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The Psychology of Colour in Art and Animation

Whether it’s in animation, concept art or illustration for sequential arts, the psychology of colour might play as much a role in a viewer’s impression of your work as just about any other aspect.

In terms of art and animation, the psychology of colour involves the mental and psychological effects that the colour in your work exerts on viewers.

But colour psychology is at work every day in everything we do. For example, the colour red has been shown to trigger increased heart rate, and a subsequent increase in adrenaline, in many people. As such, interior decorators generally won’t recommend a bright red for bedrooms, often opting instead for blues and greens, which are more often associated with calmness.

Keeping the Psychology of Colour in Context

It’s important to note that no definitive studies or series of studies exist to show that any particular colour will consistently trigger an emotion or psychological effect in everyone.

But, especially in marketing, analyses have shown results in how colours can generally affect a consumer’s brand perception, and even inclination to buy. The takeaway here is that colours shouldn’t be relied upon to instill any particular psychological effect, but should be considered as potentially having a psychological effect in the context of your work.

We can look again at the colour red for an example. Yes, red can generate excitement, but it may also produce feelings of anger, or engender a sense of romance.

Sticking with red, cultural influences can also affect the psychology of colour. Red is considered lucky in Chinese culture.

The Psychological Effects of Cool and Warm Colours

The psychological effects of colour are commonly noted around two main categories of colours: warm colours and cool colours.

Cool Colours

In color theory, cool colours are considered those in the blue-green and blue-violet ranges, including most grays. As mentioned, blues and greens tend to induce a sense of peaceful calm and relaxation.

Warm Colours

Reds, yellows, browns and tans are considered warm colours. Generally, their effect is to arouse and stimulate. There’s a reason why so many restaurants use red in their branding – it’s actually been shown to cause some people’s stomachs to growl.

Nature always has a balance of cool and warm. In your work, a lack of warmth will make a piece seem lifeless. Too much warmth will appear garish.

As you get more sophisticated about the use of colour, you’ll begin to see that there are actually warm greys and cool greys, and with red pigments and yellow pigments there are also warmer and cooler reds and yellows. Nature does a dance between warm and cool changes that can be very subtle and when we mimic that in our work, it sparkles. That’s why a well chosen palette will include warm and cool blues, yellow and reds. The potential for colour mixing, while not as great as nature’s, gives artist’s many expressive possibilities.

The Importance of Still Life Drawing

Before we discuss the importance of still life drawing, it helps to clarify just what is is. Interestingly, still life art typically depicts everyday natural or man-made objects that are inanimate and, in contrast to the name, generally lifeless.

But it’s the depiction of what may be a lifeless (actually including dead animals in some cases!) object in a way that draws in the viewer, almost as if it was somehow ‘alive’, offers the first clue to its importance.

Whether you’re considering a career in 3D or 2D animation, gaming graphics, fashion design, advertising art, or any graphic-related profession, the importance of learning still life drawing shouldn’t be missed.

1. Creating the Illusion of 3D in 2D

Even if you want to jump straight into 3D animation, understanding how to make a two-dimensional object look three dimensional gives you a practical understanding of what you’re doing on the screen.

2. “Animate” the Inanimate

The art of still life drawing is depicting objects that we might never notice day-to-day, other than for practical purposes (like a can of tomato soup!), in ways that lets the viewer see them differently, see different aspects and even different meanings in them.

If you can do that in a drawing of a bottle, you’ll be better able to do it in any graphic art form.

3. Setting the Scene

Still life artists take time and care to choose and compose their subjects before composing their drawing. It’s like sketching with the objects of your art instead of with pencil and paper. And it helps your ability to compose any scene, whether it’s on paper or digital.

4. Capturing Colour Theory

In addition to composition, still life art can rely heavily on colour theory to add meaning, mood and dynamics to the subject. All of which are valuable tools for every artist and animator.

5. Adds an Interesting, Unexpected Dimension to Your Portfolio

In addition the your areas of specialization, still life drawings add a sense of versatility and depth to your portfolio.

Still life drawing is a major component of the Fine Art Portfolio Skills Class at Max the Mutt College of Animation, Art & Design.

