06-13-2020, 02:20 PM
Yeah I didn't dislike the paws per se, they were kind of iconic although kind of repetitive since the other side of the hand also has a lot of orange.
The grey here, while I do kind of like the planar clarity it adds, it's not different enough from the surrounding blacks of the design to make a real difference.
About the "second way of fixing things", while it may sometimes mean "light everything the same way", it's more about looking to get specific effects from the lighting, the posing, the values, and repeating them through different scenarios.
Each painting is going to have different compositional elements, LINE, PERSPECTIVE(divided into a bunch of other elements), COLOR, VALUE, TEXTURE etc. and then there'll be the physical/practical elements, the actual forms of the subject, the lenses, the camera, the air, the actual physical laws that light follows etc. If you imagine yourself as a photographer, think of it as the effects you design versus the sources(the practical lights etc) that you can only manipulate a bit, move them around and not much more.
Specific styles or traditions will focus on some of those compositional elements over others and how to consistently subordinate them. It will also teach you best practices on how to manipulate the practical elements
Think of it as looking at your base design, you know your model sheet or whatever, and setting out to do an action illustration from it, do you want to "light" for the texture? "light" for the overlaps?, "light" for the big values, "light" for the receding lines, "light" for the color.
Same thing for the posing, do you pose for silhouette? pose for overlaps? pose for the big values?, pose for dynamism? pose for the gesture? the lines?
When you pick your lenses and your camera position, do you position your camera for overlaps, for the big values, for exposure? for a big contrast in proportion? or a small one? Do you wanna get a horizontal graphic line out of the soles of the shoes or you would rather move the camera up and point down to instead make use of that curver silhouette of the shoe.
When you add smoke or humidity in the air, do you do it for mood? to hide something in the fog? to really imply the space between 2 props?
When it comes to your practical elements (even if they are kind of imaginary like in illustration), before you think about whether you are emulating them accurately (the lenses, the light falloff etc.), think, "what am I trying to get out of them".
All of this is ridiculously complicated so most artists just kind of stick to a tradition until they've developed their intuition, you wanna show something is behind something else? make it darker or make it lighter, either go abstract to achieve that or move those imaginary practical lights until you get the shadows that achieve that effect.
You wanna make a round form pop? put a specular highlight on it, either do it just because *style*, or find practical reasons for it, in live action movies people seem kind of scared of just going full abstract, so they find practical plot-driven excuses to show these things.
If you wanna make a buff dude look really buff, start the scene at the end of their workout so the sweat gives them good specular highlights, you want a nice crosscontour that really shows the bulk of their chest? gotta give them some old shitty wiry tanktop like those 80s bodybuilders.
Wanna make a guy look dizzy and disoriented, tilt the camera, or put some "accidentally" tilted props behind them.
If you start researching the most iconic movie characters and scenes, they tended to focus on one or 2 big elements, form, value, color, gesture, space, whatever. You can't go all out with all of them, they eat eachother up. Dunno if it was Ingres or Gammel who talked about how you can't have beautiful stained glass with perfect lines, the lines will eat up the color, or viceversa.
Really start thinking of the most iconic scenes you can think of, think of how vitto corleone is introduced, what is the lighting and the color doing, is there CRAZY perspective? CRAZY texture? is it worse because it doesn't have those things?
Browse this channel and look at the best movie shots ever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU5gyzplpR4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MhP1PekkFo
They let the secondary elements subordinate to the main ones, if the focus is graphic impact, forms become silhouettes, if the focus is values, color takes a step back, perhaps perspective too, they compliment the major elements, they "fill the gaps" but don't overtake them.
For the transition questions, yeah, the Alex Senechal Visual Design basics tut will answer all of those. When I said to always transition between different elements I should've worded it "ALWAYS BE CONSCIOUS OF THE TRANSITION", there's always going to be a transition, being careful of what that transition says about the relationship between those 2 objects is what matters; and what it has to achieve, do you wanna exaggerate the space between them or understate it for example.
About the fog to show space, there you go again trying to be correct roto.
