visiblyrandom

Visual analysis is a broad subject, but it is basically just watching things and thinking about them a bit more than you usually would. It can consist of:

* Active stalking and observing people, animals and things in real life (example "Hmm... what makes this guy so attractive?")

* Seeing all sorts of movies, videos, photgraphy, paintings, architecture, books, games etc. and determining similarities, differences and special things about them

* Not only seeing but actually making or recreating things

Search and gather for different sorts of visual imagery and combine them accourding to your "mission".

Think what makes them special - think of composition colour, lighting, feeling etc and compare them.

Ask yourself "What works? What doesn't? How can it be improved?"

If you are observing something try to draw it or break it into main parts (for example analysing movement from a reference video or determining the way somebody walks).

When you are stuck and need inspiration.

When you need to draw/create/animate something, but you need to analyse its shapes colour, tha way it moves. (As a reference)

When you want to actually enjoy a piece of media/art, because it makes you appreciate it more.

When you want to learn from great artists and "steal" from them.

I love visual analysis because I love visuals in general - I like looking at things and trying to understand how and why they work, and usually I always start projects or designs with searching for references or seeing what others have done. It is a great method to find new ideas and you can find a lot of things by accident. You can discover things you haven't thought of.

Despite being useful for inspiration, sometimes it can get you stuck in a box. For example when you want to draw a cartoon rabbit, but you keep drawing Bugs Bunny and you don't know what to change. It is a bit tricky to know when to stop and how to get away from reality and what has already been done and that's why this is combined really nice with experimentation.

You need to develop the tools in your mind to be able to analyse even when you are not thinking about it when you are an animator, because you want to create a world which resembles reality and you want to know how things work, how people work and for that you need the correct knowledge from the literature research.

There are lots and lots of examples for visual anlysis, so let's tlk only about this project.

It was the first time I did a colour study and it really made me think and realise that I don't know much about colours, and I would love to do it more.

For the background I needed inspiration and refference so I made moodboards of the real places and the style I like.

It really helped me figuring out design, composition, colours and lighting.

We also did A lot of visual analysis on videos for the movement and the storyboarding which can be found here:
https://2021.mywdka.nl/VGWMAJ21AN/2020/09/09/storyboarding-5/

I believe that visual analysis is one of the most important research methods for me , because after all we are visual people and we need to know to others are doing to be able to create something beautiful and original.