With the advent of the information age and the development of modern society, the meaning of modern illustration has changed from a narrow concept (limited to paintings and pictures) to a broad concept. "Illustration" refers to the pictures inserted between words in newspapers, magazines, various publications or children's picture books that we usually read, collectively referred to as "illustration". Illustration, in Latin, means "light up". Reading words and thinking about meaning were originally used to increase the interest given by words in publications and make the words more vivid and vivid in readers' minds. In today's various publications, the importance of illustrations has far exceeded the foil position of "luminous words". It can not only highlight the theme, but also enhance artistic appeal.
Illustration is an art form. As an important visual communication form of modern design, it occupies a specific position in modern design with its intuitive image, true sense of life and beautiful appeal. It is widely used in many fields of modern design, involving cultural activities, social undertakings, commercial activities, film and television culture and so on.
Whether it is random graffiti or thoughtful creation, it is illustration. Perhaps everyone has their own views and explanations on the definition of illustrations:
Illustration China Dalong: Illustration can be divided into artistic illustration and commercial illustration. Generally, pictures drawn for enterprises, products, publicity and decoration belong to commercial illustrations.
Hao Aijie: Illustration is a language. Draw whatever you want to express.
Wang Dongsheng: Literally, "illustration" is a picture interspersed in a text or an article.
Guo Hongfa: Illustration is a service.
Draw a sunny day: Illustration is the product of transforming conscious thinking into visual elements. Illustration is another expression of design. Simply speaking, illustration is design.
Jiahe: Illustration is actually a very extensive existence. It has more carriers than expected.
The development of illustration art has a long history. In your eyes and mine, ordinary and simple illustrations have great connotations. From the world's oldest illustration cave mural to the Japanese folk print ukiyo-e painting in the Edo period, all of them show the development of illustration. Illustrations first developed with the changes of newspapers and books in the early19th century. Its real golden age began in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, the illustrations just separated from art works were obviously drawn, and most of the authors engaged in illustrations were professional painters. Later, influenced by the school of abstract expressionism, they turned from concrete to abstract. It was not until the 1970s that illustrations returned to the realistic style.
The earliest illustrations in China appeared in the form of printmaking. With the introduction of Buddhist culture, they used "disguised" illustrations in the scriptures to publicize their teachings. At present, China's earliest prints are recorded in historical materials, namely "Dalagni Curse" published by Tang Suzong. The title page painting of King Kong Prajna Sutra published by Tang Yizong Xian Tong in the 9th year (868) is the exact date. In the Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties, book illustrations developed greatly. The application scope has expanded to medical books, historical geography books, archaeological catalogue books, daily encyclopedia books and other books, and color overprint illustrations have appeared. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it can be said that the ancient illustration art developed greatly, and there were book engraving industries all over the country. Different regions have formed different styles. The forms of illustrations are: frontispiece drawings, text illustrations, top or bottom drawings, paintings on inner pages or title pages, and cards.
The historical evolution of ancient illustrations in China can be regarded as the development history of printmaking. It is also the history of folk New Year pictures. It's just that folk New Year pictures became commodities independently earlier, which is the predecessor of commercial illustration.
The history of illustration in Europe is similar to that in China, and it was first used in religious books. Later, illustrations were widely used in natural science books, grammar books and collections of classic writers.
With the development of today's society, illustrations are widely used in various fields of society. Illustration art not only broadens our horizons, enriches our thoughts, gives us unlimited imagination and broadens our minds. With the increasing commercialization of art and the emergence of new painting materials and tools, illustration art has entered the era of commercialization. In the era of commodity economy, illustrations play a great role in promoting economic development. The concept of illustration has gone far beyond the scope of traditional laws and regulations. Throughout today's illustration world, painters are no longer limited to a certain style. They often break the way of using only one material in the past, and widely use various means to achieve the expected effect, so that the development of illustration art has gained a broader space and unlimited possibilities. In China, although illustration developed late, it has a long history. After the development of blackboard newspaper, print and poster layout after liberation, and the reference to international popular styles after 1980s, with the popularization of computer technology in the middle and late 1990s, more and more cutting-edge authors who use computers for illustration design emerged.
ShamekhAl-Bluwi, a Jordanian illustrator, skillfully combined fashion with architecture and designed a series of exquisite paper-cut illustrations.
