Procreate CREATE DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Mike Corriero covers forced perspective, composition, and posing creatures and characters to produce dynamic art

Mike Corriero

One of the more important art fundamentals is to learn about the basics of composition. Illustrations that work well tend to involve design aspects with visual cues. These help play a role in perspective, depth and dynamics, and help the viewer see what you’re trying to communicate.

A lot of the design elements we’ll be covering in this workshop involve forced perspective, dynamic action, atmospheric depth and little overlapping details that help strengthen the overall story. We’ll be concentrating on developing a dynamic and interesting perspective. This will include utilising some basics of composition and forced perspective, focal points, and helping to lead the viewer’s eyes around the image. While working on such a relatively chaotic piece, you’ll learn how to apply more attention to the key aspects of the overall image. We’ll also be talking about colour theory, light and values.

It helps to think about the image in three different layers, starting with the main focal point which would be in the middle of our audience’s vantage point. Then we’re going to include elements of design in the foreground that will help push the atmosphere and perspective back in space. Finally, there’ll be additional design elements in the background to be used as supporting designs, as well as reinforcing the dynamics of the composition.

Composition is a crucial part of planning the layout of any image. It dictates how the different characters, elements and other designs interact with each other to create a harmonious cohesion of imagery.

WORKSHOP BRUSHES

PROCREATE

DEFAULT BRUSHES: CHARCOAL BLOCK

This brush was used to give the image more of a traditional look.

BURNT TREE

Used sparingly in larger areas where I wanted some interesting texture.

GLOAMING

I like to use this brush for finer details, such as hair, spikes and so on.

FLOWING HAIR

I use this brush to create movement, much like Photoshop’s Motion filter.

1 Create a rough sketch

The sketch for an illustration doesn’t need to be precise. You may be better off leaving it a bit rough and in this case I used the Charcoal Block brush to work out the basic line work and composition. This gives me enough leeway to reposition and resize important elements before finalising their placement and scale.

2 Generate rough values

Separating and keeping key characters/creatures and designs on their own layers makes it much easier to work out the placement of everything, eventually producing the strongest composition. Creating a new layer and setting it to Multiply is a quick way to provide shades of grey within the silhouette without losing the lines.

3 Apply the base colours