from The Royal Ocean Film Society on Vimeo.

As this video highlights, how you make cuts and stage your characters has a great effect on the ‘feel’ of the movie.

Tony Zhou has made a similar video that explains why Edgar Wright’s filmmaking works so well – namely, because he takes advantage of the film medium and shows visuals that are funny, even without dialogue.

Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy from Tony Zhou on Vimeo.

I recommend taking a look at some (or all) of the videos Zhou has posted!

Characters and how they fit into the overall composition likewise connotes a lot about the feeling of a scene. For instance, a character can be visually depicted as taking up a large portion of a shot and we will sense that she or he is more important or powerful than any other given character.

This video, by Zachery Ramos-Tayolor, gives an example from the movie Steve Jobs. It highlights how the characters’ movement indicates who is in power.

Steve Jobs - Blocking & Realist Acting from Zackery Ramos-Taylor on Vimeo.

Similarly, Mark Kennedy did a blog post that analyzes the movements of characters and how such symbolize the power dynamics within a scene in Paths of Glory.

(Source: sevencamels)

The camera angle can also aid in power dynamics. When I was studying How to Train Your Dragon, I noticed that in scenes when Stoick was imposing, the camera angle was always placed up toward him and down toward Hiccup. This established a power relationship – Stoick seems authoritative, whereas hiccup is small and unsure.

Thanks for reading along! And as always, a thousand thanks to the artists who shared their advice online!

Good luck studying.

TEACH YOURSELF | Character Design

Can anything be appealing?

In animation, the answer is typically "yes." Character designers can make any design appear appealing based on the attitude and personality of the character. Even a villain needs some form of appeal, something that communicates who that character is -- else, the audience will be distracted by the design. 

If you'd like to study appeal, I'll share some advice and links to blogs online so that you can 'teach yourself' and use the knowledge available on the internet.

Defining "appeal"

As I hint above, appeal is not necessarily "beauty" – it’s a conscious design choice to make different forms and proportions stand out in a character, based on who that character is and what the designer wants the onlooker to feel. 

Appeal can take many different forms -- in Disney's Bambi, the designers chose to make the appeal apparent through contrasts; the head is big, compared to a small body. The legs are long, compared to the small body. The eyes are huge, compared to the rest of the head. These contrasts make the proportions 'appealing' to the eye because they give the eye various shapes to look at. 

The importance of negative space

In contrast, a design that has the same proportions might not be as interesting to look at or give the eye periods of "rests." The negative space (the places where not a lot of things are going on) in Bambi's design functions as a type of break for the eye. If you give the eye too much "sameness," the eye won't know where to look and you might automatically find the design 'unappealing' without consciously putting a finger on it.

Glen Keane put this concept very simply -- three shapes put right next to each other is not as 'appealing' as three shapes where two of them are closer to each other than they are to the third.

Coming back to Bambi, the designers also chose to make Bambi appealing through round shapes, which connote softness and typically 'cutifies' anything (whether or not it is appropriate to "cutify" in animation is a topic worthy of its own post).

As Bambi grows up, these proportions change. His head is smaller than his body and his legs appear shorter. However, his design is still made of varying, round shapes that make for an appealing design.

Advice on the web

Griz and Norm share a lot of tips about appealing design on their Instagram, Griz & Norm. Here is an example:

Mark Kennedy also has many posts devoted to appeal on his blog, The Temple of the Seven Golden Camels.

I hope you'll find helpful tips on these sites and that my explanation of appeal has made sense to you. Enjoy studying these concepts! 

You can read more of my Teach Yourself tips here

TEACH YOURSELF | Sincerity

How do you take a drawing from "good" to "amazing?"

Many mentors from all corners of the internet believe the answer lies in "attitude." According to them, putting personality into your gestures/sketches is the single most important thing you can do to make your drawings stand out and have people connect to them on an emotional level.

Disney's Nine Old Men referred to this concept as "sincerity" and described it as the act of transcribing on paper what makes a character unique -- and therefore believable.

So how can you go about practicing sincerity in drawing? The answer from online sources: observation.

In a few lecture videos below, Glen Keane explains how he likes to make mental notes about what is going on with the pose he is sketching. He will ask himself what it is about the subject he’s drawing that makes them unique and worth depicting. He will not only put a verb to the action of what is going on but also observe exactly how the character performs the verb. 

The drawing has to be saying something – it has to communicate a feeling or a unique characteristic of the subject. Capturing this attitude takes a gesture drawing to the next level.

Keane begins his lecture at 2:17.

