Any tips/tutorial for composing a complex scene

Pangahas

So yeah I'm looking to make an illustration of a pretty complex scene,a bunch of guys(10+) charging in battle from the edges towards the center of the image, but I'm having a hard time trying to compose them dynamically and appealing.

Any tips/tutorials you guys can point me to regarding this topic?Any help would be appreciated thanks.

MagicSugar

Organize your composition in three planes: foreground, middle ground, background.

Prioritize your elements: first read, second read, third read

Pick focal point, control viewers eye flow.

Use perspective cues, atmospheric haze, or "camera blur" to suggest what is important and what is secondary.

Mass crowds like you can mass shadows.

Check out refs.

iconoplast

Really, any painting or photography composition guides will help. You can find oodles of them with a search.

Eric Chadwick

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Concept_Fundamentals#Painting_Fundamentals

Phil Straub's one is really good.

lotet

and on top of what pl have said, do sketches n thumbnails, dont jump into the real deal before you have a few thumbs to work from.

gsokol

Make sure you really know off the bat what you want the observer to be looking at. If you are having a bunch of characters in the comp, are they all unique and doing unique things? Or are they all kinda flowing together to appear like a crowd? Really think about whats important to convey, and focus on thumbing that shot up.

At that point...yea just use typical composition tools, like what other people are suggesting. You can really do a lot with value, color, placement, etc to really make or break a shot like that.

JordanN

Watch some cartoons.

Especially old ones (because new ones use CG vs hand drawing everything). If you can find some storyboards/production art, you'll see how much work goes in each scene.






Taken from The Thief and The Cobbler