The Case for Storyboarding & Animatics Being Crucial in Creating a Successful Animation Project

Imagine trying to verbally explain to someone exactly how the story you want to animate will unfold from start to finish.

There, now you’re starting to get an idea of the importance of storyboarding for any animation project. Storyboards show “shot by shot” where the camera will be, and how the visuals will tell the story. The camera can change perspective, change angle, the camera can pull back for a long shot or truck-in for a close-up. All of this effects how the audience feels, and what is visually communicated. Storyboards are perhaps more important in classical and computer animation than in live-action projects: while capturing even a single angle can be costly in either medium. The implications of correcting even a small character action in animation can be far more complex than in live action. Once there is a storyboard, all the shots are linked together with a dummy soundtrack to create an “animatic.” The animatic gives a better idea of how the visual storytelling is working and hopefully identifies problem areas.

Why is Storyboarding, and Subsequently Creating The Animatic so Important in an Animation Project?

If you look at all the benefits of storyboarding for either a live action project or animation projects, the implications, as previously mentioned, are more profound and important for animation than for live action. An effective animatic is a proving ground.

Proof of Concept

Concept art helps to clarify a vision. The “fun pack” includes character designs, locations and props. These are needed in order to create the storyboard. The storyboard helps us envision the film shot by shot. Next comes the animatic which includes the soundtrack and timing, and confirms that the plan for the film will work.

Will the Action Work

Once we have the animatic, very often areas that need to be revised are identified.

Storyboard Revisions are then made, and a revised animatic created

Followed by another meeting for final approval from the producers, the director and the animation director.

Confirming the Budget

It’s one thing to prove the concept and determine the animation will work, but can it all be done within budget? Storyboards give a clearer idea of the complexity of the final product, sound and vision, and that makes for more accurate budgeting.

Streamlines the Entire Production

In summary, storyboards are useful in every stage of animation production.

This is why Storyboarding is an important component of the Classical & Computer Animation & Production Diploma here at Max the Mutt. Contact us to learn more.

5 Skills a Concept Artist Needs for Creature Design

From the earliest days of film and digital animation, including the Ray Harryhausen classic films, and digital games, like 1993’s Doom, creature design has been a central process on which the success of the entire project can hinge.

If there is anything in common with Harryhausen’s Cyclops, Doom’s monsters and even the Clickers who prowl in ‘The Last of Us’, it is that, despite being unlike anything we’ve ever seen, they are believable, relatable and potentially real.

That means a concept artist for creature designs needs a fairly wide-ranging skill set to create thoroughly realistic, yet previously unimagined creatures to capture the audience’s imagination.

Among many others, that skill set would include the following.

1.Ability to draw both humans and animals, and an understanding of basic anatomy and structure for both

Audiences will only fear or fall in love with a fantasy creature they can relate to. That means, to be both realistic and relatable, fantasy creatures should be inspired by real-world creatures.

2.A Practical Imagination

Designers are usually brought in early in the story and script development and their designs may influence the storyline. Concept artists need to be able to take verbal directions and come up with designs. Sometimes the artist is given a story or character brief that may only be a few sentences long. Where does he or she go from here?

3.Research & Reference Gathering

If the direction was to create a creature that lives inhabits a rocky terrain. An understanding of that terrain. And the physical attributes the creature would need to live there is needed before design can begin.

4.The Process

Now the artist starts doing rough thumbnails of as many creatures as come to mind. From here, the concept artist narrows down the possibilities to a few ideas that he/she develops further. At this point. The 2 or 3 choices may be shared with the Art Director for approval and/or suggestions before settling on a final design that will be fully developed.

5.Traditional Drawing Skills

Traditional drawing and painting skills help give understanding and direction to what you’re trying to accomplish on digital 3D platforms.

Creature design is just one element of the Concept Art Diploma program at Max the Mutt College of Animation, Art & Design.

Why Concept Art is So Important

Even if you’ve heard about concept art, it can still be difficult to understand why it’s so important for animation and video game projects.

What is Concept Art?

It might help to start with what concept art is not. It’s not a simple illustration of a concept. It’s not a sketch or layout of an illustration. It’s not a promotional illustration used to sell a video game or animated film.

