Composition 101: Basic rules to get you started

this video is all about basic composition we're going to start with some very simple shapes start to combine them together and then learn about how to use the rule of thirds and then explore some inventive ways to frame our shots i highly recommend that you pick up how to draw comics in marvel wave by stanley and john basema so much of what i understand of composition came from just a few pages of that book and i highly highly recommend that you pick up brained inc by marcos mateo mestra he is an absolute master of composition really any book that you can find from him i think is a masterclass in what's possible with composition and he breaks it down in very very simple terms you can find links to both of those books in the description below i'm david finch i've been a professional comic book artist for over 25 years if you enjoyed this video please hit like and subscribe and share with your friends all right to start talking about composition we're going to use the most basic compositional shape that i can think of and that's the triangle the idea behind it i'm going to draw a figure here's my head here's my body let's just get him sketched in quickly [Music] and maybe to even further emphasize emphasize the point i'll give him a sword and have it kind of come toward us just like this and so that's a triangular shaped composition for a figure you can see that it really kind of conforms to a basic triangle and i can add some rocks in the on the ground some different elements and really kind of bring that that compositional shape out and keep accentuating it down the page and you'll see covers like this all the time frankfurzetta probably his most commonly used shape for composition is a triangle because it really showcases a singular figure or element very very effectively you can also use the same basic compositional shape i'm gonna draw figure he's got his arms [Music] crossed [Music] and i'm going to use a triangular composition and draw another figure in behind them very very simply because i'm just roughing in my sketches and i don't want to get encumbered with detail when i'm just trying to get in my basic shape language and that's really why i would call it shape language because you're just dealing with this simple compositional shape and so there's a group of figures all drawn in basically a triangular shape it's very very simple i can another add another figure here but this is something that you'll see all the time and it's very easily broken down but obviously you're not limited to a triangle for composition you can use basically any kind of shape that you want you really want to keep them simple using a star that kind of thing might get a little bit crazy let's go ahead and just use a rectangle or a square and so i'm going to draw a figure standing in the center of my rectangle and another figure standing directly beside them [Music] and maybe another figure right here and this keeps them all grouped into a basic shape but it does a lot less to accentuate the importance of any individual character another thing to consider is that my triangular shape can be angled any way that i want and it can still be pretty effective i can just turn it directly upside down now i can draw a figure in here [Music] and i've got him coming out toward me [Music] and got his arms coming out toward the top of the triangle [Music] just like this truthfully i i don't start my compositions by drawing a triangular shape and so trying to make this figure conform into my triangle is giving me a little bit of trouble here but you basically see the idea and so now that we've done that very very basic start we can start to take some shapes and combine them together and so for this example i'm going to draw a figure standing in the foreground [Music] maybe holding a gun [Music] and really my basic composition for this figure is just a rectangle here he is in the foreground [Music] and now in the background i'm going to draw a rectangle maybe i'll curve it a little bit just to give it a little more interest and i've got a whole group of other figures standing behind them drawing them very quickly and sketchily just to kind of get them established in here just to give you an idea of the where i'm going with that composition [Music] and you can see i have two major elements in this composition i've got my foreground and then in the background i've got a row of figures and i've arranged them all in a neat shape behind my main figure and so now i've got a figure this is going to be my central figure [Music] and maybe he's he's telling a story sitting on the ground his arms kind of crossed and so there's my basic triangular composition for my main figure and then i'm going to use curved composition around them now he's got his audience in the foreground i'll just shadow them out to give you an [Music] idea [Music] very very simple composition but you can see how making sure to arrange my figures in the foreground in a curve really accentuates my central figure and it's just using a couple of shapes together and i could even extend this all the way around maybe have figures standing behind them and bring my audience all the way around the figure in a nice circle so i've got another figure sketched in here basically using my standard triangular chrome position and an element that i can use very very effectively in an image to help lead your eye and make things a little bit more interesting is to start to use some angles like this and so i'm going to draw maybe a barrel heading up toward him just like this on the ground and i'll draw another one give it a little symbol on the barrel and draw another barrel poking out of the ground here just so it's not so completely obvious that i'm just using this kind of a composition and then a big foreground and you can see there's like a skull on there with crossbones but basically what i'm doing with this kind of a shot is really leading your eye right up to the figure so now that we've done some of our most basic composition the next thing that we need to look at is the rule of thirds and so i'm going to draw a basic page shape [Music] and this is not something you really need to measure you want to divide it vertically into three even parts and then horizontally