All the things that you observe out in real life help you put truth into the characters you animate. Your observations help you make each character unique. Just think about it – when you sit down to animate, you start with nothing and have to create a believable performance out of that thin air. You’ll need to know a lot about human behavior to do that; you'll need to know where to draw inspiration from. 

So what are the little things that people do in real life? How do people differ? How would a shy person walk? A confident one? Through these observations, you'll have a reservoir of impressions to pull from when the time comes to animate or create a character design.

As Glen Keane says in the above video:

“If there’s anything that I want to communicate to you guys, it’s not principles of animation in terms of squash and stretch and overlap and anticipation. I mean, there are a lot of things that are really essential. But the most important thing that I want you to come away with is learning to see. Or I guess I should say, learning to observe.”

Here are a few extra quotes on the connection between sincerity and observation:

“My sketch books and the figure drawings are the source for everything I’ve ever animated. It’s all these observations. The little things that make a huge difference. You don’t see it unless you are drawing it, and you have to draw it. In order to draw it, you have to have observed it. You can see it, or you can really see it” – Glen Keane

“DUUUUDE, we live in permanent Christmas-land. There are all these presents, all these great faces, moments and stories just surrounding you, and you only have to open your eyes and look at them to have them. Incredible!” – Iain McCaig

Lastly, here is a link to a brief documentary about animation. About halfway through the film, Glen Keane and Joanna Quinn explain how they use their sketchbooks to make sincere observations that can later be used for their animation.

I hope these explanations prove helpful.

As always, thanks to the artists who have shared their advice online for us to teach ourselves.

You can read more of my Teach Yourself blog posts here

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Sketch

If you've ever been frustrated that the characters you draw from your imagination are missing something, perhaps your sketching practice is at fault.

When you use a sketchbook to study from real life, this enhances your understanding of a given subject. By studying real life, you can make drawings from your imagination more believable because sketching can give you an understanding of what you are drawing -- an understanding that no amount of studying still images can give you. 

To help in finding techniques for sketching, I've included some of my favorite advice from all corners of the internet.

Advice

Copying from still images can only take you so far. Worst case scenario, it can actually teach you to only copy what you see. When you copy, you will be incapable of reproducing the character from your memory. Or if you do, it will be that specific character in that specific pose that you memorized.

This is similar to stretching only a particular muscle: you may be really good at stretching that muscle from a specific angle but as soon as you try to stretch it in a different way, you fall short and are unable to do it.

To avoid copying what you see, mentors across the internet urge artists to draw humans and animals that move around a lot. This forces you to capture the essence of each pose (the gesture). You get the impression of the person or animal and then you put your interpretation down on the paper, all within a matter of seconds so as to retain that first impression.

Sketching this way allows you to understand what you are drawing so that you can draw it from any angle based on your imagination. It functions like a brain exercise.

In these two videos, Aaron Blaise, a 2D animator, discusses how he approaches sketching animals:

Also, here are some handouts on drawing animals, possibly by Glen Keane, from Animation Meat.

When it comes to specific exercises to practice in my sketchbook, I have found the blog post, Doodle Dump, which suggests that you can draw a subject three times; the first time, looking at the subject; the second time, looking at your drawing of the subject; the third time, from memory. This way, you will ensure that you are not simply copying the subject and are instead drawing from and enhancing your memory.

I hope these tips will help you as you go out and sketch from real life. Let me know how you go.

TEACH YOURSELF | The Line Of Action

How can you convey the essence of a pose in a clear, interesting way that captivates the beholder of your drawing?

The 'Line of Action' is arguably one of the most efficient ways to do so.

On the internet, the 'Line of Action' has been covered by many artists and I am going to share some of my favorite advice in this post.

Let's get to it!

In these handouts, Pixar story artist Alex Woo explains that the 'Line of Action' is equivalent to the 'Main Idea' of the pose you're drawing:

(Source: woohoopictures)

Some more info on the ‘line of action,’ given to me by one of my CalArts teachers:

(Source: lindadornart)

(Source: sevencamels)

Finally, here is a handout from Griz and Norm:

(Source: grizandnorm)

Have fun studying these!

-Christine-

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Lead The Eye

Recently, I made about 1800 thumbnail studies from How to Train Your Dragon. Every time there was a cut or a camera move, I would hit pause and draw the shot. I got the idea to do so from a CalArts classmate, who in turn got the idea from a post by Emma Coats. While I did the sketches, I paid close attention to the composition of each frame. As Coats instructed in her post, I asked myself a series of questions about the shots, such as, where are the characters positioned? Why was there a cut? How is the frame divided? How are the angles and lines positioned in the shot? What do they lead the eye to? Where is the camera positioned?

