Analyzing the Visual Artwork

As a digital artist, I could not help but notice how much art compositions and graphic design posters actually have in common. Starting with composition techniques, values, negative space usage etc.

Therefore, in this assignment I decided to break down two visual pieces to show how similar the process is for both of them.

1 — Artwork

For the artwork, I decided to analyse the digital artwork of one of my favorite artists, Antiquewhite古白.

鳥は空へ
屍体は土へ#SoundHorizon pic.twitter.com/61JYCXRqDN

— 古白|Antiquewhite❄️🌕 (@A_ntiqueWhite) October 22, 2020

From just takin a look at the piece you can find out the whole story. There is the sad note in the main character, waiting for someone they find precious. That someone tries to reach to them but they have to disappear, turning into white pigeons. I really love this artwork, it gives me a soothing feeling, it also has lots of details related to colors and the composition I would like to talk about.

To visualize my analysis I used Procreate and Adobe Photoshop.

Composition Technique

I tried to break down the artwork by the grid, leading lines and golden triangles. On all three compositions it is clearly seen that the artist is trying to draw the attention to the two characters in the right bottom.

On the third picture we can also see that the artist designated the bottom half to tell the story, while the top half of the canvas is used to draw attention to the bottom part using the leading lines.

Negative Space

The negative space on the artwork also creates a clear arrow that points at the two characters.

The two lines, created by white pigeons also makes it easy to make a round-trip with your eyes and fixates your attention on the characters.

Contrast and Values

My favorite part in this piece also includes how well the artist used the contrast and values in this piece to deliver the right mood.

In the grayscale mode, we can clearly see how the value on the artwork changes from right (lighter values) to left (darker values). Such technique also gives us the sense of motion, the illusion like the female character is reaching towards the male character, trying to hug him. The pigeons also provide the illusion of the extension of that motion.

As for the contrast, it also helps to define the inner state of each character in the composition — the female character symbolizing something bright and innocent, while the male character has the darker tones.

2 — Movie Poster

For the movie poster, I decided to analyze the design of the poster for the movie called "American Animals". Just to be honest, I have not watched the movie yet, but the poster already told me what I could expect from it which is why I thought it would be interesting to break it down.

As IndieWire cited:

Bart Layton’s heist drama “American Animals” tells the true story of four criminals who set out to steal the highly valuable book “The Birds of America.” This ingenious poster makes it clear just how much that decision will go on to haunt the main characters.

Composition Techniques

This poster was quite hard in terms of finding the right pattern. I tried to use the same steps as for the artwork but in this case seems like the poster was broken down into smaller composition in the big general composition (picture 4).

Although, the poster fits the best into the grid number 4, it is also important to note that it also has perfect leading lines, created by the body of the flamingo, pointing at the main characters.

Negative space

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the flamingo's body creates pretty decent leading lines. It can be seen clearer while analyzing the negative space on the poster.

The head of the flamingo also plays a big role in drawing attention to the main characters.

Typography

It seemed to me that more different fonts were used on the poster but turned out there were only two of them and the rest was just playing for the bold and medium styles.

Main font family: Aachen Std, extended with Neue Aachen Std by ITC.

Colors and Values

As for the colors, mostly vintage colors were used for the poster, to give out the vibe of the criminal America back in 20th century, even though the story took place in 2004.

It is also interesting to note how the main characters are showed in the grayscale, again referring to the 20th century in the criminal America.