PrimeJourney

I'm currently working on an animation project starring the lovely smiley choo-choo man himself, Emmet! I don't want to share more since I'd like it to be a surprise, but I'm looking forward to pushing myself to learn After Effects while doing this.

However, still being an art noob of sorts here, I am feeling some indecision about how to do things, lol. Mainly, I am trying to figure out what kind of placement/composition to go for...I'm horribly indecisive, so an outside opinion from more seasoned artists than me would be wonderful!

I have a few options here. You can see my mockups in the Imgur link here (as silly as it sounds, I don't want my cruddy sketches here to clog up my blog feed): https://imgur.com/a/mBRQIr7

I suppose I will have to spill some beans on what I'm planning here: I want to make flowers bloom onto the trees as Emmet's expression changes. I'm stuck on whether I want to put more attention on his face or the trees (i.e., should Emmet be the focus and ergo, bigger...or smaller as we want to focus on the trees?). I also don't know if his placement looks awkward or not (following the rule of thirds or something idk???).

(your intention: **I want to make flowers bloom onto the trees as Emmet's expression changes. I'm stuck on whether I want to put more attention on his face or the trees (i.e., should Emmet be the focus and ergo, bigger…or smaller as we want to focus on the trees?). I also don't know if his placement looks awkward or not (following the rule of thirds or something idk???).)

the three steps when drawing scenery is

observes: ----- how much you want to draw? what part do you want to draw? (if you want to draw part of the sky put the horizon line lower. if you want to draw more people/ more of the ground, put the horizon line higher.? (to find it, i was teached to find the line where everyone's head aligned. => generally the eye lie, because people wear hats and it messed up the measurement and from afar, all you could see is their head))----- is it longer then it is wide? the ratio between length/height.----- where are the vanishing points?

set-up: you set up your 3/3/3 grid (the default composition type i learned, there are many!) and begin to put the info you got into the page.

details: you add in the little bits, the engraving, the people, the branches etc. etc.

(i'll just use only the 1st pic)

our subject is emmet. current, emmet's eye line is horizontal to the part where the branches started on the tree. with the horizonn line being high, you would instinctively feel like there should be more of the floor, or like the thought is "you are looking down more so why are you seeing so much of the branches?"

with your intention being to make the flowers bloom as emmet chances expression => you want to have more of the upper half => your horizon line needs to be lower => lower emmet. but i propose 2 solution.

1. solution 1: keep emmet as is => make the tree smaller.

this is a more spacious type of background. the tree are more spaced. an establishing shot maybe, to show the view where he is. you could use this pic first then jump to the pic below.

2. solution 2: keept the trees => lower emmet.

lowering emmet meaning bring him closer to the camera and so he becomes bigger :)) the trees in turn are smaller smaller as they get further from emmet and us. (big smile so happy (omg looking at him smiling makes me smile also :"))) ) )

I was first confused on the concepts of the horizon line and eye level/line. I wasn’t sure if there were two different things, and I wanted to understand better on what it meant to place a person’s face relatively around this point. So, I did a little more research.

THE BASIC CONCEPTS – WHAT IS THE HORIZON LINE AND EYE LEVEL?

From what I understand, the Horizon line and Eye Level are two different concepts, but closely related to each other on the topic of perspective in an art piece

Horizon line: where sky separates from land or water

Eye level: the actual height of the viewer’s eyes when looking at an object, interior scene, or an exterior scene

Usually the horizon line and eye line are on the same level as each other, and so the terms are often used synonymously.

The former term usually refers to drawings that are outdoors, while the latter is used for drawings that are indoors (since you can’t usually see the horizon when inside a room!). When drawing complex perspectives, you might have the horizon line at a different level than the eye level, but for the most part, they are the same.

As this redditor named FieldWizard noted: “The horizon line is always at the viewers eye level. Unless you are doing some weird drawing 100 miles above the surface of the planet. Then the horizon line is sort of abstract. The eye line is perpendicular to the picture plane. The eye line does not necessarily intersect the horizon”.

(I also noted that the eye level is also referred to as the eye line by most people I’ve run across online…I don’t think it’s a different thing entirely, but If I’m wrong, anyone can feel free to correct me!)

Other useful notes:

The Horizon Line moves up or down to adjust for your Eye Level (FieldWizard).

As a reminder: Vanishing points are basically than the center of the viewer’s vision (i.e. where your eyes are looking); they determine the orientation of the Picture Plane and the Ground Line.

Vanishing points don’t always converge on the horizon/eye line: The vanishing points of objects parallel to the ground converge to the horizon/eye line, but you might have cases where you want to depict a titled object. This object’s vanishing point could be above or below the horizon/eye line, depending on how it is titled. – LoveLifeDrawing shared this neat explanation (and has other useful notes on horizon/eye lines).

APPLYING THESE CONCEPTS TO ART COMPOSITION -- CREATING A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE AND DETERMINING THE BEST PLACEMENT OF SUBJECTS IN AN ART PIECE

Now that I know what these concepts are, I can better understand how they can define the depiction of perspective and subjects in an art piece.

How perspective is created by the placement of the horizon line/eye level in an art piece:

“If the horizon is at the vertical center of your canvas, that means you're looking straight ahead, and vertical lines in the scene (perpendicular to the ground) aren't converging to viewpoints, assuming the image isn't cropped.

If your horizon is below the page center, you're looking up, and vertical lines are converging to a viewpoints above the page.

If your horizon is above the page center, you're looking down, and vertical lines are converging to a vp below the page.”

Source – Redditor “Averagetrailertrash”

The rule of thumb for placing people (& people’s heads/faces) in an art piece:

Generally, a good composition rule of thumb is to place people’s heads near the horizon line/eye line, specifically placing them in a way where their eyes line up with the horizon line. (It’s not a hard rule—you can subvert it—but it usually looks nice like this).

With all that said, the rule of thumb of where to place the horizon line, a piece’s subjects, and overall, decide the composition of a piece:

A rule-of-thirds grid can be very useful to setting a horizon line.

If you want to have more focus on the sky (the upper part of the rule-of-thirds grid), set the horizon line in (or near) the bottom row of the grid, with the subject of the sky being placed in the upper two rows.

If you want to have the focus on subjects near the ground (people, plants, etc.), place the horizon line in (or near) the top row of the grid so that the viewer’s eye is drawn to the subjects in the top two rows.

You can place subjects in the middle row too, but can place them in the upper or lower part of that row based on the ideas above