into three even parts and if they're not exactly right it's all right but the points you want to focus on are here here here and here and if i do a horizontal panel something that's generally more common especially nowadays [Music] there's my rule of thirds for a horizontal panel and i'm working with these points here and i really only need to pick two of those points and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw a figure here's his eyes nose mouth and he's looking out into the panel and then i'm going to draw another figure behind him and he's taking up this portion right here and basically what i want to do is if i use one point i want to use the opposite point and ideally one's going to be larger and the other one's going to be smaller it just seems to work in a more pleasing way and so there's two figures done using the rule of thirds something that if you look through comics through artists that have a basic understanding of composition and that's really most working artist by far you'll find this kind of thing done over and over in a horizontal panel for instance i can draw here's here's a figure and he's looking into the panel here's the back of his ear and he's looking at someone standing here [Music] i'm gonna do another version of this panel here this one i guess is a little bit longer it really doesn't matter too much though just rough in now you'll find as you go along you really don't need to rough in these lines at all you can basically just eyeball it but there's generally i think my middle one's a little bit long there generally my divisions i can make one head enormous it really takes up this whole half and here's his nose and then my other character is looking at him here so i can play with the sizing quite a bit just in in terms of of this kind of a shot and you can see that also works [Music] obviously for these rule of thirds examples i'm just using two figures and placing their heads in the corresponding points the rule of thirds is widely useful for a variety of different purposes and i'm going to show a couple right now so i'm going to draw another horizontal panel generally speaking these are more common i find in modern comics because it mimics a movie screen so you see them being used quite a bit more and i highly recommend that you look at movies to find examples of these kinds of compositions being used so i want here's my thirds basically roughly roughed in roughly roughed in roughed in roughly and so i'm gonna use this third and this third but i don't need to place everything directly on this point what i'm gonna do for this one i'm going to draw a tree it's going to be in my foreground here [Music] give it some leaves and some things to kind of ground it here maybe another tree just over here the idea is that i want something to fill this space and so while i've gone all the way up with it all the way through the bulk of my detail is going to be down here and then i'm going to draw a little house up on a hill maybe give it a little path it comes through here and then out this way something we'll discuss in just a minute using these kinds of angles to leave your eye maybe some other trees around it basically you can see how the composition is is working now for this example i'm using basically a square panel and what i want to do is use the same kinds of framing techniques i'm going to draw a figure and i'm just going to draw them as a silhouette standing on the ground [Music] using my rule of thirds he's basically just about here on my rule of thirds and i'm going to use some trees in the foreground [Music] to frame them and really make sure that your eye goes directly to them while keeping them in a relatively complex environment [Music] so i've got trees all around them drawing some groupings of leaves [Music] and i'm using all these shapes basically to give him a frame i'm just going with very very simple shapes and very sketchy just to get this across as simply as possible another grouping of leaves here just drawing big blocks for my leaves really drawing the individual leaves is great but what i want right now is just my composition and i really don't want to encroach too much on this shape because i'm really trying to accentuate that shape as much as possible i'm going to close this then up here quite a bit draw in some cross branches what you can see is i have a mess again drawn very very simply but you can see how i've really framed that figure and your eye goes directly to them even though what i've drawn is just very very simple sketched in block shapes i'm going to draw one more example for this one i'm going to use a horizontal panel and with my rule of thirds i'm basically going to place a figure right here walking out toward us [Music] and that's really not ideal i just cut my finger off at the knees compositionally that's something i'd never like to do and so i'm going to cheat because i don't want to redraw the figure and so i'm just going to make my panel a little bit deeper [Music] and you really don't want to cut a figure off at the ankles either so let's raise that up just a little bit and that should be fine and i'm going to draw the underside of a maybe a bridge over top of them here let's get that sketched in it's pretty loose i know and we'll just make this figure dark too because really we're just working with shapes i'm going to draw a cross piece here give it some scaffolding maybe some pipes [Music] and a shadow along the ground below that effectively frames that figure that's coming toward us this way in a very very simple way and really the possibilities and combinations for this kind of thing are truly endless so feel free to experiment and so just to sum up almost all composition can be broken down into very very simple shapes and then combining those shapes to create slightly more complex compositions and finally using the rule of thirds to effectively place your shapes in a composition and framing elements to direct your eye directly toward what it is that you want your viewer to see taking all that together we can draw panels with an element here in this rule of thirds and i can use diagonals so here's a ground and i've got some figures standing on the ground just right here and i want a larger element here i'm going to draw another diagonal