Concept art helps to convey the look, feel and mood of a design idea. It is used to capture and convey the overall design vision of a project before anything goes into production, versus trying to express everything in specific terms at the very beginning of design development.

Concept art can be used in animated or even live-action films, video games and comic books. It is particularly helpful in introducing new ideas into existing projects, or even to help quickly convey the direction of an entirely new project.

Why is Concept Art so Important?

This is a great time for artists, animators and video game designers to be alive. Why? For the first time in history, just about anything you can imagine or envision can be expressed visually. Any new world, any re-imagination of the laws of physics, any lifeform; if you think it, you can probably create a visual representation of it.

But if you’ve ever had a hard time telling someone about one of your wildest creations, you can begin to get an idea of how and when concept art can help. Think about the tough time you’d have explaining your idea of a new world, it’s mood, and even potential story arcs that can take place in it, to your grandmother.

Now what if you could show her a single image that would express the thousand words needed to get her to really understand what you have in mnd.

That image would be a piece of concept art.

And its ability to give your grandmother a clear idea of your vision is why it’s so important.

And if your grandmother was the head of Disney Animation Studios, or Konami, well, it could just make you a rock star.

Is that All There is to Concept Art?

No. Concept art isn’t just about pitching overall concepts to grandma. Let’s say she really was the head of an animation studio and you got the gig. Now lots of cash gets plowed into getting hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, in locations around the world, to make your idea come to life in a film or video game.

But your initial concept art only helps to convey the setting, mood and tone of the overall story. Typically, to help fill in the rest, you’d carefully create a game design document, including painstaking descriptions of characters, for the entire project. Cool. Now everyone has a single reference point for designing not just characters, but settings, features, gameplay elements and so on.

But any two people can read the same physical description of a character and develop two very different looking and functioning beings. If no one is able to capture what you mean from a written description, the development of your character goes back to square one and your project goes way over-budget. And then you’ve upset your grandma.

So concept art can be a mood shot, or the schematic of a vehicle, or any artwork created before the real work begins to make sure everyone works towards the same vision. It might be a single image, a series of images or a mosaic of images that will all together communicate ideas quickly and clearly.

An increasing level of concept art proficiency is required in the video game and animation industry to help streamline the production process. To learn more about how you can earn your Diploma in Concept Art, get in touch with us here at Max the Mutt College of Animation & Design.

8 Graphic Novel Stats You Need to Know

Before we reveal some of the impressive graphic novel stats that every aspiring illustrator and/or storyboard artist should know, it’ll help to clarify just what is a ‘graphic novel’.

Except that’s not so easy. Wikipedia even says “the term is not strictly defined” and “…the exact definition of a graphic novel is debated…”. Other definitions include: “a novel in the form of comic strips.” (Dictionary.com) and “a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book” (Merriam-Webster).

For our purposes, a graphic novel can be any story that has more than one chapter ( similar to the difference between a short story and a novella or novel) and is told through a combination of sequential drawings and words. However there are rare examples of terrific graphic novels that don’t fit this description: one is told completely through sequential drawings with no words at all, another is a sequence of one sequential drawing chapter followed by a written chapter. Sometimes a sequence of individual comic books is published over time as a continuous story and is later published as a graphic novel.

In general graphic novels are a story in book form that is largely told through the use of illustrations, like “This One Summer”, written by Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki.

That said, take a look at some of the graphic novel stats listed below. They show, in a world of increasing digital animations and illustrations, that traditional forms of the art are not only still used, they are thriving. Even if you want to be a purely digital animator or illustrator, learning more about about ‘pen and paper’ techniques will add a new dimension to your work.

Graphic Novel Stats

$1.085 billion

Total graphic novel sales in the U.S. and Canada in 2016 (comichron.com)

16% – 23% – 16%

The growth in graphic novel sales in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively, to a total of $405 million in 2016. The graphic novel category is considered one of the biggest growth categories in all book publishing. (comichron.com)

The First Graphic Novel to Receive the U.S. National Book Award

Released in March 2016, “March: Book 3” became the first ever graphic novel to receive the National Book Award. A story about the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., every installment of the March Trilogy, written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydi and illustrated by Nate Powell, held the top three spots in the New York Times Graphic Novel Bestseller list for six weeks. (Wikipedia)

Six of the Top 10 Grossing Films of 2014 Were Based on a Graphic Novel

Have you seen “Guardians of the Galaxy”; “Transformers: Age of Extinction”; “X-Men: Days of Future Passed”; “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”; “The Amazing Spiderman”; and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”? All of them are based on graphic novels. (CNBC.com)

Graphic Novels Boost Library Circulation

As traditional libraries continue to redefine themselves in an online, on-demand world, graphic novels are a welcome area of growth.

