More William Wray

Here are some more pictures from a painter that I have introduced in an earlier post.

From his latest post, he has done an appealing painting, with such convincing anatomy to the characters, as well as some excellent lighting, and a solid understanding of weight. You get a good variety of sizes and shapes for the characters, like the small boy on the left, and, the centrepiece, a large woman sitting on chair. We get the notion of weight from the lighting- the boy's back is darkened by the light source, whilst the woman shines well a top, but gets darker as we go below the shoulders. Wray's comments reflect his preference to painting people with extreme proportions. This is good to note this when I will develop my own characters for future works by using a contrast of proportions on my characters to make them stand out.

I like the mood this picture brings. I also like the contrast between the lighting on all three sides on the piece. The one on the left is the darkest, bringing out the details on the stairway. The other wall is not too dark, but just has enough lighting to make it convincing, especially when you get down to the ladders and the drainpipe. The street scene, in the background, is very bright, using light colours to depict buildings; again, like on the walls, gets darker when you reach the road. It is always good to note what mood the backgrounds brings, especially when it comes to 2D animation, especially when layouts are concerned.

Clouds, as well as other objects, can be used to create mood when it comes to lighting a piece. This picture uses clouds to darken this street painting; but we are given a supposed location of the light source by the bright blue sky in the top left corner of the painting.

I quite like how light the colours are on this plane picture. This limited palette gives the plane a convincing perspective, and weight, within this scene. I should seriously consider using a much lighter palette to make my objects, or characters, stand out.

To finish off this post, I will finish on this simplistic painting of a train. The perspective is convincing because of the darkened areas of colour along the side of the train, and on the ground.