![[Image: QwxaWUy.png]](https://i.imgur.com/QwxaWUy.png)
What your brain interprets and what light effects happen physically are 2 different things, you can trick somebody into incorrectly interpreting a real world situation, there's plenty trompe l'oeil examples in art, shit, faking real world situations through a smart use of shape and color is kind what representational art does, it's still just a rectangle.
Your brain doesn't sit down to do calculations about the humidity of the air before guessing that a mountain is behind another, our brains just see a soft white gradient between 2 objects and instantly go "HAH, I KNOW WHICH ONE IS IN FRONT".
the cubists milked the shit out of that transition between objects, wether doing it with black or with white, they really made you feel some bullshit was in front of the other bullshit.
![[Image: qoNbVBA.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/qoNbVBA.jpg)
I see a lot of realists who think "but realistic art doesn't do that"
Here's where they are wrong kiddo
![[Image: CNSNidA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/CNSNidA.png)
^komarck I think
"b-but you can't do that always, here it works because there's dust and fog and humid something something and blablabla"
![[Image: 4AmABUZ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4AmABUZ.png)
^komarck
Hey, you wanna get a similar effect with a practical object? throw a big white water shape between the characters.
![[Image: 9rYhwKZ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/9rYhwKZ.png)
^komarck
put the big white element behind the darker character
![[Image: fjQdA8t.png]](https://i.imgur.com/fjQdA8t.png)
komarck
GIVE THEM A WHITE CAPE or light it so it's a noticeably lighter or darker tone than the character.
![[Image: meeCTcA.png]](https://i.imgur.com/meeCTcA.png)
wes burt
A "lucky" tongue of smoke or humidity that just accidentally happened to make the spacial quality of your composition work, how fortunate.
In animation they do this shit all the time, they dress their characters for perspective, they design the wardrobe to show space
![[Image: fDvoCc1.png]](https://i.imgur.com/fDvoCc1.png)
yoshida
how lucky that the inside of the collar is darker than the guy's skin therefore in almost any lighting condition you'll get a good, clear overlap.
I think harry carmean is amazing at showing the spatial qualities of his drawings, developing a taste for this stuff will do anybody good. They really do this type of thing a lot in modern fantasy illustration, they do it A TON in splashart, although more subtly.
![[Image: WPx03eJ.png]](https://i.imgur.com/WPx03eJ.png)
Carmean
Granted, most of these examples have been about showing space, and that's kind of because getting that sense of space seems to be the name of the game for a lot of modern illustration and promotional concept art, not every image has to do it, you can perfectly make a wonderful graphic image, or one were the colors just fly free, unbounded by structure or space, but space seems to be the hot thing for a ton of artists, maybe because painters don't get this stuff for free, so we obsess over the tricks we can use to fake it.
For sure you should start trying to bullshit your shadows, 100%, don't get me wrong, as we get better we start to be able to think both graphically and practically, but without being familiar with the shadows you want to get, HOW ARE YOU GONNA KNOW WHERE TO PLACE THE LIGHTS!!!.
Gotta practice both, hey, filmmakers work with practical elements and they get great shadows, at some point you just get good enough that you work those lights like you were born to, but first you gotta familiarize yourself with the shapes you want to get, and for that, there's nothing wrong with bullshitting the lighting sometimes, hey, nobody knows if that big ass shadow somes from a cloud, a platform, a lightray being blocked by a leave, who knows, as you do it you get better at gauging those elements that have to be accurate, versus the ones you can bullshit a little.
Photographers and filmmakers lie a lot though, they never tell you what is happening outside the camera, could be ANYTHING
![[Image: yTy056c.png]](https://i.imgur.com/yTy056c.png)
About the shadow on the arm, it's what I said earlier in this post, there's no "BETTER", there's only which qualities you want to accentuate, if you make it dark, the distance between them is reinforced, if you don't, then it's more graphic, it's your choice, but remember that the other elements are there to strengthen and solidify that main one, if you want it to be graphic, is the silhouette graphic enough too?, are the shadows even necessary or should you push for harsher colors. Your choice, I really like looking at hokusai's stuff when I wanna do graphic things.
