Week 3: Compositions and Practice script

Why is it that I can't draw when given time in class? Just the thought of it makes me freeze up...I look at my work in conjunction with other class members and I just feel my work is so lame and childish looking AND I don't feel I have a succint style of my own. Not like when I look at Kyles or Damiens or Liams characters, you can tell immediatly who did what.

Anyway thats my whinge for the day...Now, down to business.

This week we revisited Composition and its relevance to storyboarding. I happened to work the night before, and to have something to read over my dinner I printed off "Storyboards: The Art of Cinematic Storytelling - Part 1". Reading it alot of the concepts listed throughout I was thinking are just commonsense, but then the next day when I first started my storyboards I was like "ohhh...I see..." I guess, like most people, I too had the idea that "they're just storyboards" As long as you get a sense of what action or who's in the frame thats all that is important. But it was quickly pointed out to me through Marks lecture that storyboarding is equivalent to say the layout and planning you would do for a painting. If you don't do this necessary research and planning then your overall project will either take twice as long to complete because your having to fix things up or figure things out as you go...OR...you just get a half hearted end result. How many times have you watched a movie or seen art work that you see a spark of something in it that you like and you say, if only they'd pushed that farther it would have been so much better...I wander if that is because they didn't do enough develpment planning stages?

Also while reading the notes posted my Mark I recalled the pixar storyboards I had found when researching for our week 1 - Inn homework. They were so beautiful as individual peices, but man if you see them together, they were so dynamic and definately portrayed the story...funny thing was though, that most of the characters had next to no detail and yet you still made it out. My aim is to be able to be that communcative in my drawing and story telling techniques.

Speaking of story telling, Mark also started telling us about a great book we should consider purchasing Cinematic Storytelling. This was like kind of creepy actually, cause that night before I was asking my script writing friend at work if he had any good books or links to film technique etc...and he was like mmm no!!! So when Mark brought this up in the lecture I was like thats it...I'm getting it! So went straight to Folio books, but they didn't have any so will call me next week with order.

More story boarding notes from the lecture...sorry I digress so easily...

Again the ever important 180 degree rule was highlighted..(and you watch...even though I remember how many times we've been told about this, I bet Ill be somebody that forgets it...)

Also when considering composition remember

1. THE RULE OF THIRDS - A great explanation of the uses of thirds in composition can be found here. Its an article I found on the Digital Camera website. I felt a storyboard was a snapshot of what we had in mind we wanted to see and feel in that frame...which is what we concentrate on more obviously when trying to take a decent photo.


2. REPITITION - Things repeating are generally more pleasing to the eye


3. PICTURE FLOW - The relationship of objects to eachother.
   

Ill attempt to show an example of Number 1 and 3 by analysing this photo I took in Melbourne when visiting for 24hours in July 2004.

Even though the seagull is bright white and maybe what the viewer is attracted to first, our eye is quickly drawn to other whites in the picture. So from the seagull our eye is drawn to the sandstone column behind the lady, but we stop on her on the way as she has some white just under hear chin. The chairs create lines and patterns which also direct our eye into the focal point, once again the lady. She is slightly off centre with majority of birds and the pattern of the chair to the left which balances the weight in the photo. So there are thirds in the tones of colour, the patterns found and in the line of direction.

The below photo is an attempt to show an example of Number 2 - Repitition. I am a sucker of repitition or pattern as I have done a whole series of work on using this in conjunction with the fibonnaci sequence. Also the contrast in colours here creates an interest and draws our eye around the frame.



When we were discussing these composition techniques in class I kept remembering my studies from USC and the period of work I did using the Golden Mean and Fibonacci sequence to also create compositions...I think these methods also lend to a more interesting composition.

To see some of my research and notes on my obsession with Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Mean - just have a squiz below:-

These two Mathematical properties are very closely related, in the fact that they divide objects up proportionally, both have their place in nature eg. the breeding of rabbits, the way plants grow, the qualities of the shell spiral and they are both also closely related to art. Artists use these methods to not only create patterns but to also lay out there objects on surface where it is aesthetically pleasing to the viewers eyes.

As you can hopefully see from this really bad image from my art journal, this is an example of the golden mean in action. The image is a copy of French Impressionist George Seurat's Bathers(1859-1891). the red lines are outlining the 3 Golden rectangles used to create the composition.

Here is an example of my art work where I have employed the Fibonnaci sequence to create a pattern

This link has alot of interesting analyis' of the fibonacci theory. The part particulary on film I have included below.

Fibonacci in Films The Russian Sergie Eisenstein directed the classic silent film of 1925 The Battleship Potemkin (a DVD or video version of this 75 minute film is now available, both in PAL format). He divided the film up using golden section points to start important scenes in the film, measuring these by length on the celluloid film. Jonathan Berger of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics used this as an illustration of Fibonacci numbers in a lecture course.Dénes Nagy, in a fascinating article entitled Golden Section(ism): From mathematics to the theory of art and musicology, Part 1 in Symmetry, Culture and Science, volume 7, number 4, 1996, pages 337-448 talks about whether we can percieve a golden section point in time without being initially aware of the whole time interval. He gives a reference to his own work on golden section perception in video art too (page 418 of the above article).

I think this is so creative and interesting...so not only can you use these techniques to create the picture but when sequencing pictures together aswell, such as film or animation prehaps, you can also employ it!

And then we started the practice thumbnails...here are my crappy crappity crap one...Lets just say, when it comes to the real deal, I can remmeber to practice everything I have talked about in this entry - Pattern, line, flow, rule of thirds and golden mean and fibonacci.