This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
The Autumn Promptathon is Coming
2024 • 09 • 24 - 2024 • 09 • 30
Click here for more info
Having trouble coming up with something to draw? No worries - while you'll eventually learn how to start from a tiny seed of a thought and gradually nurture it into a complex concept to explore through design and illustration, it's perfectly fine not to be there just yet.
For now though, here's an idea that might interest you.
Kaiju Defence Force: Engineer Corps
We all knew it would end this way - we just didn't realize we'd put up such a good fight. Kaiju attacks, once rare and utterly horrifying, have all but become commonplace. Every aspect of our lives, from our housing, our transportation, - hell, even the food we eat - revolves around the fact that multiple times a week, our very existence is threatened by these great hulking beasts that emerge from the depths of our oceans.
Living with the constant threat of Kaiju attacks introduces a plethora of problems that must be solved in order for a society to survive, let alone thrive. Pick one, and attempt to address it in a design. Whether it is a direct defensive measure against the attacks, a means of navigating the city, or a system that helps ensure the citizens' needs are being met - everything's on the table, and the clock is ticking before the alarm sounds again.
This one isn't doing it for you? How about this one instead: Family Life >>>
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Framed Ink
I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.
Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.
Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.
Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.