Get the hans bacher and mateu mestre books if you wanna get good at film stuff, The illusion of Life has a lot of good lessons on how drawing is super limited, so you gotta set dress, wardrobe, and set the scene to get certain effects, you aren't free to just get things accurate, you gotta find the effects that will make it believable and solid. Their principles of solid drawing are GOLD.
The grey here, while I do kind of like the planar clarity it adds, it's not different enough from the surrounding blacks of the design to make a real difference.
About the "second way of fixing things", while it may sometimes mean "light everything the same way", it's more about looking to get specific effects from the lighting, the posing, the values, and repeating them through different scenarios.
Each painting is going to have different compositional elements, LINE, PERSPECTIVE(divided into a bunch of other elements), COLOR, VALUE, TEXTURE etc. and then there'll be the physical/practical elements, the actual forms of the subject, the lenses, the camera, the air, the actual physical laws that light follows etc. If you imagine yourself as a photographer, think of it as the effects you design versus the sources(the practical lights etc) that you can only manipulate a bit, move them around and not much more.
Specific styles or traditions will focus on some of those compositional elements over others and how to consistently subordinate them. It will also teach you best practices on how to manipulate the practical elements
Think of it as looking at your base design, you know your model sheet or whatever, and setting out to do an action illustration from it, do you want to "light" for the texture? "light" for the overlaps?, "light" for the big values, "light" for the receding lines, "light" for the color.
Same thing for the posing, do you pose for silhouette? pose for overlaps? pose for the big values?, pose for dynamism? pose for the gesture? the lines?
When you pick your lenses and your camera position, do you position your camera for overlaps, for the big values, for exposure? for a big contrast in proportion? or a small one? Do you wanna get a horizontal graphic line out of the soles of the shoes or you would rather move the camera up and point down to instead make use of that curver silhouette of the shoe.
When you add smoke or humidity in the air, do you do it for mood? to hide something in the fog? to really imply the space between 2 props?
When it comes to your practical elements (even if they are kind of imaginary like in illustration), before you think about whether you are emulating them accurately (the lenses, the light falloff etc.), think, "what am I trying to get out of them".
All of this is ridiculously complicated so most artists just kind of stick to a tradition until they've developed their intuition, you wanna show something is behind something else? make it darker or make it lighter, either go abstract to achieve that or move those imaginary practical lights until you get the shadows that achieve that effect.
You wanna make a round form pop? put a specular highlight on it, either do it just because *style*, or find practical reasons for it, in live action movies people seem kind of scared of just going full abstract, so they find practical plot-driven excuses to show these things.
If you wanna make a buff dude look really buff, start the scene at the end of their workout so the sweat gives them good specular highlights, you want a nice crosscontour that really shows the bulk of their chest? gotta give them some old shitty wiry tanktop like those 80s bodybuilders.
Wanna make a guy look dizzy and disoriented, tilt the camera, or put some "accidentally" tilted props behind them.
If you start researching the most iconic movie characters and scenes, they tended to focus on one or 2 big elements, form, value, color, gesture, space, whatever. You can't go all out with all of them, they eat eachother up. Dunno if it was Ingres or Gammel who talked about how you can't have beautiful stained glass with perfect lines, the lines will eat up the color, or viceversa.
Really start thinking of the most iconic scenes you can think of, think of how vitto corleone is introduced, what is the lighting and the color doing, is there CRAZY perspective? CRAZY texture? is it worse because it doesn't have those things?
Browse this channel and look at the best movie shots ever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU5gyzplpR4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MhP1PekkFo
They let the secondary elements subordinate to the main ones, if the focus is graphic impact, forms become silhouettes, if the focus is values, color takes a step back, perhaps perspective too, they compliment the major elements, they "fill the gaps" but don't overtake them.
