Dynamic Composition

General Skills:

• Making a new Folder on your Mac
• Opening and checking resolution of a Downloaded File in Photoshop
• Downloading and placing a file into Illustrator

Skills In Illustrator:

• Layers
• Creating shapes in Illustrator
• Transforming and Rotating Shapes
• Changing the Fill and Stoke Color
• Object Sending to Back/ Sending to Front

Results of In Class Exercise 1: 

Compositions can be static or dynamic. In this exercise, we will recreate the dynamic movement found within a painting. Dynamic compositions are full of energy or movement. Angles are used to create motion. While a flat horizon line is at rest, a triangle is in motion. The repetition of even spacing is easy on the eye, as our minds predict the simple rhythm of an evenly spaced grid. Angles and uneven spacing between objects causes our eyes to move back and forth. This physical movement translates into the perception of movement within a composition. Use the Schiele painting or another dynamic composition as the guideline for your dynamic composition with rectangles. The final composition could be like this image, if yours is based on the Schiele painting:

The Poet, 1911, Egon Schiele, oil on canvas.

1. In Illustrator, click on the Rectangle tool from the Tools panel. Click and drag to draw a rectangle on the page. 

2. Once the rectangle is created, release the mouse and click on the Selection tool. Objects can only be modified when they are selected. The Selection tool is used to select an object in order to move, scale, or copy it. Click on the rectangle with the Selection tool. Notice that the selected rectangle has square anchor points on each corner and at the midpoint of each line. These anchor points are essential components of the vector art. They determine the contours of the shape by their position in relationship to each other. A rectangle is described by a path that turns at right angles through four anchor points to create four sides and meet itself to close the shape. To deselect the object, click on the Artboard in any area outside of the rectangle.

Notice that a tool tip shows up when the mouse hovers over a tool. The tool tip displays the name of the tool and the keyboard shortcut. This is true in most graphics applications.

3. With the rectangle selected, notice how the shape is made. The rectangle is an area filled with color and there may or may not be a line surrounding the edges. The interior color is called the fill. The outline is called the stroke. White and black are the default color settings for fill and stroke.

4. Look at the bottom of the Tools panel and notice what color is loaded in the Fill icon and what color is loaded into the Stroke icon. The Fill and Stroke icons stack with the active target on the top. To change the fill, it needs to be the top icon.

5. While the rectangle is still selected, click once on the fill icon to reposition it on top of the stroke.

6. Click on the Swatches panel, then click on any color. It is assigned to the fill area of the rectangle and it also appears as the color in the fill icon. The rectangle will change because it was selected before a new color was applied.

7. Click on the Stroke icon to position it on top of fill.

8. Click on the “None” icon. This symbol, beneath the fill and stroke icons, is a white square with a red diagonal line. Clicking this will remove the stroke from the rectangle.

9. With the Selection tool, scale or rotate the rectangle. Scale the rectangle by clicking on an anchor point and dragging toward or away from its center.

To rotate the rectangle, position the Selection tool just outside one of the four anchor points at the corners. Don’t click yet. Notice that the cursor changes from the usual Selection tool icon (straight, black arrow) to a curved arrow. The curved arrow indicates that you can rotate the selection. When you see the curved arrow, click and drag outside of the rectangle to the right or left in order to rotate the rectangle.

Shapes can also be rotated via the Object > Transform > Rotate menu or with the Rotate Tool in the Tools panel.

10. When the first rectangle is complete (with the color, scale, and rotation of your choosing), deselect the rectangle by clicking on the Artboard. Notice that the anchor points are no longer highlighted.

11. Use the Rectangle tool to begin the process again. Once a rectangle is made and modified, use the Selection tool to reposition it to the right, left, or on top of the other rectangle. Recreate the composition with up to 15 shapes. You should feel comfortable creating a shape and changing its fill and stroke colors.

12. Arrange the rectangles so that they can be seen as one dynamic composition. Notice that as you create and position each rectangle, they appear stacked on top of each other. While you are creating this composition you may want a rectangle to be “sent behind” another rectangle. Select the top rectangle with the Selection tool, then click Object > Arrange > Send Backward.
        
