lElements of Design

By Stephen Chmilar

Have you ever looked at a picture you like and wondered why you like it? Have you ever
wanted to make your art more dramatic and eye catching? Well this tutorial will help
you!

Ok let’s start off: Colour

Picture 1

As you can see, Picture 1 (blank canvas) is really boring to look at. Your eyes are lost and
you don’t know what to look at or what you’re looking at. So let’s introduce our first
Element of Design, its Colour. We all know colour. We see it everywhere. We use it from
our clothes to knowing when to cross a street to knowing when our computer has crashed.
Colour plays a huge part of design, not just for animation and web design, but in clothing,
architecture design, to pottery and every other conceivable form of art work. Let’s see
what the blank canvas would look like with a little colour:

Picture 2

There we go, you now see where the canvas is and now have a place to focus. As you
might be aware, there are thousands of colours. Colour is produced by light bouncing off
 Picture 3
of objects. Colour in itself could fill up pages and pages and pages of tutorials, but I’ll
help you out and show you the colour wheel:

1 Yellow 5 Blue 9 Red

2 Yellow Green 6 Blue Violet 10 Red Orange
3 Green 7 Violet (Purple) 11 Orange
4 Blue Green 8 Red Violet 12 Yellow Orange

Wow, scary isn’t it? The theory is that you can make any colour with only 3 colours, and
these 3 colours are: Red, Blue and Yellow. These colours are called the Primary Colours.

See the line between Red and Green? These colours are on opposite sides of the Colour
Wheel and when mixed together you get brown. Red and Green are Contrasting Colours.
Think of how many times these opposites go together…..
Green, Blue Green and Blue, these 3 colours are an example of Complimentary Colours.
They go together well and work together.

A Monochromatic piece is a piece that only uses a certain colour. There’s an example of
this in picture

Now we’re going to move into Value/Tone/Light:

Despite having 3 names, Value, Tone and Light practically means the same. We will be
calling it Value from here on out.

As you may know, the balance between light and dark has been fought over thousands of
years. The darkness and the light are on opposite sides of the spectrums.

Picture 4

Picture 5

In picture 4 we see a Black to White value chart. In picture 5 we see a value chart with
the colour Red.
Let’s see an example of Value in a photo:

Picture 6

Picture 6 has no colour yet you can clearly see the shapes of the wall and floor.

This brings us to our next Element of Design: Line

In picture 6 we can clearly see lines, or contours of the wall. Lines are strongly used
everywhere. From 2D animation and comic books to photography. Edges of tables,
buildings, windows, power lines and textures create lines. Anyone who has ever drawn
on a surface has created a line drawing. There are several types of lines:

(See next page)

Line 1 is a pretty normal hard edge line.

Line 2 is a soft edge line, from something

like a paint brush.

Line 3 is a (somewhat) sharp or jagged

line.

Line 4 is an example of horizontal line, it

goes side to side. Very geometric.

Line 5 is a vertical line, it goes up and

down. Another geometric line.

Line 6 is a Diagonal Line.

And Line 7 is a Curving Line, very natural

and organic.

Picture 7
Now that you have an idea of Line, we shall now move onto: Shape

Shape is much line, you’ve used shape everywhere. The building blocks you used when
you were a baby are shapes. There are 2 types of shapes:

Picture 8 Picture 9

In Picture 8 we see some pretty familiar shapes, Square, Circle, Star and Triangle. These
are called Geometric shapes. They’re pretty straight forward and predictable.

Picture 9 contains some Organic shapes. Organic shapes are often relaxed, natural, and
different.

Think of the differences this way, you’d find Geometric shapes in a factory and Organic
shapes in a forest. Make sense? Good.

(Next page, I should really learn to organize these things better.)

Moving on to Form and Mass.

Like it or not, we have weight. Some of us weigh more then others and it becomes a very
important part of art. Where Form is used in things like sculptures and pottery and other
physical forms. Mass is important to animators of all sorts, because if a character who is
suppose to be a big fat mean monster looks very light on his or her or it’s toes then
something will look wrong. Some people will draw the lines on a character’s feet darker
to give them more weight on the ground.

Picture 10

Here we can see that this teddy bear is sitting on a bed and has sunk in just a smidge and
has weight. His scarf is resting on his arm and legs and you have a sense of just how
heavy he is. And yes, he is very soft.

(Insert commercials here)

Now on top Space

We’re not talking about Stars and Galaxies here, but they do feature space. Space is the
distance of objects from each other. For an example:

Picture 11
In picture11 you can tell exactly how tall the pillars are, as well as the shadows showing
us distance. Space is often used to show the size relations of objects together or to create
a focal point (more on these in Principles of Design).

In 2D these Space is still used, for an example:

 Picture 12

In Picture 12 we see that the big blue circle is bigger then the green and red sphere. We
also see that the yellow circles have distance between them.
The next Element of Design is Time or Motion:

Time and Motion is a tough thing to pull off in a still piece. But Animators and Games
often rely on the art of motion. There’s a lot of art in everyday things. Carefully watch
water, it’s moving, splitting, falling apart and getting back together. Motion blur is an
example of how time can be captured in still form. Example:

Picture 13

Picture 13 is still image but you can see that it was taken when moving. Remember, most
things moves. The trees sway in the wind, wheels go in circles, mouths move up and
down. We all don’t stand still. We often have a pose that implies motions. For Example:

Picture 14
This whale in picture 14 is in mid swim and is stretched. We automatically know that this
whale is swimming and that it is frozen in time.

Now on to our final Element of Design: Texture.

Texture is very oblivious; we don’t live in a flat world. Our world is full of textures.
Infact, around me is a badly painted wall, carpeted floor, a few Todd McFarlane action
figures, a few crushed up pieces of paper, a pair of jeans, my watch, a fleece vest , several
books and even more items. Each one of those listed has a clear texture. You can reach
down and feel the carpet at your feel and you can see that it has textures. Textures work
well with Value. Example:

Picture 15

In picture 15 we clearly see that the wind has created ridges and grooves in the snow and
you could just reach out and touch it.

And there you have it, The Elements of Design:

Colour
Value
Line
Shape
Form/Mass
Space
Time

Use them wisely and check out my tutorial on The Principles of Design as well. There’s a
lot more about each of the elements to learn, let this tutorial be a starter guide.

Links:

http://schmilar.blogspot.com - my blog
http://www.digimill.net - host of this tutorial

All Images, except picture 11, by Stephen Chmilar

Picture 11 by Peggy and Rob Chmilar