Current mood:	thoughtful
Entry tags:	basics: cropping

Image Positioning Tutorial
One of the main keys in making icons is positioning images. Alot of people are fantastic at it, some arent so good... but one of the big questions is how exactly do do position an image in an icon? What are the basic rules you ought to follow in order to ensure it looks best?

This tutorial is for any graphics programs, as well as traditional mediums of art (though it is mostly aimed at icon makers).

Unlike most of the other tutorials I've written in the past, there are no specific outcomes for this tutorial. All this tutorial aims to do is to help give you, as an artist, an idea of how image positioning can improve your work.

A basic rule of artwork is a rule of threes. You take your image, and split it into three collumns vertically, and horizontally.



The red dots indicate where the lines overlap. These are the key parts of an image. This is the reason many people say you should never centre images in icons or other graphics (I'll be coming back to this, however). Your eye should be drawn to one of these dots in an image. When drawing, or making images a main aspect of your drawing should always lie over one of these dots. For example:



In the above icon, Jack's face is directly on the upper left dot, with his shoulder on the upper right. This test will work with most of the icons I've made. I usually try to line up a specific part of the face; eye, nose, or mouth, and sometimes cheekbone - though as long as some part of the face intersects one of the dots, I'm usually happy. I never use a reference such as the one above, as I've had this drilled into me through art classes so much that it's become second nature to see the lines and dots without them actually being there.

That said, rules are always made to be broken. Some of the most striking pieces of artwork have focal points that avoid these dots and lines specifically for the purpose of drawing attention to them. You look at the picture and immediately think, there's something about that that's kind of off, or disturbing, or just plain unusual, and it makes you look for that extra amount of time that will make you remember it. For the purpose, I cant actually find an icon I've made that breaks this rule drastically, so I cant give a proper demonstration. However, there are these two:

1.

There are no major focus points directly on one of the dots. However, the Ring (the main focus of the image), is directly centred within the image. This makes the image quite striking, but also kind of prevents you from putting text on the image (at least, I feel that adding text to this icon would ruin it).

2.

Harry's arm does follow the top horizontal line, passing through the two dots, but his face and hand are not on any of the dots. It makes for a rather interesting composition, though not something you can generally do with publicity photos - this is usually something you can only do with screencaps or stills from films.

It takes a fair amount of practice to get the positioning of an image just right, but once you get it, you'll see just how much it improves your icons.

I'm also throwing open the floor to anyone else who's got suggestions on image positioning - I know this cant be the only method people use, so come on... what's your method?

Love,
Kris