Task 15: Elements of game design, part six: visual composition

Visual Composition

Visual Composition is a very important and crucially fundamental. It's a shame it doesn't really get taught at all in Art education. So you have to go by searching it for yourself and then apply it to your drawing.

There are many rules of visual composition, that I hardly know them and even apply them, so this blog is a good chance for me to broaden my knowledge to go and research composition and as well apply them and put it into practise.

First of all here is something I stumbled across a post, pretty in-genius indeed :)

Cognitive Scientist = The mind, responsible for thinking, understands how the eye and the brain works.
Designer = The eye for design, for visual solutions, for colour
Journalist = The nose for a story, the analytical angle to pursue
Communicator = The mouth and ears, to talk and to listen
Computer Scientist = The hands, the builder
Data Scientist = The back-breaking hard work of data gathering and preparation
Project Manager = the torso, bring the whole thing together
Initiator = The legs, sets things in motion

Something I will read a bit more later
 http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2012/06/article-the-8-hats-of-data-visualisation-design/



Visualization

So, change your playing field and  start with this method visualization. Imagine the scene what you want to draw, before you want to draw it.
Artist do often, I am guilty of it my self that people start a drawing by simply drawing, you know take your pencil and start scribbling around, or making  a vague sense what you want on the page for example  like a cool idea of a character. There isn't much wrong with that method, many artists find abstract shapes and patterns to start them off calculating it all and making sense out of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDPcSuLe73g&list=UUbdyjrrJAjDIACjCsjAGFAA&index=8ieve 

Feng Zhu had an video Episode 54 - Chaos to Control.  

"Briefly that to try things in a completely different way you normally work with a canvas  which is uncontrolled  and to look at forms, thinking what it is and abstract that out and let your self go."

Well back to my point, well basically it can be a bit vague and all you do is try and solve everything in the drawing, as you are drawing. Well I think it's helpful instead, to do things a bit different and to start your drawing, by really thinking about what it is you want to show in your image. 

• Little exercises, so close your eyes, ask questions and imagine what you want to see. 

• What is this picture of?
• What's the scene?
• Where are you? 
• What is the feeling you want to get across, are you looking up or looking down?
• Is there a character in the scene?
• Think of it as if you are watching a movie.

Try and practise this next time you 'think of a drawing to draw' and to play this movie in your mind, until you find the scene, the shot, you want to reproduce in your mind onto your page, when you have the shot you want, pause the movie and try and hold on to it, as much of the information as you can, about the image your looking at.

Now as you open your eyes, stare at your page, as you start to see the scene in your mind on the page, if you lose the image, close your eyes again and try it once more and visualise your image. Even if you can't visualise well at the beginning, approaching your drawing by first thinking about it, by visualising it. It can just be a much better way to begin with, than to rush a drawing without what you really want to see on the page. So I think it's important to visualise as much as you can, think of things as movie scenes. Both methods  of approaches have value, none are right or wrong, but it's good to expand your awareness by visualisation and thinking, than just being on auto pilot.