here and draw a larger element up here that they're looking at maybe a building something like that and i can draw another diagonal here maybe have some mountains in the background just above between them and so it's just using diagonals to lead your eye through a panel your rule of thirds to organize your objects within a panel and then framing to focus your eye on exactly what you want to see [Music] and so with our simple breakdowns out of the way i wanted to show some really great artists using these basic shapes and ideas in practice our first example is mike mignola with a lobo cover and you can see in this one he used a very strong triangular composition and at the bottom of the panel he's got arms extended upward diagonally and they really help frame the central figure and the composition i have to admit the figure in the background behind lobo while it's very very cool i think actually kind of takes away from the composition overall this next example is also mike vignola and here you can see how he's really used some strong diagonals through the picture to lead your eye from the upper right corner and then down through to the bottom of the page this next example is a really great example using a triangular shape for framing and really centralizing that figure with the window behind them here's another great example of a triangular composition from mike mignola he's got the arm extended out diagonally upward on the lower figure and he also has a spear extending out diagonally the opposite way and both of those elements really help separate the focus of the panel and that's wolverine here's a great example of using a curved element as a compositional framing device he's got his main central figure and then all of the heads surrounding it curve around him and help ground him in space this is an example from mike mignola's wolverine the jungle adventure one of my favorite books the top panel shows a really great use of the rule of thirds with the two figures in the left lower corner and then the trees in the upper corner i actually use this as a bit of a template example for one of my sketches earlier on also notice i was using diagonals to lead you through the image in the background these included dinosaurs and they also form their own triangular composition in the second panel of this page he has wolverine framed by the figures below very nicely using the rule of thirds and he's used the spears to nicely frame the composition in the final panel of the page he has the background figures drawn in a nice triangular composition and then wolverine forms a composition of his own in the foreground forming his own basic triangle with his body and the rock that he's sitting on this is a great example of two figures in a basic rectangular composition and then a rectangular frame of shadowed elements being used around them to focus your eyes on the main elements of the shot here's a frankfurzette example it really doesn't get much more clearly triangular composed in this shot this is a real classic this frankfurzeta picture uses a rectangular composition centrally for the figure the axe helps point your eye directly into the figure along with some of the lines of the rocks behind and the rocks are used as a framing element surrounding this example from rosetta is absolutely masterful he has an overall triangular composition but if you notice in the center of the composition he surrounded conan with weapons and people's arms and they form a circular composition all around the main figure i absolutely love this painting it's one of my favorites but just compositionally looking at it you have an overall triangular composition the two foreground figures really form their own triangular composition and preset has really emphasized them as their own compositional shape using a much brighter white and then in the mid ground of the shot the villain is using more of a rectangular composition that overall combines with the foreground figures to give you a nice rectangular composition this is a really great example of framing by forzetta this shot has an excellent use of the little thirds with the figures in one corner and the creature taking up the upper corner and to accentuate that phrase that is used to shadow across the bottom of the foreground figure to bring your eye up to where he wants you to look the creature's head and also the opposite rule of thirds and finally you can see how he's used his entire foreground to frame the main figures here are a couple more examples of rosetta using a triangular composition and just to kind of drive the point home of how versatile such a simple composition can be and also to showcase some great for zetta art here's an example from barry windsor smith and this is a massive fight with wolverine and a bunch of guards and this could really devolve into chaos very quickly but notice how he's framed wolverine with all the figures around him and they're forming a circular composition and really driving your eye toward the main figure this last example is from 100 bullets by eduardo rizzo it's a bit more disturbing it's a bit of a torture scene but i thought it was such a great example of using framing to lead your eye directly towards the figure that's hanging from the ceiling this is one of my favorite pages from edwardo rizzo and i've used this as a template for quite a few panels so i hope you can see from the examples that i've drawn and all the examples that i've shown just how prevalent and useful a few basic rules and composition can be and how far they can get you in your own page design these are rules that you can use or ignore to your advantage but it's incredibly important to learn the basics before you can move on and start to break the rules on your own i have so much more that i'd like to say about composition and there's so much more that i could add to this but it's a broad topic and that we'll have to wait for another video thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed the video be sure to tune in monday nights at 8 o'clock for our monday night draw live stream and i will see you in the next video

Channel: David Finch

Views: 160,607

Keywords: drawing tutorial, how to draw, comic art, inking

Id: atZhM-9E08k

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021