Hi, David Finch here.
Welcome to my course on creating a comic book page.
In this lesson, we're going to take a look at composition.
These are the fundamentals that I use daily to help me create dynamic comic pages that
flow and tell the story in the most interesting and effective way possible.
We'll start with some basic concepts that will help you break down and arrange the most
important elements of each panel and then, we'll take a look at compositional shapes
and how we can use those to design and block in those elements.
If you want to follow along with me as we design our own comic page, head on over to
proko.com/comicpage and sign up for the course.
We'll have more lessons and go much further in depth into what we learned here.
We'll be posting premium episodes regularly so I hope to see you there.
Alright, let's get started.
So, the first thing that I want to cover is something that's called "The Rule of Thirds."
For our purposes, all we need to know is that vertically, we're dividing our image into
three equal parts and horizontally we're doing the same and what that gives us are these
four points right here and these four points are what we're going to want to choose to
place a most important elements of our panels and so, an example of this, I'll quickly rough
in my Rule of Thirds.
It really does not need to be absolutely perfect.
I'm going to draw a figure just right about here.
You will find variations on this.
I could go well off of my center of interest fairly far off of it and still have it work
relatively well and obviously this is pretty simple just for the purposes of hitting the
point across but my eyes are basically directly inside that focal point.
And if I draw another in the background, I can draw him directly on the opposing point
and it makes for a nice pleasing composition.
And there are multiple ways to use this just using heads.
I can draw a figure looking into a shot just like this and I can draw another figure looking
out at him and you'll see this in movies and that kind of thing all the time used very
effectively.
I can draw a figure here and I can draw another figure and this will represent my horizon
line too.
I can draw another figure smaller in the background just along the other one.
And so, they're level with each other but they both rest directly on my Rule of Thirds
lines.
And in a vertical panel, we get the same basic effect.
For instance, a huge rock formation and maybe a sunset here just to keep things very simple
and that makes for a very pleasing balance composition.
Another example in a vertical panel could be a large figure standing on a rock formation
and then another smaller figure in the opposing quarter.
Generally speaking, this effect is most pleasing when you have something that's quite a bit
larger and then something that's quite a bit smaller to balance.
This is an incredibly versatile rule and you'll find that it applies all over the place in
panel design.
Here's a panel of a character.
He's sitting down in the foreground of a panel and I've got his head essentially across this
point here and I can draw another figure walking up to him and I don't need to make sure that
his head is lined up on this point.
I just need to make sure that the figure is generally taking up this generalized area.
The next thing we're going to talk about is using basic shapes compositionally.
And ,so here I have a triangular shape and I can draw a figure standing inside my triangle.
Maybe even give them a weapon to accentuate the effect.
Shield over here.
And this is a basic triangular composition.
This is something you'll see in paintings by Frazetta and artists all over the place
in order to establish a central figure of interest.
A rectangular composition might be something more straight on and so I've got a figure
walking toward us and he's really taking much more of a rectangular space in the image and
I can even enhance that effect.
I can give him maybe a weapon up here, I can draw packs on his body and really accentuate
that verticality.
I can also combine shapes.
Here I've got a figure looking into a panel.
I'm drawing him from behind and you'll notice for this figure, I have a shape that is more
like this - it's more of a diamond shape and then in front of them, I can draw a shape
like this and have maybe a whole crowd of people that are standing and facing my main
character.
Even in this very simple sketch, just to establish my basic shapes, you can see how I'm grouping
my compositional shapes.
All these figures pick up this space here and my main figure is offset from them picking
up this space here.
Another example of that would be to have a figure in the foreground picking up this kind
of a shape and then a line of people standing behind them and it really pops this figure
forward in the composition, so I have my line of people here with my main figure I guess
that'll be just a little bit longer, and my main figure standing in front of them like
this.
I'll draw a horizontal panel and I'm going to use my Rule of Thirds and draw a tree that
takes up a rectangular shape compositionally and then in the background, I'll draw a shoreline
and you'll see maybe some trees off in the distance just like this.
Let's draw another horizontal panel and I'm going to draw a group of people.
This is my classic hero shot.
I've got big guy in the foreground here.
I'll lift his leg up.
And I can give him a gun that he's holding maybe and then another character here.
And what I want to do is I want to create a bit of a shape like this.
And so, I'll draw another character standing behind here.
I'll have this character with our arms crossed grouped with my original character.
I could draw another character up here.
Might be cutting my space off just a little bit.