For the transition questions, yeah, the Alex Senechal Visual Design basics tut will answer all of those. When I said to always transition between different elements I should've worded it "ALWAYS BE CONSCIOUS OF THE TRANSITION", there's always going to be a transition, being careful of what that transition says about the relationship between those 2 objects is what matters; and what it has to achieve, do you wanna exaggerate the space between them or understate it for example.
About the fog to show space, there you go again trying to be correct roto.
What your brain interprets and what light effects happen physically are 2 different things, you can trick somebody into incorrectly interpreting a real world situation, there's plenty trompe l'oeil examples in art, shit, faking real world situations through a smart use of shape and color is kind what representational art does, it's still just a rectangle.
Your brain doesn't sit down to do calculations about the humidity of the air before guessing that a mountain is behind another, our brains just see a soft white gradient between 2 objects and instantly go "HAH, I KNOW WHICH ONE IS IN FRONT".
the cubists milked the shit out of that transition between objects, wether doing it with black or with white, they really made you feel some bullshit was in front of the other bullshit.
I see a lot of realists who think "but realistic art doesn't do that"
Here's where they are wrong kiddo
^komarck I think
"b-but you can't do that always, here it works because there's dust and fog and humid something something and blablabla"
^komarck
Hey, you wanna get a similar effect with a practical object? throw a big white water shape between the characters.
^komarck
put the big white element behind the darker character
komarck
GIVE THEM A WHITE CAPE or light it so it's a noticeably lighter or darker tone than the character.
wes burt
A "lucky" tongue of smoke or humidity that just accidentally happened to make the spacial quality of your composition work, how fortunate.
In animation they do this shit all the time, they dress their characters for perspective, they design the wardrobe to show space
yoshida
how lucky that the inside of the collar is darker than the guy's skin therefore in almost any lighting condition you'll get a good, clear overlap.
I think harry carmean is amazing at showing the spatial qualities of his drawings, developing a taste for this stuff will do anybody good. They really do this type of thing a lot in modern fantasy illustration, they do it A TON in splashart, although more subtly.
Carmean
Granted, most of these examples have been about showing space, and that's kind of because getting that sense of space seems to be the name of the game for a lot of modern illustration and promotional concept art, not every image has to do it, you can perfectly make a wonderful graphic image, or one were the colors just fly free, unbounded by structure or space, but space seems to be the hot thing for a ton of artists, maybe because painters don't get this stuff for free, so we obsess over the tricks we can use to fake it.
For sure you should start trying to bullshit your shadows, 100%, don't get me wrong, as we get better we start to be able to think both graphically and practically, but without being familiar with the shadows you want to get, HOW ARE YOU GONNA KNOW WHERE TO PLACE THE LIGHTS!!!.
Gotta practice both, hey, filmmakers work with practical elements and they get great shadows, at some point you just get good enough that you work those lights like you were born to, but first you gotta familiarize yourself with the shapes you want to get, and for that, there's nothing wrong with bullshitting the lighting sometimes, hey, nobody knows if that big ass shadow somes from a cloud, a platform, a lightray being blocked by a leave, who knows, as you do it you get better at gauging those elements that have to be accurate, versus the ones you can bullshit a little.
Photographers and filmmakers lie a lot though, they never tell you what is happening outside the camera, could be ANYTHING
About the shadow on the arm, it's what I said earlier in this post, there's no "BETTER", there's only which qualities you want to accentuate, if you make it dark, the distance between them is reinforced, if you don't, then it's more graphic, it's your choice, but remember that the other elements are there to strengthen and solidify that main one, if you want it to be graphic, is the silhouette graphic enough too?, are the shadows even necessary or should you push for harsher colors. Your choice, I really like looking at hokusai's stuff when I wanna do graphic things.
Get the hans bacher and mateu mestre books if you wanna get good at film stuff, The illusion of Life has a lot of good lessons on how drawing is super limited, so you gotta set dress, wardrobe, and set the scene to get certain effects, you aren't free to just get things accurate, you gotta find the effects that will make it believable and solid. Their principles of solid drawing are GOLD.