How To Fix Empty Spaces in Composition With Perspective - Check 'Hot' Process & File!

Hey everyone,

Here is the process video, file, and brief insights of 'hot', my latest illustration. These kinds of articles are often split into two parts: the concept, where I share the idea behind the piece, and the execution, where I explain the technical aspects like shapes, colors, and value choices. I hope you find this useful; have a great read.

Concept

This time I wanted to try a "hotdog" as the main inspiration for this composition since I was in search of something very casual and popular related to food. I figured if the initial idea was relatively simple, I would have more space to integrate random concepts, which in this case is the Formula 1 pilot.

Why this mix? In some way, I found the hot dog food connected to "fast" since it's fast food, and it has warm colors. Also, I've been intrigued by the idea of a female pilot for a while. I immediately imagined a pilot uniform with the same colors as a hot dog, while a mechanic is changing a tire or working on a racing car. While exploring references of pilots' uniforms, I found a very particular professional called Niki Lauda, with half of his face burned, which was great to integrate into the concept to reinforce this "hot" dog idea.

The simple idea was a pilot in the middle of a crash, more concerned about her car than her own health, a very passionate professional.

The list of points looked like this:

• Color: Red, white, yellow, a bit of brown or orange (warm colors).
  Ref: Hotdog
  Action: Mechanic putting out fire of race car, pilot looking at it.
  Costume: Race pilot uniform. Mechanic uniform, similar to hotdog vendor. Car?

Execution

Composition
Initially, I used strokes to figure out the position of three big shapes in the composition. The goal was a scene looked at from a top view, highlighting two characters and a car in flames. A portion of the car in flames in the front, a circular small mechanic in the middle, and the main character in the back. This took less than one hour, and I was strangely confident, something I don't like.

I often spend more than one hour trying to come up with an interesting composition; this time it was too fast. I said to myself, either I'm improving greatly, or I'm making a mistake. As I've mentioned in previous process posts, when you doubts, the solution is to avoid details and go straight to finishing a rough sketch of how it's supposed to look. If the sketch looks good enough, then the final version will be great.

It turns out I was making a mistake; after three hours, the top right of the canvas looked way too empty for my taste. Luckily since the characters where drawn for a top view perspective, I rearranged the composition by placing the main character between the car and the secondary character and then I simply moved the secondary character up to cover the empty space.

This 'top view' perspective is achieved by positioning the imaginary horizon line very high, so every shape in your composition, regardless of whether it's a character or an object, can be moved around while still maintaining a sense of perspective that doesn't feel off. This is very similar to the Orthographic View found in many popular video games like League of Legends or Hades, among others. For this illustration, the horizon line is not as high as in games, but it's still high enough to allow me to move characters around in order to fix empty spaces. Check this post for more about the subject of Perspective. For more about this correction, please check the process video at the 3:10:00 mark to understand my point clearly.

Colors
About colors! Although I prefer to design characters with one or two colors, and the hot dog as a concept has many, I have to say that I had some fun while distributing different warm tones across the characters and props. My favorite is probably the mustard symbol that resembles a snake in a way; this was a happy accident.

Values
As for values, you will notice that these characters had an extra source of light coming from the fire. This is not a very common approach in my illustrations, as I like to keep the number of shadows as simple as I can. Nevertheless, it was necessary. Please check the PSD file to better understand the values distribution through the layers. Blending mode and adjustments as well.

Conclusion

This time I was lucky to work on a very clear top view composition, allowing me to move characters from front to back, down and up. This is a benefit of trying this particular perspective. I hope this process and file help you deal with similar situations! 

Thank you for your support.