Visual Storytelling With Color and Light ─ Mastering Gouache

Create visually-stunning backgrounds that stand out.

Visual Storytelling with Color and Light teaches background and concept designers in animation and film the skills needed to create visually stunning and professionally appealing pieces. In the world today—where digital is considered king—traditional media and the skills attached to them are often overlooked. Although it is true that major studios no longer want their backgrounds or concept boards hand drawn or painted, they do want their artists to have traditional as well as technical backgrounds. Gouache is a technique that provides its artists and practitioners an understanding of color theory and composition that all studios are looking for and that a course in Photoshop cannot teach.

Visual Storytelling with Color and Light offers behind-the-scenes secrets of standard-setting practices used by some of best that the animation industry has to offer. Michael Humphries provides step-by-step techniques that will help readers better understand color theory, composition, and lighting. He’ll share common gouache techniques and then show readers how to develop their own style, and how to create a piece to match the studio exec’s dictated styles. This book also displays practices to help take readers’ paintings and backgrounds to the next level with Photoshop interventions and enhancements. To survive the trips to the studios, sets, and ‘en plein air’ locations, this book will have a hardback, layflat binding with a splash guard to protect the pages and cover from nature or the accidental artist. Most importantly this book will feature video demos for both the en plein air approach and photoshop enhancements.

Michael Humprhies began his professional art career at Walt Disney Studios, painting backgrounds on such films asWho Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Lion King. Michael was Art Director forFantasia 2000 and most recently was the Production Designer for Sony Pictures’Open Season. After 28 years as an artist and art director for film, he’s been working as a fine art gouache artist and instructor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.