13. Shapes such as your rectangles can be sent backward repeatedly, or brought forward. Find these commands in Object > Arrange. Any art object can be positioned using these menu items. Finally, while art objects are sent backward or brought forward one at a time (through as many levels of stacking order as there are objects), they can also be sent all the way to the back of the composition or brought all the way to the front of the composition using Object > Arrange.

In this image, a large black rectangle was sent all the way to the back of the composition after most of the dynamic composition was already made.
        

Exercise: Saving a File

Click File > Save As to open the Save dialog box. Choose a location in which to save your file. It is common to save files in the Documents folder. On a Mac, this is located in Macintosh HD/Users/Your_User_Name/Documents, and can be found on the left side of the Save dialog box. On Windows Vista, this is located at Start > My Documents. We created a folder called “digital_foundations” in the Documents folder. We will save our work there.

All actions that can be performed on your file are located in the File menu.You must name your file when you save it. Follow these naming conventions: Avoid spaces. Instead, use_underscores_to_separate_words. Spaces are dangerous in web browsers. Any designer who plans to work with interactive media should form good habits by eliminating spaces from their file names. Use lowercase letters. This is also a convention of designers who name files that will be referenced in code. Spaces and upper case letters will not damage your files, but if you are just beginning to form good habits, you might as well learn all of the rules at once. Never use characters such as those in the nearby list, as these reserved characters mean special things to applications and operating systems and can disable websites and crash applications.

The following are examples of reserved characters: ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) + = ~ [ ] ‘ ” ? / \ , : ; > <

• Use a descriptive title, such as xtine_dynamiccomp.ai. Including your full name in a file name is especially important if you are submitting a file in a classroom or professional setting.
• Make sure the file includes an extension. In this exercise, the file is saved as an Illustrator (.ai) document. The extension is .ai. In other words, the very worst file name that you could use is something like this: “My *best* ever/first file!” Not only does the name include spaces and reserved characters, it also fails to describe the file or format. Other bad names include the likes of “FINAL edit.ai,” “final.ai,” “composition.ai,” and other names that do not specify who made the file, or what is in the file. A better model for naming your files includes your individual or group name, a descriptive word about the contents of the file, and a date or versioning system. For example, when we sent a copy of our cover to the publisher on October 20th, we named it digitalfoundations_cover_1020.ai.

Native file format for master files
Most applications have a native file format for master files. This format can only be opened in the original program, and should be saved frequently throughout the working process. A copy of a master file is often created in a compressed, non-editable format when the author has finished editing the work. Compressing the file makes it smaller and easier to transfer. These compressed formats are readable by many applications, not just the original program. A .ai suffix indicates the file is an Illustrator master file. If a logo, for example, was created in Adobe Illustrator, it could be shared with a friend or collaborator as a PDF file, which is viewable in Adobe Acrobat or Preview. These applications are installed on most computers. The exported files cannot be edited and are usually much smaller in file size. If the friend asks for revisions on the logo, the original AI file would be modified. After modification, a new PDF file would be saved and sent to the friend.

Key Command: Command+W closes windows in any application and on the Desktop.

Closing and quitting
To close a file in Illustrator, click the red button in the upper left corner of the window, click File > Close, or press Command+W. Quit the application by clicking Illustrator > Quit or by using the keyboard shortcut Command+Q.
It is very important that file extensions, or suffixes, remain intact. The extension assists the computer operating system. It tells the system the type of file and the application to use when opening the file. This is especially important when bringing a file from one operating system to another (such as going from a Mac to a PC).

Some important file formats include:.doc or .docx – Microsoft Word document.rtf – Rich Text Format, non-proprietary word processing format.txt – Text only, no formatting .ai – Adobe Illustrator file .pdf – Portable Document Format .psd – Photoshop document .tif or .tiff – Tagged Image File – format for photographs, saved with lossless compression and used for scanning and printing. This format will be revisited in Chapter 7. .jpg or .jpeg – Joint Photographic Experts Group – a compressed image file format often used for photographs on the web .gif – Graphic Interchange Format – a compressed image file format often used on the web for logos, design elements, and other graphics with low numbers of colors. .html – HyperText Markup Language – a text file written in the language used to create web pages. .fla – Flash master file .swf – Shock Wave Format – exported Flash file for the web