HELP! Where's the perspective in this painting?

[Adam Thornton 0]

Hi folks,
Just wondering if anyone can help. I'm wanting to draw something with a similar perspective to this screenshot from the film Wolfwalkers, but am pulling my hair out trying to find the correct perspective/vanishing points. Have drawn and erased so many lines and vanishing points!
Can you help?
Thanks soooo much!!
Adam

[Fey Realme]

@Adam-Thornton-0 because its so organic they are creating perspective by the position of the body—thats it. The foreground elements are basically just a decorative frame not bound by perspective. The contrast in sizes tell us where we are (looking down) and support the perspective created by the body’s position. It is really a flat piece and only uses perspective’s ideas in size and positioning to tell us what is going in, but there is no real 3 demensionality, which is where vanishing points would come in. (IE, you cant find them bc they arent there)

[Norman Morana]

Hey @Adam-Thornton-0
I did a little breakdown of how my brain interprets this space and how I find the ground plain. Pardon my quick drawings.

First, I see that they provided a circle, from there I can put that circle in a box, helping me find the ground plain. I think they're using more of an isometric perspective here.

This leads me to thinking the ground plain the character is walking on is something like this.

From there I can build up boxes for where I may want to put trees. Mind you I made up the boxes in this example, but I did put the character in a box.

You didn't ask, but as far as perspective goes. Depending on what you want to do, it is crucial to learn, but I think it is important to understand what to take away from what you learned from perspective. My theory is learning perspective is there to help give us an understanding of space and how an object looks when it is above or below the viewers eyes.

This shot you provided, I think is an example of where vanishing points are not important, necessarily, but understanding where the ground plain is is important.

Hope you found this helpful.

[Adam Thornton 0]

@R-Fey-Realme Aha! That makes a lot of sense! And explains why I just couldn't find the vanishing points. It just wasn't making sense - because they weren't there! Thanks for taking the time to explain that.

[Adam Thornton 0]

@Norman-Morana That's really helpful. Thanks for taking the time to help me out with that. Yes, I'm wanting to create an image where you're looking down, similar to this one. Thanks again!

[Adam Thornton 0]

@Norman-Morana P.s. I never noticed that circle! It was so clever for you to see that and then use it with the squares and ground plane etc!

[ArtistErin]

@Norman-Morana Thank you for this very well thought out breakdown. You could absolutely teach this. I created a piece similar to this one, and I need to re-visit and apply these technical details. XXXOOO so good...

[Norman Morana]

@Adam-Thornton-0 haha, glad you found it useful

[Norman Morana]

@ArtistErin oh cool! I hope the new version works out for you

[ArtistErin]

@Norman-Morana Thank you!! In fact, here's the piece, I pitched it at a SCBWI conference last fall, and queried the art director who asked for me to develop the storytelling more around some of my work. Anyway, if you have insight into this particular piece I'd love to know what I can do to make it better.

I feel like I need to continue to hone my perspective skills and would love to know if you hand draw your grid in Photoshop? Or is there a resource you use? I have used the Polygon tool however seem to really struggle to move the points outside of the canvas, and then zoom in enough to draw my elements within the lines. OMG I could take all day building this. If you have a hack please share!! Thank you

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@Adam-Thornton-0 hi Adam. This piece doesn’t seem to need the use of perspective. You can achieve this look by just using an isometric view

[Norman Morana]

Hey @ArtistErin I do all of these construction lines by hand in Photoshop. I haven't messed with the grid tool before. However, if I'm adding something like a poster into an illustration, I will will draw it flat and use the transform tool to roughly put the poster into perspective.

Where you looking for help with construction in this piece you shared?

[ArtistErin]

@Norman-Morana Thank you for your reply! I have been drawing rough estimations in Photoshop using the line tool, and the Polygon tool also. I just thought if there is an easier way to set up a grid I'm up for it! I love seeing draw-overs and thought if you wanted to weigh in, so yes, I need help here! I would love to know what you would do to fix this piece. And how you might set up the grid to set up the components within it ( the boy on the platform, the dog below, etc. Thank you so much!!!

[Norman Morana]

Hi @ArtistErin I'm sure you'll find a way of establishing grids you like.

I did do some construction over your illustration. I want to say first I think a lot of the parts of this image are already working really well. I don't have any notes for you on color, texture, design, or your rendering, I think they're all solid. And the foreground elements are really nice, too.

I called out some stuff in the drawing with numbers.

Where I think the struggle is is in establishing a consistent ground plain. Right now we have two going on, the earth, shown in red as 1. and the treehouse in green, 2.

Funny enough, if I look at ground plain 1 and ground plain 2 as their own spaces, the elements existing on each plain are believable in their respective ground plains. Did I make sense?

The bike and the wagon, 3 and 4 are working well with ground plain 1.

The boy and everything on the treehouse are working well in ground plain 2.

The dog (6) is a maybe? I drew a box to show how I interpreted the dog's existence. But the dog could be subjective.

Now the trick is to get the treehouse and the earth in the same plain of existence. Right now to me it reads as the tree house is on a slant. I hope that I illustrated how I'm seeing that in the construction lines well enough.

There is one small issue with the branches coming out of the left and right of the treehouse. I am getting the branches visually mixed up with the roots. I would recommend experimenting with making sure the tree roots and branches are distinct from each other. Maybe with size and value. The roots could also be going in and out of the ground more? I know you'll find a clever solution.

I did a couple little drawings to show how I would think about solving this illustration's puzzle. Yours will look much better lol.

I would think about how tall you want the tree to be. The top (a.) is how tall I think you have the tree now. For this I tried making the tree taller, seen in (b.)

Now (c.) is my attempt at trying to figure out how this could look when viewed from above. It is a little rough, but I want to show that I am thinking about the shapes as solids and drawing through everything. I did cheat and put this more in an isometric perspective. But I hope the ideas still come across.

I think maybe the easiest solve for you would be to keep all of the objects in the image that are man-made I think they are all believable. I think if you stretch out the tree like my (c.) example, you could make this more solid. So I think it's really just redrawing the root area.

As I was writing all that I thought it might be helpful to illustrate what I was suggesting. Oh boy, this is a real difficult angle lol. I tried adding some shadow and highlight to help sell the depth. I also wanted to have the treehouse's deck stand out from the roots and ground plain. I cut the hill a little and pushed back the silhouetted tree. I shrunk the dog, bike and wagon to help push them further from the viewer, I want it to sell that we're seeing this up high with the birds. I also warped the ladder a little to make it look like it's going down.

I do think the image could use a little more space in front of the tree, but that all depends on the story you're trying to tell here. I hope this helps with the next image you work on and if you choose to take this one further, please take anything I did that you found helpful.

[ArtistErin]

@Norman-Morana Wow Norman... thank you for this. I really appreciate the time you took here. I will for sure make the adjustments! You have helped me establish a set point that will help me in so many ways to problem solve what my eye knew wasn't right. Also knowing how you set up this grid makes me more resolved to get these things planned better in the thumbnailing phase in future compositions, because I could have saved myself alot of time in the painting stage had I applied this important fundamental...

Again, a million thanks. For sure you know what you are doing and could absolutely teach this!!!

[A Former User]

@Norman-Morana this review is very clear and easy to understand. Great job Norman!

[davidhohn]

@Norman-Morana Super impressive draw-over! Nicely done!

[Norman Morana]

@ArtistErin Oh that is awesome! I am really happy to hear that you found this helpful!

[Norman Morana]

@thomas-young Thank you thank you!

[Norman Morana]

@davidhohn awe thanks! That means a lot