Understanding Composition
Learn all about the importance of composition in this new Blender Guru tutorial.
It took me 8 years to learn this the hard way: that Understanding Composition is one of the most important things you can learn as a CG artist.
And yet almost no one in the CG field is teaching it. Which is why I’ve made this video – because I truly believe it’s fundamental to becoming a better artist.
Discover:
- Why a lack of composition knowledge can undermine your efforts
- The 3 stages of a well composed image
- The most common mistake artists make
- Simple rules to create more engaging artwork
Enjoy!
Funny I just read a very interesting article in the current ImagineFX where James Gurney debunks a lot of these composition tropes. How the eyes sees a picture has nothing to do with grids and golden ratios etc your eyes look at a pictures in a staccato pattern jumping from one point of interest to another and are particularly drawn to figures and faces.
A lot of these so called composition rules or guides were developed long before eye tracking technology came about, now that we have that technology the short comings of these guides are been seen.
Some composition rules are a bit too sophisticated, but there are other photographic rules that, even if you don’t use them, they force you to plan a work in advance. Understanding patterns, colors, geometry, curves, are really important to achieve depth and dynamic in the final picture. Of course, once you know them you can decide to break them to achieve a new surprising result. In this context I would suggest a book: “The Photographer’s Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos”.
Most of what you have mentioned is e still valid. The main point of the article was examine the compositional guides of using grids, golden ratios spirals etc and comparing it to how our eyes actually look at pictures. For example the picture above with Sintel entering the cave, no matter where you placed her that was were you eye would be drawn. Even things like a caption can promote you to look at specific places in a picture.
We seek out people in pictures, in a crowd composition you eyes would jump from face to face, ignoring the grids and spirals the artist used in composing the picture. Animals also draw people attention and story telling elements. We ‘read’ a drawing to try and understand the narrative behind it with our eyes jumping from one element to the next in a very individual manner.
Most of Gurney articles and books spring from his blogs so I am sure you can Google and read some of the very interesting things he has done with eye tracking technology.