Tayasu Sango
Okay I don't think I understand what staging means (first time I've encountered the art term).
I was thinking that the second image was more dynamic because his head turned off to the side and it balances with the left arm closest to the viewer and then the other arm kind of has some perspective on it so it looks kinda smaller than the one in front of the viewer because it's farther away.
And then the first one has almost/pretty much his whole body facing the same direction and mild perspective since the other arm is behind the body but it isn't dynamic as it could be. Also applies to the third image.
But I'm not sure if this is what staging means? /hair pull
classified_fu
I can't explain the difference in thrust and why the artist chose to make the drawings border-less either.
Assuming you're talking about the tumblr post (I didn't think anyone I didn't know rl was actually reading that s**t. Haha.)
Staging (as I understand it) is the arrangement of players (objects) on the stage. This stage can be the 3d space as it exists in the universe of your image. Even the images in the first quiz are staged and one staging is better than the other, for composition purposes. That's the most basic staging. Make things clear in silhouette and arrange so that nothing that needs to "read" is hidden within the silhouette. (You can go back to the second set of videos where we look at all the quizzes.
An illustration however has another level of staging. The relationships between the players and with the viewer.
See, I learned about staging through stage performance (dance), studying animation (both academically and cause I ******** LOVE ANIMATION), and cinematography for film. Animation is even better to study that film because in film, you can't stage a lot of things that you have no control over. In animation EVERYTHING is a decision someone made. Just like our illustrations. Study Disney features and you'll develop a wonderful sense of staging by example.
An illustration, like a film is a story. Unlike a book, they don't interact by reading. It's your job to engage the viewer into interacting with your players, so they "read" the visuals and invest in your story. (Dialog too, but most subtext is visual. Subtext - "reading between the lines"
wink You lead them through the story, so they see what you want them to in the order you want them to so they come to the end as you want them to. You also must make sure they have the relationships with your players that YOU want them to or they'll be reading a story you didn't intend.
I kept is really simple, with only one character that was similar to his own, but as illustrations get more complex, you can really go on and on about it. (And ramble like I do. Haha.)
As for the thrust, see how the center line of the torso bends? The thrust is the directions of the peak of the curve. In both, the bottom of the ribcage is thrust forward, so the shoulders and hips are pointing to the back. The reason I say it's a pointless thrust is because usually the thrust indicated movement or intention to move. The two static ones have chest thrust that doesn't follow through with the rest of the body and there's no movement or preparation to move. That's why I said it was pointless.
It's not that the artist chose to make them borderless, it's what those artists did with lack of background/frame that the artist I critiqued didn't. The bottom one made sure all of the body was in the image and nothing was cropped off. The top did a much better job by using the body to be the frame, so it's all contained without having to crop the body at the hips or legs or whatever else wasn't going to fit on the page. (Used the cropping for composition).