Illustrations have found a huge living space since the birth of the mother book. With the development of technology and the needs of society, rich carriers are constantly emerging.
VictoNgai is a Hong Kong illustrator. One of the youngest winners in Forbes' latest "Under 30" (30 years old) art list.
What is the definition of CG illustration? What are the artistic features of CG illustration? What is the development potential of CG illustration? CG illustration mainly refers to the use of computer technology, which is mainly suitable for computer drawing, modeling and other visual design paintings. Mainly divided into two directions:
(1) Role positioning: Mainly in personal design and fashion design, and probably later suitable for game companies and animation companies. For example, the personnel of "Xian Jian San":
(2) Scene orientation: mainly painting scenes to express space atmosphere, architecture, scenery, etc. Film and television company, do conceptual design of the scene. For example, the concept map of the scene of "Looking for Dragons".
The two have something in common, and industrial design and advertising design often need such designers.
Of course, there are pure painting illustrations, such as Ritz, Shi Jiao, Chicken Leg and others, which are used for magazine covers, light novel illustrations, picture book illustrations and so on, but these people also have the strength to play the first two kinds of cross-border.
It depends on your personal choice. Basically, the scene is greater than the characters and the income of the pure illustrator. The original game paintings and pure illustrators are already saturated. At present, there is a shortage of people who can do conceptual design in China movies. Of course, income has a decisive relationship with the quality of your own paintings. As long as you draw well, it is not a problem.
How to learn illustration? An excellent CG illustration has its unique artistic style in composition, color matching and expression. How to draw a CG illustration well? On the one hand, we need to have a solid foundation, such as excellent modeling and color expression ability. On the other hand, the composition needs to be novel and creative. Below, mainly from these two aspects. CG illustration is put forward relative to the traditional illustration form.
CG in CG illustration is ComputerGraphics, and its core meaning is digital graphics. Computer is the main tool for visual design and production industry. It is a combination of art and technology. Drawing a CG illustration well requires not only mastering the illustration software skillfully, but also solid expression ability and unique creative thinking.
As an art form, CG illustration is an important visual communication form in modern design. It occupies a specific position in modern design with its intuitive image, true sense of life and virtue appeal. Add WeChat official account WeChat: Dong Fei, a famous animation teacher, and get 40,000 minutes of learning tutorials for free! An excellent CG illustration has the characteristics of very individuality, rich imagination, changeable angles, bright colors, clear characters, strong three-dimensional sense and realistic pictures.
In the learning process of CG illustration, first of all, let learners know the development history and present situation of illustration, so as to grasp the essence and development trend of illustration. At the same time, we should understand and analyze different illustration styles, representative works and technical characteristics, and design rich colors, exquisite shapes and illusory worlds in CG illustrations according to the needs of the market. In concrete operation, CG illustrator mainly uses computer drawing software and handwriting board to create works. Through the pressure-sensitive effect of the stylus, smooth and realistic lines can be easily drawn, which brings the same hand-drawn experience to CG designers. CG illustration is mainly simple in design and production. Illustration software can simulate traditional painting techniques, and at the same time, it can design effects that cannot be reflected by traditional techniques.
In the primary stage of learning, it is suggested that scholars should first be familiar with lines, which are the soul of illustration. Secondly, observation methods and basic description skills, such as copying mature animation works, are helpful to master the learning methods of CG illustration. When masterpieces can be copied well, scholars can create at various levels at this stage. For example, you can change clothes and gestures for the copied characters. Add WeChat official account WeChat: Dong Fei, a famous animation teacher, and get 40,000 minutes of learning tutorials for free! In short, we should make bold changes, and at the same time, we can practice our works with the help of communication platforms such as the Internet. In the process of learning CG illustration, we should focus on the following aspects.
1, the improvement of sketch ability
Sketch is closely related to the creation of CG illustrations. In CG illustration creation, scholars can extract their feelings about the works through sketch, which is the basis of all painting forms and the life of illustration art. In sketch training, we should pay attention to using perceptual vision to capture learners' ability to summarize images, strengthen their perceptual knowledge of the human body, and complete the description of objects in a short time. A good sketch is generally characterized by conciseness, delicacy, vividness and image. Sketch should adhere to long-term training, pay attention to the image of characters, and show the charm of characters well.
