How to use watercolor techniques in animation illustration design?
Illustration design is a hot industry gradually emerging in the field of design, which involves a wide range and has a great social demand, and has a great influence on the transmission of various information and the design field. Illustration is rapidly, popularly and frequently enriched, which meets the needs of the public in this picture-reading era, and the expression forms of illustration art design are becoming more and more abundant. With the expansion of the design field, illustration design has integrated the elements of design and painting art, becoming more and more social, fashionable and expressive, and becoming an indispensable art form in today's society. With the increasingly close relationship among science and technology, culture and art, the application fields and forms of illustration are becoming more and more abundant.
Illustration, like animation, needs to tell stories through pictures and has certain narrative function. Illustration itself uses a variety of materials and techniques. In Japan, because the commercialization of animation started earlier, manual illustration was very developed before the emergence of modern digital illustration. Hand-painted illustrations are generally done with watercolor tools. Watercolor has a long history, profound connotation, many famous artists, various artistic schools, and smooth and transparent pictures. Among the painting arts, watercolor painting, as a popular painting, has a unique position. The expression technique of watercolor painting can be combined with the style and characteristics of illustration design. The unique artistic charm of watercolor illustration makes more and more animation artists choose this expression technique for artistic creation. The technique of watercolor painting is widely used in animation illustration design works, and its advantages are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
Watercolor tool materials are the best choice for drawing animation illustration design works
Watercolor materials and tools are relatively simple, economical, convenient and easy to carry. There are many kinds of watercolor paper, including bagged watercolor paper and notebook-shaped watercolor paper, which is convenient to use and carry. Other kinds of paper, such as sketch paper, cardboard and gouache paper, can be used as materials for painting. There are two kinds of watercolor pigments: transparent pigments and opaque pigments. Usually, when painting, transparent watercolor pigments are generally used. There are many forms of packaging, including liquid and solid, tin tube and bottle. Liquid watercolor pigments are bottled in transparent glass, which is transparent and bright, with high chroma and high transparency after overlapping. Drawing illustrations is the best. Commonly used watercolor pens generally have two types: round head and flat head, and round head watercolor pens are mainly suitable for sketching and detailing; Flat-headed watercolor pen is mainly used for flat painting, drawing square surfaces and lines, and can also be used for flat painting in a large area. Chinese watercolor painters often use brushes to paint watercolors, so there is no specific requirement for the choice of pens, and they can choose and use them according to their own preferences. The sketchpad is made of wood or plexiglass, which can be easily carried when sketching or collecting wind. Therefore, watercolor painting tools are simpler and more convenient than oil painting or traditional Chinese painting.
the rich techniques of watercolor painting are suitable for the expression of animation and illustration design works
Watercolor painting techniques are generally divided into dry painting, wet painting and combination of dry and wet painting according to material characteristics. You can also use special tools and means to create special effects, such as using a pen containing clear water, absorbent paper or sponge to absorb the color before it is dry; When the color is not dry, use a watering can to spray water, resulting in different sizes of white spots; While the color is not dry, scratch the picture with branches, knives, etc., and scrape out bright spots, branches and other shapes; There are also many methods, such as shading, crayon, salting, oil stain, and printing. At present, CG illustration is widely used, often used in the creation of comics, animations and games. Compared with pure art painting, CG illustration is more intuitive and simple in operation, and easy to modify and store, but it is more commercial and has a single expression language and technique. With the improvement of people's cultural and artistic quality, purely artistic hand-drawn illustrations are more popular with the public, especially watercolor illustrations. Watercolor illustration can not only show animated scenes, but also show animated character modeling. The animated scenes and character modeling expressed by watercolor techniques have fresh and unique picture effects, which can attract the attention of the audience and improve the artistic value. In short, the rich expression techniques in watercolor painting can better reflect the characteristics of exaggeration, humor and imagination of animation illustrations.
The unique visual effect of watercolor painting can better reflect the artistry of animation illustration design works
1 Pure and transparent, fresh and bright
The beauty of water mostly lies in its clarity and cleanliness, and most watercolor pigments are also transparent. The most attractive feature of watercolor painting also lies in its transparency, which helps to smudge in layers, better express light and create a wonderful picture, thus achieving a pure and transparent picture effect. Oil painting and gouache are mainly covered, although there are transparent paintings, but they can't be compared with watercolors, so the picture effect is characterized by dignified, vigorous and elegant. Chinese painting also paints with water, but its pigment is not as transparent as watercolor, and its expression language is mainly lines and ink colors, so it is difficult to show the beauty of water color like watercolor. The cartoon illustrations drawn by watercolor technique are pure, transparent, relaxed and bright, with free and freehand brushwork and fresh and natural brushwork, which is more in line with the characteristics of animation and suitable for expressing some characters and scenes in animation.
2 Vivid and coherent
Flowing is the characteristic of water. Watercolor painters are good at making use of this feature of water, so that the combination of water and color can flow, permeate and connect actively on special hard paper, achieving vivid visual effects and showing unique artistic beauty. Oil painting and gouache rely on stacking and covering, which can't flow; Although the "splash ink" and "splash color" of Chinese painting have certain fluidity, because it is painted on soft and fast-absorbing raw rice paper, the flow of water color is hard to match that of watercolor painting. Using watercolor techniques to express the characters and scenes in animation can make the gestures in the works flexible and changeable, and the character personality is more distinct, which perfectly shows the Chinese aesthetic charm of animation illustration design.
3 Abstraction, generalization and distinct levels
Watercolor painting is not necessary to pursue rich, realistic and delicate effects like oil painting because of the limitation of its tool materials. In order to give full play to its advantages, the shape and color of objective objects should be summarized and refined before being expressed. Wet painting in watercolor technique is a method of coloring paper after it is soaked or dyed wet, which is suitable for expressing hazy, illusory and soft animation scenes, such as distant view, fog scene, rain scene and dark parts of objects, summarizing the light and dark levels of the picture and strengthening the beauty of color composition. The use of a variety of watercolor techniques can enable artists to grasp the paintings, so that what is finally presented on the screen is pure and rich sublimation beauty.
4 Water and color blend and artistic conception is hazy
Many stories in cartoons must be expressed by animation scenes, so scenes are essential for animation creation. In order to highlight the theme and background of the story, attention is paid to creating an environmental atmosphere in the painting process, and watercolor has unique requirements for creating, rendering and unifying the atmosphere. Taking the animation works with fantasy and romance as an example, its watercolor effect and beautiful pictures complement each other, which is perfect. This type of expression method makes the creative theme rich in connotation and hazy in artistic conception. Watercolor pigments are relatively thin, and it is easy to create aesthetic effects. The water * * * of wet painting can vividly express the beautiful pictures, making the works present a hazy artistic conception. It can be seen that artistic conception is undoubtedly a bridge between artists and viewers. Illustration art can easily achieve this effect when using watercolor to express.