Month: July 2015

That’s right! Don’t bottle yourself up inside your office or studio and expect to stay fresh! The brain needs air to breathe, and space for illumination. Artists needs to engage with the world around them.

A gorgeous plein air painting by  XiangYuan Jie, a master painter in the field of fine art and animation. To view more of Jie’s work visit here.

I’ve seen concept artists spend endless hours on Google images searching for reference of trees and leaves, while not considering for a second to look at, smell or touch the real thing outside the studio’s walls. I’ve witnessed animators, doggedly trying to figure out how the hips should look and feel in a dance move, while never getting up from his desk. It’s truly remarkable how disconnected we’ve become with ourselves and with the world around us!

This beautiful painting of NYC’s Village district is by the amazing Dice Tsutsumi, Co-founder of Tonko House. To see more of Dice’s work, visit here.

When I went to animation school in Toronto, my old classmate Yeon-Tae and I would regularly take outdoor field trips. Sure, we did our share of after-class life drawing sessions (for countless hours three to four times a week), but we always made the effort to experience drawing in the flesh, out in the fresh air, amongst living people and things that shake, glimmer and decay.

Draw on anything, anytime, anywhere. This series of rough charcoal sketches of my neighbor were made outdoors on an inexpensive 5×7″ newsprint notepad.

Almost every weekend, we spent nearly half the day going to cafe’s and bars to sketch or to the zoo (which was more than a 90 minute drive away) to study animals. We did it at first so we could get better, build a portfolio and to get an edge. But soon, we got to doing it, because it was so enjoyable and rewarding. We stretched not only our creative minds, but our legs and lungs. We did it, rain or shine, hell or high water. (Try drawing outside when it’s a cold minus -20 Celsius with wind chill! I’ve spent many hours drawing with nearly frozen fingers).

A pre-Tonko House Dice Tsutsumi, unknowingly caught on camera by a NY Times photographer in 1996. Dice is always outdoors capturing the real world for as long as I’ve known him.

All the drawing and practice did improve our skills. It also helped our careers – as we were both selected by Walt Disney Feature as part of their Animation Boot Camp training program (where we were joined by many other young talents, including Dice Tsutsumi, featured above). But the greatest part of all of it,  was the companionship. What a stupendous way to spend your time!  Good friends, bonding in time and space, expending energy and effort to grow creatively, celebrating art, sharing insight, and most of all, laughter. (Yeon-Tae was very good at stopping us periodically to check out a cool comic/Gundam store or sometimes just to grab ourselves a drink!) These are moments I never forget.

So stop with the “plans” to go sketching and just do it. The digital world is amazing, but the real one is even better.

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living. – Robert Henri

The Zen symbol for wholeness, emptiness and balance.

In the words of spiritual sage and author, Thomas Merton:

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”

These words ring so true don’t they? Balance is the ever elusive goal for many of us. Without balance, things look disjointed, off-kilter, and disharmonious. It’s tough to do or sustain in life, and almost as tricky to achieve in art, that is, without making things completely symmetrical and boring.

A comparison of shape geometry, placement and rhythm. Which is more interesting to you?

Balance can be easily achieved with symmetry or evenness, but that is neither effective or desirable. In animation, we refer to it as twinning but in entertainment circles, we call it uninteresting. Therefore, the creative individual is constantly challenged to find balance in their work without uniformity, which is, unfortunately, inherent in our age of digital technology. It’s the default setting — whether we’re talking about poses, timing, negative shapes, depth or lighting.

Most rigs, like this free one from Anim School, usually come in the form of a default T-Pose. Everything you get for free is even-steven.

But there are general artistic guidelines to help achieve this elusive goal. If the work is good, evenness is avoided, while balance is achieved —allowing for contrast, texture, and ultimately, greater interest — like in this example by Milt Kahl:

Milt Kahl’s beautiful staging, from Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, demonstrates great depth (using overlap and foreshortening), asymmetrical balance, point of focus and absolute clarity.

 Almost all films are structured in three acts, rather than an even four.  Syd Field’s three act paradigm chart, is pretty much the standard for not just Hollywood but almost the entire film-making world.

Great balance is needed not just in cinematic design but in every aspect of all artistic compositions, both visually and rhythmically. Whether you’re breaking down a piece of dialogue/story/layout, components must have ebb and flows between them, changes and surprises that make it interesting. It’s why divisions on thirds, or fifths work so well in screen composition:

David Lean’s epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, abides perfectly to the concept of dividing the screen into thirds, while giving the image balance, movement and beauty.

In both music and dialogue, there are ebbs and flows throughout. Good audio design gives a scene texture to work with.

Simple Dialogue breakdown to determine the flow and rhythm of the audio, hi-lighting syllables and rising tone of the recording.

If elements of your work/composition are too evenly spread out, the audience doesn’t know what to do. It doesn’t know where to look, what to focus on. Arrangement of shapes, must be orderly, balanced yet interestingly uneven.

Stanley Kubrick’s use of fifths in his landmark film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Notice how each division supports the whole.

 You also find balance achieved in good character design, where big shapes are complemented by smaller ones, and they are harmoniously integrated within the whole as often seen on character model sheets such as this:

In Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, there are wonderful compositions throughout the film. Although he’s famous for his dominant use of one point perspective and framing on fifths, he also did very intriguing things with perspective, sets and character placement, while still achieving balance:

 Does this optical illusion, created by the rabbit-ear telescoping of phone cables created by the mirror and placement of the George C. Scott’s character, imply in some way how much this woman owns him? The boxer shorts, pin up pose and high heels, are a further give away of the clear message sent by the director. From Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy, Dr. Stranglove.

What’s your main theme? who’s your central character? Change and contrast create interest. Variation gives the work texture and uniqueness. Allowing one area to dominate will give it focus.

Note the dominance of the screen right eye (elegantly placed right at the apex of the golden rectangle) in this gorgeous portrait by John Singer Sargeant.

So, be careful of balance. It must be there, but know that it’s unevenness, change and contrast that help create texture and interest. Only then, do you have a chance of holding on to an audience’s attention.