I did this exercise to study what makes up a ‘good’ composition. I had come to accept that to learn about composition from movies, it is not enough to simply watch a lot of movies. In fact, when a composition is well made in a movie, it is often difficult for the audience to notice it – it flows into the storyline so well that that the audience gets carried away into that world.

To many people, myself included, composition can therefore be a bit of a mystery.

The first time I heard about composition was in my Art History classes during high school. In these classes, we would analyze paintings from around the world and how they reflected the thought pattern of a given society during a specific time period. When we got to the Renaissance and Venetian art, we learned that these artists used shapes, such as converging lines and figural pyramids, to purposefully guide the eye through the painting and convey the ‘mood’ of the time. We learned that Renaissance artists used composition as a tool for creating visual depth and figurative meaning.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Still, I wasn’t sure what makes a ‘good’ composition. If composition is the arrangement of shapes within an image, then at what point does it become a ‘bad’ combination?

To settle the ins and outs of composition, I took a class at CalArts that covered composition. I found that composition is really just about making art that looks good to you while being mindful of the purpose behind the composition. 

In a nutshell, composition is about not settling before you’ve reached a point at which you’re happy with the ‘flow’ of the piece.

That being said, there are a few basic ‘rules’ to keep in mind.

To reinforce and remind myself what I have been taught, I have started analyzing movies on my own, like I did How to Train Your Dragon. On top of that, I like to scout online to find any resonating insight. In this post, I’m going to share some of the handouts and videos that have been helpful in understanding how to lead the eye through a composition. Most of these sources agree that good composition is about clarity, i.e. leading the eye to a point of interest, while being mindful of what you’re trying to communicate story-wise.

Advice

Artist Rad Sechrist thinks about the relationships between shapes as he makes compositions. He has made a handout on his site Rad How To that analyzes a painting and how the artist guides the onlooker through it.

(Source: radhowto)

Another example of leading the eye is to point everything toward a single center of interest:

(Source: andreasdeja)

Having the perspective lines converge where you want the audience to look is another way to guide the eye.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Yet more ways you can guide the eye through a composition is by contrast. You can create contrast though lighting, colors and/or patterns. Whichever element stands out the most (creates the greatest level of contrast to the rest of the elements) in a given composition will be where the eye looks. So for instance, if you have a composition with a majority of circular shapes and then one triangular shape, the audience will be attracted to the triangle.

(By Loui del Carmen, source: theartcenter)

Here is a video by Ahmed Aldoori that analyzes some paintings by Paul Felix. Aldoori explains how Felix uses some of the principles I have mentioned above to create his compositions.

I hope these links and explanations help!

As always, thanks to all the artists who shared this advice online!

-Christine-

TEACH YOURSELF | How To Do Gesture

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people

Leo Burnett, quoted in #Girlboss

As part of my Teach Yourself series, I’ve been wanting to do a post about advice on gesture drawing. After having searched online for tips for a while now, I realize it is hard to locate any blogs that focus specifically on gesture drawing. As a result, I have decided to compile specific advice in the form of videos and handouts as I have been able to find them. These tips all come from different corners of the Internet, as opposed to a few specific blogs.

Defining 'gesture'

Gesture is about capturing the essence of what you’re drawing.

It is arguably the single most important part of making a lifelike figure. Without it, a drawing will seem stiff. When I decided I wanted to go for CalArts, I made it a goal to really hone in on my gesture skills. 

Gesture is about feeling the action and making mental observations before you ever put the pen down to the paper. This way, you’ll communicate clearly and guide the eye of the onlooker through an appealing flow of lines.

Advice

Here is a handout by Griz and Norm on gesture drawing:

(Source: grizandnorm)

When you’re drawing a gesture, the essence of the pose should be captured within a minute or so – perhaps even sooner. Instead of focusing your attention on each little part of the body, you should focus on getting the whole figure down, without too much detail. This way, you have everything you need, should you decide to finish the drawing at a later point in time.

(Source: drawingsfromamexican)

Rad Sechrist shares some very good advice on his blog, Rad How To, about gesture:

In one of these handouts, Sechrist points to the fact you need to ‘push’ the pose. This is something I think a lot about, too, as I draw. It can be very easy to fall into the trap of  “straightening up” a pose and making it more symmetrical. But when a drawing looses its angles and tilts, it also looses its power and life. If this is something you struggle with, you have to make a conscious effort to overcome this tendency by exaggerating the pose.

(Source: grizandnorm)

On a final note, I want to thank all these artists for sharing their advice on gesture drawing!  

-Christine-