Today I wanted to focus on design applied to character's poses and the overall staging of a shot.
The main and basic shapes we can use for this purpose are the following: circle, square and triangle.
From what I've seen almost everything can be reduced into one of those shapes.
Using those simple shapes applied to staging and posing of our character we can tell a lot in one image.
When we look at a circle our eyes tend to be "caught" in a vortex, without any direction where to go they are like ipnotyzed by it.
Circles can also mean security for us and they remember to us something soft, natural.
Squares are usually used to sell the idea of stability, strength; while triangles are synonymous of lack of balance, conflict, opposing forces.
Of course every shape with a certain tilt and depending on the relationship with the line of the ground has a different meaning for us.
Let's see some examples I've found:
In this first frame we can see that the pose of the two characters can be reduced to simple shapes: a rectangle for Woody (slightly bent towards Buzz) and a sort of triangle coming towards left screen, emphasized by the arm pointing to Woody's chest.
Here you can see that the relationship between the characters is exactly the opposite from the first one:
Woody is attacking Buzz like and arrow, while Buzz is tilted and pushed to the corner of the frame.
Woody's arm is also helping to make us see the direction of the overall arrow.
In this example we can see the composition of the frame: Buzz is in a triangle, and all the elements (his arms, the outside figures too) are pointing to his face.
We can find a similar composition in the following painting by Leonardo da Vinci:
The use of shapes is almost the same: in this renaissance painting Leonardo studied all the elements (arms, legs of the main characters) to make us look at the child's face.
In this case the triangle is a stable shape, because his base is on the ground pointing upward.
Notice also the elements outside the figures: they are there to stop our eyes so that we can concentrate on the most important place of the painting.
In this last painting (also from Leonardo), the "Battaglia di Anghiari", we can see a circular motion built from all the limbs and even with the horses too.
Also notice the shapes created by the fighters: they all are shapes on unstable bases.
The paining should evoke movement and action, that's why the circle is used instead of a more stiff shape like a square.
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