“In our library it’s (graphic novels) 3% of the collection and 30% of our circulation,” says Esther Keller, a New York school media specialist. (publishersweekly.com)

11.3 Million

The number of graphic novels sold in 2017 (comicsbeat.com)

992,000

Number of copies sold of the #1 selling graphic book of 2017, “Wimpy Kid #12: The Getaway” by Jeff Kinney. (comicsbeat.com)

Wide Employment Horizons

In addition to jobs as illustrators for graphic novels, those who learn traditional illustrating have success in finding job opportunities in gaming, animation, digital graphics, graphic facilitation, advertising and marketing.

To learn more about learning traditional illustration and animation skills and techniques, get in touch with us at Max the Mutt College of Animation Art & Design.

Classical Animation Isn’t Dead!

Any rumors, or even statements of fact from ‘experts’, that classical animation is dead proves the truth of they old saying “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.

In a curious repetition of history, every time a new medium comes along, claims that the old media are dead seem to come from anyone with a voice.

Here are some examples of what we mean.

After commercial radio took to the airwaves in the 1920s, doomsayers announced the death of newspapers. Today, 100 years later, not even 24-hour, on-demand online news has managed to entirely kill off traditional newspapers.
When televisions became common after World War II, it was considered the death knell of radio.
And then the internet was supposed to kill television

Yet, with all those lessons from the past, we see the same thing happening with classical animation. The ongoing development, availability and ease of use of computer animation, CGI and 3-D animation, has lead to news of the death of classical animation coming from almost every corner.

What is Classical Animation?

Classical animation includes two-dimensional cel animation and stop-motion animation. Traditional animation can include some digital processes for movement, scaling, morphing, soundtrack matching, special effects and editing. But the animation itself generally involves hand-drawing, hand-inking and/or hand-painting of individual frames on paper and/or cels. Classical stop-motion animation is done by manipulating physical models and objects and capturing each step in the animation on camera one frame at a time.

On the surface, the demise of traditional animation seems to make sense. Digital animation takes the art to new levels and forms, including games and ultra-realistic movie animations. At the other end of the process, with that much animating power at their fingertips, who would want to take the time and make the effort to layout backgrounds and painstakingly draw individual animation cells to appear over them?

But traditional animation is alive and kicking, and will be so well into the future for two basic reasons. First, it’s an integral part of most 3-D animations in movies and cartoons, especially in storyboarding and other pre-production processes.

Second, while computer animation speeds up the process, it does so at the expense of the idiosyncratic styles, charm and personality that can make every traditional animation unique. Many different computer-animated works can have a similar quality, depending on the characteristics of the system on which they were produced.

Why It’s Important to Learn Classical Animation

Many millennials and generation Z’s have grown up with little or no exposure to or understanding of traditional animation. For them, it’s crucial importance as an art form itself, and as an integral part of 2-D and 3-D computer animation, can be lost.

Classical animation is alive and well as a profession too. With an explosion in the animation industry based on dedicated television networks, like the Cartoon Network, and the popularity of animated movies, there are more animation jobs available than ever.

Many current animated cartoon series are still produced largely based on the techniques of traditional animation.

Disney studios have probably produced more animated films and television series than any other company. They still stipulate that their animators, even those who work entirely with computer animations, must take life drawing classes and traditional animation techniques. The idea is that a better understanding of how to capture and express anatomy, motion, emotion, gestures, clothing, etc., improves even computer-generated animations.

In fact, considering the Disney program has been in place since the 1930s, it’s interesting to note that it has recently been expanded and is more popular than ever, even as computer animation has come to the fore. If you would like to learn more about learning classical animation, contact us here at Max the Mutt.