[Talk] Shapes

[Megan]

One of the topics that crop up inside my head from time to time is this thing often referred to as shape theory. To put it simply:

There are three different types of shapes that serve as a basis:
- circles
- rectangles
- triangles

Each of these shapes have certain attributes to themselves:
- circles give of this feeling of youth/cuteness (look at any design of a cute anime girl and you'll realize a lot of it is circles)
- rectangles give off a very static and very stoic vibe (sturdy fighters, knights in full armor, etc.)
- triangles make objects look more dynamic, they're also used to make things seem more threatening and dangerous (popular example: Vegeta from DBZ looks as threatening as can be in part due to his rectangular eyes)

You can either fully commit and maximize the effect or mix and match and create more intricate and complex designs.

On to the question: has anyone actively (that is: intentionally) made use of shapes and what effect did you want to achieve if you did? Or is it something that you'd find interesting to play around with in the future? Any other thoughts you want to add?

 

[Sunfished]

oh my god i think of the same thing a lot! kind of eerie how similar it is to my approach to utilizing shapes to design things. The only difference is that I don't look at it as shapes, but rather lines.

For me, I actively use curved lines whenever I want to move a viewer's focus towards certain key elements in a "tourist" fashion. things like scarves and long flowing hair usually flow around a piece to either draw a person towards the head, (which I tend to make the key focal element in my art), or away from it towards other parts of the body. Ellipses are used the same way as well!

I like to group rectangles and triangles together into what i consider angular lines, (mostly because I seldom use actual rectangles), and I use those slightly different from curved lines. If curved lines are like a path a tourist travels, angular lines would be like the tourist attraction. I like to sprinkle in sharp angles to break up some curved lines, like adding some little pointed triangles in hair, or have curved lines conjoin where angular lines tend to dance.