Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Finding the Frame

A Reflection on Design

Once in a while you find yourself doing some work and all of a sudden “eureka” a moment of clarity comes along; well that did not happen to me last night, but what did happen was that I reintroduced myself to cropping. I was setting up the files for theses dogs illustrations and I started to play with cropping, When… the light went off and told me this is some really powerful stuff be careful. No kidding!

Sure you do the thumbnails, or at least some do, and you think I’ve got it! Then you look at the composition that you spent hours on and it just doesn’t dance, it doesn’t sing, it doesn’t even talk, it just doesn’t want to say I exist. And that hurts!

In animation it is all about story telling and I think these different cropping can illustrate how four different lines around an image can make and image sit on a wall as a print, be in a magazine, or look like a still from and animation.

These four lines are strong story telling tools.