How to look for visual patterns and variation.
If you're new to this site and such:
Hi! I'm a Dutch art director and concept artist and I spend most of
my time working on a variety of creative projects in animation,
education and business. Really interesting stuff I would love to
share with the world all the time. But unfortunately a lot of what I
make holds pretty sensitive information for the clients. So I usually
can't. Still, I love to share some of my insights and fascinations
with you – my dear readers (hopefully there's more then one of
you). I plan to make blog articles like this whenever I find the
opportunity. So let's start this 'tradition' with a recent
fascination.
Almere, a great inspiration?
I think it's a common misconception to
think it's necessary to seek out really exotic and remote locations
to find interesting material for background art. Of course, visual
interesting stuff is more evidently present on those commonly hold
'hot spots'. But you know, there's probably some interesting visual
stuff to find just around the block of where you happen to live. But
in order to spot it, you really 'open your eyes' ...I know, it's a
cliché, but it's true.
I'm pointing this out because I
recently found some really interesting things in what I thought was
boring beyond redemption: the relentless sameness of the endless sea
of suburbs that make up Almere, the town I grew up in. For those who
don't know, Almere is a modern city built on reclaimed land from the
sea, to relieve Amsterdam of it's population surplus by building
endless suburbs that are very pragmatically designed with a high
degree of uniformity of it's architecture and street plans for
maximum efficiency of stalling people away.
These are some snippets of the booklet my parents decided to buy their new-to-built home off in the mid-eighties. I think it illustrates the conservative urban planning and monotonous uniformity quite well.
Now, 30 years after these houses were
built, I start to notice some endearing 'cracks' in the dull top-down
uniformity whenever I visit. And I think, in order to 'see' the
cracks you have to see 'in the shapes' that are there, not
just what the objects meant to look like in theory. (This is a
house, this is a shed, this is a tree, etc) I would like to to make
an effort to break down what most of you perceive as anonymous modern
suburbs and see the personal, organically grown side of it as I
learned to perceive it recently.
1. The premise.
So the architects and city planners of
Almere built the houses of the Molenwijk in one 'grand' (ahem)
vision. What was, however, not in included in this vision was
the fencing of the gardens. All new home owners got a slab of freshly
reclaimed mud behind their neat little house and then had to decide
how to fence it, one homeowner at the time. Interesting to realize
that this decision of the builders to leave the fencing open for
interpretation would ensure, over time, an unique form of personal
expression.
Before we dive in how this expression
took shape, let's first have a quick look at how architects and
planners combatted this 'unseemly' heterogeneous sprawl in
later-built neighborhoods – this is the kind of neat fence work you
expect to see with modern planned housing, right?
To quickly break it down in shapes:
- Exploration & Visual research
Okay, let's go back to the mid-eighties
Molenwijk and what happened to the garden fencing there. Keep in mind
that we are really looking for personal expression, variety and (if
possible) even a sense of mystery and adventure. So I made a little
excursion to this not much advertised sight of Almere...
Walking for about an
hour in a circle of just 800m around my parent's home reveals an
exciting, almost medieval city scene of variety of shape, texture,
colour and composition.
Do you start to see what makes these
alleyways so interesting and inviting? Just take the sheds and
fencing – I started to see playful patterns of vertical and
diagonal lines, squares, triangles, and arcs. I started to make some
sketches of this emerging visual language.
These are just
simplifications of the most prominent recurring shed and fence themes
I found during my walk. I could do similar studies just on
doorhandles, drainage pipes or weeds, but let's not get too crazy
here. (if I were to produce backgrounds for an animation that was set
in these alleyways I would of course explore those visual elements
further if time and budget allowed it.)
3. Designing a background.
So now we have experienced the hidden
world of personal expression that this modern suburb hides out of
sight, lets condense it to a single piece of background (concept)
art. I could start from scratch and 'built' an imaginary alleyway
using the shape language I uncovered. This
is usually the way to go for backgrounds in animation that need to be
specific to layouts of characters and action. Or find a shot that
'says it all' and enhance it a bit with your visual research
findings. That’s the way to go for concept artwork, just for
finding the tone).
So, let do another water colour
study...
Now this seems a pretty straightforward
interpretation? Yes and no, let's have a quick look at some key
visual aspects I took into consideration into choosing and
'heightening' the scene.
Alright. I could end this exercise
right here, but for the sake of argument lets push it even further.
Based on a study like this I could tone the shape-deformation and
colours down to create a really subdued 'realistic' rendering that
work well for serious animation or concept for live action. Or I
could 'push' the deformation more and make it more cartoony and
cheerful, lets go for the latter for now.
I first made this quick layout sketch
in Photoshop, playing with exaggerating the shapes but what struck me
is how much of coziness is due to the colour scheme. I could easily
use this layout to make it a scary, haunted place. Maybe something to
get back to as an exercise some other day, still, let's go for
enhancing the coziness for now.
So there we go. I'm not saying it is
always necessary to such extensive research before making something
like artwork above, usually time and budget restrains put severe
restrains on visual research, but I advice to fight for it – do as
much of it as you can. Because, as I do strongly believe, looking is
as much part of drawing as listening is to conversation.
Until next time!