Image source: Laimyours.com
I’d like to talk to you about style. Specifically, I want to talk about your ability to create variations on a theme. This type of art technique is readily apparent in heavily stylized movies like Wreck-it-Ralph. The movie is set in a video game world, so the characters have cartoonish, childlike qualities. Ralph and Vanellope are practically polar opposites in appearance — Ralph is massive, brutish, and has a rustic outfit while Vanellope is small, adorable, and has a trendy hoodie-skirt combo. And yet, these two characters look like they belong in the same world.
In realistic movies, variations on a theme aren’t always so apparent. These movies strive to mimic real life, so there isn’t much room for stylistic creativity. Pacific Rim is a good example. The robots each looked different, but they were united by a similar aesthetic. Each of the kaiju (the massive monsters in the movie) had a unique feature on their heads such as a horn or a bone plate to visually represent that all of the kaiju are related.
Image source: Takuchat.com
The ability to create variations on theme is (in my opinion) often overlooked and vastly underrated. Audiences want everything in a video game or movie to fit together aesthetically and thematically because it’s so jarring to come across a character that breaks the pattern.
Being able to create variations on a theme is both vitally important and incredibly difficult to pull off. One of the reasons why it’s so tricky is that you have to have multiple pieces of art before you can create a pattern. I mean, suppose that you’re presented with the task of creating variations on a theme with the Joker. There are dozens of directions you could go — super villains, suggestions of insanity, clowns, green-purple color combinations, gothic imagery, dark humor, and so forth. So, what theme do you create?
One of the best ways to improve this skill is to force yourself to create a variation on a theme of another artist’s work. One of the best examples I can think of is reality TV. Contestants are often charged with the task of completing a project that follows another artist’s style. The character in the image below was created by a contestant on Faceoff who had had to create a Tim Burton-inspired personality. Do you see the dark, whimsical patterns that are so prevalent in Tim Burton’s movies?
Image source: Realitytvmagazine.sheknows.com
Do yourself a favor and try to replicate some of these reality TV-esque challenges. Create a 3D model of a new Pokemon that fits the franchise’s iconic art style. Design an environment that wouldn’t look out of place in The Croods. By forcing yourself to work within the thematic boundaries that other artists have created, you will learn how to identify the underlying concepts in a piece of art and use those themes in your own projects.