VizWorld.com

Lucas Martell, creator of the fantastic Pidgeon Impossible short film, has a great blog post up dissecting this shot from Dreamwork’s “How to Train your Dragon” and how it is a fantastic example of using pose to guide the viewer to the portion of interest.

I’ll talk more about this concept in an upcoming podcast, but this still is just so perfect in many ways that I had to share. First off, if you’re not familiar with this idea, the basic rule of thumb is that you want the lines of your pose to lead the audiences eye towards the most important part of the image. Usually this is the eyes of the main character.

via The Pigeon: Impossible Blog » Blog Archive » A picture is worth a thousand words.

Graphics theory, vfx

The WebDesignerDepot has a great writeup on “The Myth of DPI” and how people unfamiliar with web design typically size images in inches, thinking that the DPI is a useful figure in sizing images for the web.

Images on the web are measured in pixels. Yet many people go through the trouble of setting their images to 72 dots per inch (DPI). The process of sizing them is often misunderstood.ci

The misconception about resolution in digital images, especially ones bound for the web, is that they must meet a certain number of dots per inch.

via The Myth of DPI | Webdesigner Depot.

Graphics design, theory

Will Evans has written a fantastic treatise on Dynamic Visualization: introduction and Theory over at Semantic Foundry.  It discusses several classifications of visualizations and how they succeed, and how they fall.

The visualizations that are created must support the cognitive requirements such as pre-attentive processing, working memory, etc.. To do this, many of the same theories, strategies, and techniques are also duplicated in a dynamic visualization (Image Theory, the Gestalt Laws, verbal / visual dual-coding, etc.) Instead, I will give a brief overview of the literature, cognitive processes, and techniques that are unique to dynamic displays. This article is roughly organized into the following sections: Introduction, Dynamic Visualizations, and Conclusion, References, and Apologia.

via Dynamic Visualization: Introduction & Theory.

Science education, infovis, theory, visualization

Over at psd.tuts, Danny Outlaw has gathered a list of 50 free tutorials/lessons in graphic design theory.  They range from typography, to colors, to grid based design, all the way through user feedback testing.  The information contained here goes much further than just graphic design, to just good graphics in general.

While many of us can create something that looks good in Photoshop or attractive when spliced into CSS, but do we actually understand the design theory behind what we create? Theory is the missing link for many un-trained but otherwise talented designers. Here are 50 excellent graphic design theory lessons to help you understand the ‘Whys’, not just the ‘Hows’.

via 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory – Psdtuts+.

Graphics design, photoshop, theory