John K Stuff: More BG Layout Notes - HIERARCHY of Form and Composition

BG Layout artists, or the persons who will help me design the main scenes and setups will have to be able to draw a variety of types of forms, and use some basic principles of design and composition to make the scenes compose well with the characters.

The BGs should provide an instantly readable organic environment for characters to play out their stories.

Hopefully some of these qualities below will help you see what I am aiming for:

TREES - Build Trees out of overall forms, don't start with the details.

Each of these trees has an interesting overall form. Even the foliage is contained in a form; it's not a mess of random leaves.

When you go outside, squint your eyes when looking at trees. Try to see the form of the tree, rather than getting lost and confused in the details of leaves, bark and branches.

Each kind of tree has its own unique plan, and each member of each kind of tree has its own unique variation on the same overall plan.

Buildings/Cars- Man Made Organic Geometry

Man-made objects, such as houses and machines are made of simpler more geometric forms than nature's forms, but to be well-designed, they still have to have appealing, solid forms.

And, they also have to have variety in the shapes, details, textures, arrangement of forms.

Lots of negative shapes!

Composition. The biggest forms in the picture have to make the overall statement instantly. A viewer shouldn't be distracted by a lot of cluttered details and an absence of negative shapes.

What details there are should be much smaller than the bigger forms they help describe. They wrap around the bigger shapes- going in the same directions. Not in a strictly 100% mathematical way. there should be very slight organic imperfections, but not so much that they destroy the forms they are part of.

The bricks, windows etc. on the walls below are not drawn with a ruler; there are no 100% parallel lines. Edges have slight curves. Not all the shapes mirror each other.

The details are not evenly spaced apart.

The background is composed to make the character read easily in his environment.

This is the kind of thoughtful control I would like in the layouts of my cartoons. No haphazard wonky flat modern look.

Stylish but planned.

A car is more organic than a house, but still has an overall form, and again: the details wrap around the form. They don't go off in their own directions.

The door follows the form of the side of the car, the lines on the seats follow the shape of the seats, etc.

Nature - Organic Forms, but still forms

Good BG design makes the largest forms in the picture make a statement: a controlled purposeful instantly readable composition.

The details are less important.
The details follow the same perspective and physics as the larger forms.

Not all areas of detail are filled equally. There are sparse areas or completely empty areas.

THE DETAILS ARE MUCH SMALLER THAN THE LARGER FORMS

This is so important. If the details get too large, or stick out of the silhouettes of the larger forms, they make it harder to see an overall form.

This Frazetta drawing looks elaborate and detailed, but follows the same ideas and planning of the more cartoony art above. All the little details - the bark texture, the moss, the flowers and mushrooms are much smaller than the twisted solid tree root. The tree root is the important graphic statement.

If the details were too large, or didn't flow around the root, or stuck out of the silhouette of the root more, you wouldn't feel or see the root so clearly.

There are sparser areas of detail on the root-between the areas of moss, for example.

I don't need anything this detailed in my cartoons, but the principles are what I am after.

The big picture should be solid, interesting and instantly readable as what it is - and not get in the way of the characters..

HARVEY EISENBERG APPLIES ALL THESE IDEAS