Elements of Game Design compositon

Elements of Game Design

Visual Composition

For the purpose of this blog I will be looking into visual composition.

A definition of Composition is as follows:

The act or art of composing, or forming a whole or integral, by placing together and uniting different things, parts, or ingredients.

The invention or combination of the parts of any literary work or discourse, or of a work of art; as, the composition of a poem or a piece of music.

The art or practice of so combining the different parts of a work of art as to produce a harmonious whole; also, a work of art considered as such.

http://www.brainyquote.com/words/co/composition146327.html#ixzz17zxAzjiG

Composition is the term that is used when discussing what or how an artistic arrangement is made up or contrived. In terms of a musical performance, it would be the arrangement and order of the different instruments and timing in which they are heard that would determine the musical pieces good or bad composition. When looking at visual composition it is a different story, let’s take a photograph for instance. There are several things to consider when taking a photograph or planning out a painting or sketch, such as the light and reflections cast, the objects that are to be within it and the horizon line.

Art composition rules provide a starting point for deciding on a composition for a painting, for deciding where to put things. The Rule of Thirds is the easiest art composition rule to follow in a painting. It's a basic rule popular among photographers, but equally applicable to the composition of paintings. Applying the rule of thirds to a painting means you'll never have a painting that's split in half, either vertically or horizontally, or one with the main focus right in the centre like a bull's-eye.

What is the Rule of Thirds?

Quite simply, divide a canvas in thirds both horizontally and vertically, and place the focus of the painting either one third across or one third up or down the picture, or where the lines intersect (the red circles on the diagram).

What Difference Does the Rule of Thirds Make?

Take a look at these two photos of a lion. On the one on the left, your eye is drawn straight into the centre of the image and you tend to ignore the rest of the picture. On the one on the right, where the lion's face is on one of the Rule of Thirds 'hotspots', your eye is drawn to the lion's face, then around the painting following the curve of the body

http://painting.about.com/od/composition/ss/art-composition-rules.htm

This windmill is a good example of simple composition on the rule of thirds as it is placed two thirds of the way up the picture and one third from the left.

This next photograph of a tree puts a barbed wire fence and a tree covered by ice on the focal point. The image is one third up from the bottom and one third from the right.

The next picture below shows another example of bad composition due to the photographer only capturing half of the dog in the scene.

The next image is an example of good composition. As you can see there is a good appreciation for the assets within the scene, attention paid to the horizon level, nothing seems to be cropped unnecessarily and the reflection of the rocks is captured nicely in the water below.