And so, what I'm going to do is erase that gun, get this figure drawn in and then once
I have that establish and I know the space it's going to take up, I can go ahead and
redraw in that arm with the gun.
And this is where really understanding very basic figure drawing like this and very basic
compositional shapes, making sure that your figures interlock with each other can give
you pleasing image designs before you go through all of the work of finishing your figures
and finishing your composition only to realize that it really doesn't hold together the way
that you may have been hoping.
And then I can use my other Rule of Thirds, create another triangular shape right here
And another grouping of characters.
This one I'll draw crouching on top of some kind of a rock or some kind of a thing.
And let's increase the size of that triangle just a bit.
Draw another character behind him, just like this.
Another one here.
Maybe another one here.
And I can put a whole lot of characters into this design and have it really hold together.
I can draw another character here to kind of connect these two shapes so it doesn't
look like they're two completely separate elements and that will give me a nice arrangement
of my figures using not only really the Rule of Thirds but also some compositional shapes
in my page layout.
And actually, instead of this figure, I'm going to erase up my entire middle and I'm
going to create a third triangular shape that kind of connects with this one and draw a
much larger figure right in the foreground to anchor this whole shot and I think that's
much more pleasing to the eye.
And so, it's all just about designing with shapes.
Using your Rule of Thirds but not being absolutely married to it, you can see that I use this
point in this point as opposed to this point here and that just work better for the image
for me and then where it works, adding a third shape here to anchor these two together and
there are infinite possibilities that you can use to take these shapes and create your
compositions.
Now, in this example I'm going to use a framing element to draw attention to what I want to
put in the center of the panel.
I'm going to draw some guns and I'm going to use those guns compositionally around him
and I'm also going to point the guns directly at him.
So, not only am I creating a circular composition around him that focuses your attention on
him, all of the elements around him are pointing directly to the center of my main character
and that really drives the fact that this is what we're focusing on in the picture.
In this same effect can be used so many different ways.
Here I've got a horizontal panel and I've got an element that I want to showcase right
here.
We'll just call this a house.
And so, I'm going to draw all around it.
Can be a tree.
Any organic shape is great to be able to use as a framing device.
It's just very simple shapes that I'm using here but obviously in a finished picture,
you can make this much more realized.
You get something that's much visually pleasing and obviously you don't need to draw a silhouette.
This could be an entirely detailed foreground but because it follows this compositional
shape framing this element right here, you can see that what I've drawn here is very
neatly framed and I can even cross over just a little bit and maybe even improve it by
using a bit of a better use of my Rule of Thirds and bring it up and that might be just
a little bit more effective.
I can see it looks just a little bit more pleasing just like that.
I've got a figure, he's walking.
You're looking down into the scene.
Kind of sell the fact that we're looking down at this figure and you'll notice I've made
sure that he fits pretty well in that upper corner but something that I can do, I've got
my perspective is coming through just about like this.
And so, I'm going to draw a big pipe above him up here and maybe another pipe here, another
one full mid-size pipes here.
I'm going to make sure that I'm keeping my sizing of my pipes random enough that they
don't all look like the exact same size and dimension and then when I draw my floor, you
can see that detail in the ceiling really helps to frame my character just beyond.
And obviously, there are so many possibilities.
I can draw a scientist and in the foreground the whole series of technical scientifical
equipment around him here and this whole element works just as a block to frame my main figure
and then I can draw elements behind him and finish out my panel but you can see it gives
me a nice pleasing compositional effect very simply.
And you'll find this kind of design used very frequently with concept designer and you'll
have a - the end of a hallway kind of defined basically like this.
You'll see a piece drawn here, frame in just this little area here and then maybe that
piece repeated much larger in the foreground just like this and it can add quite a bit
of depth and visual interest just doing that.
And this whole here acts to center your eye around the center of interest which is going
to be right around in my Rule of Thirds just right here.
Composition is a very broad topic and there's so much ground that we could cover just on
this topic alone but we're going to be drawing a few pages together and through those examples,
I think we'll find a lot more specific problems that we'll be able to compositionally address
and work through together.
That's it for this lesson.
If you enjoyed this video, take a look at the premium course over at proko.com/comicpage
and if you want to get better at the concepts, take a look at some of your favorite movies,
television shows, comics, and illustrations and look for how your favorite artists use
the Rule of Thirds basic compositional shape language in lighting in their designs.
See if you can apply some of these basic principles to your own work.
Thanks so much for joining me.
I'll see you next time.