2. Master the modeling ability
The most important thing to learn illustration is the modeling ability of scholars. When learning illustration, scholars should practice creation and accumulate their own inspiration on the basis of understanding the human body structure, so as to design a good illustration. At the same time, we should be able to portray the characteristics of people of different ages and sexes, and portray the perspective performance and material texture of different buildings and landscapes.
When learning illustration, you should use good lines to express your head and facial features. It also explains the expressions and differences between head and five senses in traditional art and animation, as well as the proportional relationship between men and women, head and five senses. And the method of expression. At the same time, we should practice drawing the expression of characters' personality on facial expressions, such as emotions. Add WeChat official account WeChat: Dong Fei, a famous animation teacher, and get 40,000 minutes of learning tutorials for free! In physics, we should pay attention to the difference between cartoon characters and actual characters, and summarize the effect of exaggerated performance. Proportion and expression of key parts of human body: neck, trunk, limbs, hands and feet. Understand the characteristics of various body shapes of men and women as a whole, as well as the changes and performances of parts, and perform exercises on the overall body shapes of characters: fat, thin, tall and short.
3. Consolidation of color foundation
Marx once said: "The feeling of color is the most common form of aesthetic feeling". In CG illustration, color affects the atmosphere of a work, whether it is fresh, comfortable, fearful or dangerous, it is closely related to the adoption of color. For example, the whole picture is composed of one color, only the difference between lightness and purity. This kind of picture is simple and soft, giving people a sense of tranquility, comfort and unity. On the contrary, the colors of the works are composed of similar colors or adjacent colors, and the differences in hue area, position, size, purity and lightness of various colors in the composition constitute color contrast. The strong color relationship makes the picture eye-catching and shocking, and such works give people the feeling of excitement, fiery, enthusiasm or irritability. Add WeChat official account WeChat: Dong Fei, a famous animation teacher, and get 40,000 minutes of learning tutorials for free! There are also bright colors, which are generally used in cheerful scenes. Dark and gloomy illustration colors and dark and dignified tones are usually used to express mysterious, horrible and sad atmosphere effects. Illustrations of this color are often used in stories about myths and magic, and the pictures are mainly cool and gray.
4. Creative expression of composition
The essence of creativity is the subversion of tradition and people's inertial thinking, and creativity is full of innovation. Creative composition gives people a novel and unique feeling and can deeply grasp the audience's sight. A good example. The harmonious blend of body language and scene is the focus of composition. At the same time, we should pay attention to these points in the specific composition: First, don't blindly start with "the horizontal plane is up", but always try the angles of "looking down" and "looking up". Second, the movements and expressions of the characters should be full, so that they can jump from the page. Third, the background should set off the characters, and don't let the characters decorate the background, unless the literati draw landscapes and illustrations, it is mainly for people to see. Finally, they should be clear and hierarchical. Only in this way can they design excellent works.
5. Be proficient in software skills
Technical proficiency requires scholars to try to express their works with different tools. The use of different tools will bring different effects to the work, and find out the effect that best suits the style of this work. In the study of CG illustration, brushes and layers are the most commonly used. Brush is the main tool for drawing CG illustrations, and general drawing software has its own brushes with various strokes. You can choose brushes according to your own needs and preferences, and try to express various styles with different strokes; Add WeChat official account WeChat: Dong Fei, a famous animation teacher, and get 40,000 minutes of learning tutorials for free! The second is to make full use of the function of the layer. Establishing different layers according to needs and painting in the corresponding layers can not only speed up the drawing, grasp the overall level of the work, but also facilitate the modification of the work.
6. Adhere to the illustration style with China characteristics.
Under the impact of western culture, according to the artistic characteristics of our country, how to grasp the illustration style of our country has become particularly important. With the development of illustration market, the level of illustration in China will be higher than that in by going up one flight of stairs. CG illustration should not only show the characteristics of the times, but also highlight the national tradition and spirit. For example, the artistic features of China traditional Chinese painting, paper-cutting, shadow play and New Year pictures are applied to CG illustration, and the unique artistic effect and expression of China traditional art are digitized, which not only enriches the form and content of illustration, but also develops the illustration form with local characteristics.