1 Comment Written by Robert on June 25, 2008 – 4:39 pm

This next assignment is an easy one. It will give your hand and eye a chance to get to know the world around you and help you develop a more critical eye for design. The critical eye is developed by critiquing either your own design work or others’ work. Over time you’ll start to notice what is good and bad design.

This can only come out of careful observation of many designs over time and making mental if not written notes of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Observation is the keen awareness of what you are examining, and noticing design elements, such as proportion, contour, size, color, concept, and function, that make that design a success or failure. In layman’s terms, use observation and critique so you don’t make the same mistake twice, and notice any mistakes others have made. You learn from good design by applying it to your work.

Critiquing your own work is very important to learning the observation process, but for starters, let’s critique others. In your sketchpad, devote at least a few pages to doing this next exercise. I want you to look at cars, buildings, people, trees, flowers, fashion, furniture, jewelry, store displays, and sculpture and analyze the characteristics that make them unique. Is the design perfect for what it does?

Does it stand the test of time? Does it have mass appeal? At the top of the page, list your object and the design elements that make that object look cool, interesting, quirky, ugly, etc. List all the attributes that make up its physical appearance. This list should consist of design traits that you think are responsible for its identity, whether good or bad.

Take a mobile phone, for example. If you think it’s an attractive phone, perhaps it’s the cool aluminum case, smooth round buttons, and huge LED screen that make it feel modern and hip. In contrast, maybe the mobile phone is unattractive because of its cheap green plastic case, squarish hard-to-read buttons, and small LED screen.

Using observation as your primary tool, examine each object and ask yourself what makes this good or bad. Design flaws that stick out like a sore thumb are easier to notice, so look for the subtle flaws, like a coffee mug handle that’s too small, a picture hung too low on a wall, a beautiful curve in a household product, nice subtle lighting at a restaurant. Critique color, shape, quality, proportion, and ease of use. Ask yourself why you are drawn to certain design elements and make note of these.

If you are drawn to a certain consumer product, like Apple’s iPod for example, what is it about the iPod that makes it so cool? Is it because its function and form is perfectly simple? It looks simple to use and it is simple to use, and it’s that simplicity that permeates the product. Simply put, the iPod functions like it looks. It functions intuitively, looks stunning, and personifies cool. That kind of simplicity is the ultimate goal of any designer, but can only be achieved through trial and error, a keen eye for design, and careful observation.

All of this relates to production design and ultimately filmmaking. Once you have the hang of observation, find your favorite movie and really watch it this time. Use the scrutiny of your new critical eye to pick out color, movement, composition, and environment that make this movie a real success. If you pause your favorite scene and start to move through it frame by frame, you’ll start to notice things about color, contrast, and composition that you never noticed before.

With your newly acquired drawing skills and critical eye, you’ll really be able to break down a shot and figure out what the cinematographer was trying to achieve from a graphic standpoint. Look at each shot as a graphic drawing, purposely composed with a focal point and flow. Ask yourself where the director wants your eyes to go.

What graphic shapes are in the background that add a mood to the shot and makes it poignant or compelling? Study each shot as if it were a graphic design problem and make a mental or written note of all the things that you discover. Ultimately, this kind of careful observation and patient critique of others will lead you naturally to designing your animations with the same sensibilities and subtleties as found in your favorite films. I like to think of this kind of observation as a path of discovery that leads to a broadened sense of what good design is and the confidence to apply it to your own work. I must digress briefly to tell you a story of observation that even today has left an indelible impression upon me.

I was on a flight from Los Angeles to Florida on a new Boeing 777, which is a huge airplane with all the modern amenities. I had read a lot about the 777’s construction and was really excited about flying on this bad boy (well, any plane that has an engine the circumference of a 727’s fuselage is a bad boy). Every person who boarded that day was greeted by the flight attendant saying, “Welcome aboard, please watch the Flight Attendant call button because it is located on the top of the armrest and it is easy to hit it with your elbow.”

As soon as I sat down I noticed the armrest had a recessed touchpad for telephone, TV, etc., and sure enough the call button was there. Instead of putting the keypad on the side of the armrest, some genius thought it would be more convenient to access the keypad from the top, which in plain English means a constant beeping sound over the PA. To make things worse, my seat was located right under a speaker, so my whole flight was nothing but hundreds of elbows hitting this call button, “bing, bing, bing,bing… pause… bing, bing,” shortly interrupted with “ladies and gentleman, please remember that BING, BING, BING….”

The preceding is a true story and a great example of a design flaw. The real question for you is, “What kind of design flaw?” Understanding that there are different types of design will further refine your observation skills and improve your work by keeping things in context. What I mean by “different types” of design are different studies within design, like industrial design, production design, fashion design, graphic design, photography, cinematography, architecture, lighting design, and interior design.

As a designer and 3D animator, your greatest tool for improving your work is to create a 3D world that is viable and believable. If your scenes contain elements of industrial design, lighting design, and graphic design, you want to accurately portray each of those design elements looking their best.

A good example would be a short 3D film that I just saw. It was lit beautifully and had great character design, but the architectural elements were awful. I could tell that this filmmaker was really good at lighting, animation, and even character design but had no eye for architecture, so for the entire film I was distracted by this animator’s lack of caring for such an important design element. In fact, there were times I cringed at how bad the designs were, to the point that I missed some of the dialogue and action… NOT GOOD!

In your own work, do your best to observe the good and the bad in all types of design, not just what interests you.