Introduction to visual language

[Music] hi I'm Dean Kelly and I'm a story ours here at Pixar you know that old saying a picture is worth a thousand words well it's true using simple visual cues you can communicate all kinds of cool ideas and different emotions and because of this a single image can tell a whole story [Music] let's make this scene a simple drawing like the storyboards we create a Pixar the first thing you'll notice is that the bigger something is in the frame the more important it is I'm clearly the most important thing in this frame choosing to put a character in a large space where they appear small is one way to communicate how vulnerable they are or how big their world is a low-angle can make me seem commanding or menacing I now seem a little unbalanced everything you see on screen is a choice and all of it can help you tell stories this is the dolphin art from ratatouille this single image clearly illustrates how important shape and framing artists Ori telling the artist who drew this chose everything in the frame including the framing look at Remy he's a tiny rat but in this frame and from this perspective he's the same size as the chefs see how we separate from the kitchen with these panes he is literally being kept from his dreams of being a chef with these horizontal and vertical lines boxing him in but Remy seems equal to the chef's which is an important story point shape also helps us tell story take these three main characters for monsters University the artists who design Mike Sully and hardscrabble show shapes to amplify and reflected their character Mike is essentially a ball he's just not threatening or scary Sulley is a big rectangle he's sturdy and he's tough to move you believe he can be a scare hardscrabble is a bunch of triangles she's pointy and threatening it helps her to be intimidating in the film as a visual storyteller you have a chance to guide your viewers in all sorts of ways color can guide the eye value or how dark or light something is can make it stand out from everything else in an image in the movies size and position in the frame also matter they have an effect on how we feel about a character or a moment an incredible script this scene was just two people arguing but the story artists used Helen stretching abilities and Helen becomes the powerful one in this moment just by being larger than Bob by stretching but usually an artist will make a character closer and bigger and frame in this storyboard I drew from monsters University you can see how it made Mike dominate the frame by putting him in the foreground close to camera Mike is coming into his own as a scare coach and I mean the biggest thing and framed because he's the strongest character in this moment stronger than Sulley we can communicate so many things using only visual language and these next lessons you get to explore these ideas and use them to help tell your own stories