How do you tell a story with a single frame?
sriesch
Posts: 4,243
I'm busy working on my next contest entry render, by which I mean I got all excited about an idea and put together a scene and rendered it, then took a step back and thought... "who cares? nobody will even know what's going on in here" and I now stare blankly at it while occasionally adding something, fiddling with it for a few hours, then deleting it.
That got me wondering, how does everybody else cram an entire story into a single frame? What things do you do differently than you would for an image that just "looks good" but isn't supposed to tell a story? What things have you tried to do that failed horribly that one shouldn't try? Thoughts? Idle rantings on this subject? Do you have extra random extraneous lolcats that have nothing to do with this post? Has anybody gone from animation or writing books to single image based art and contemplated this? Should I try to cheat by adding clues when naming the render? Over at DSA one is encouraged to write a short blurb explaining the render, something I haven't tried yet that would assist in this area, but of course that won't work when using galleries at other sites where adding text isn't an option, and half the time I only have story fragments that might not work well when put into words. Hmmm.
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Interaction between characters in the scene. Facial expressions, hand positions, character's reaction pose. Establish obvious protagonist and victim. Give obvious action to props such as falling, flying, smoking, melting etc. Establish time of day or season (lighting, clocks, weather, foliage, etc.) If necessary, image title sets the situation or a one sentence description to explain the action, such as protaganists demand, or victim's response. Know your audience. Let their experience fill in the unsaid.
What's the story (stories) in this painting by Jan Steen? https://static.artuk.org/w800h800/WLC/WLC_WLC_P158.jpg for example: what's the season in that picture?
A still image needs to translate into a passage of time.
You need to be able to see what's happening in the picture and also have hints (or obvious clues) of what's about to happen and what happened before the picture was snapped.
1) Image of a woman holding a knife. could be a great artistic render, but not say much.
2) make the knife bloody and now something happened for blood to be on the knife.
3) Place a fallen woman in the background and you have the story of a MURDER- not just a stabbing.
4) Place a letter in her hand you have a mystery.
5) Have her look out the window and see the reflection of police cars pulling up.
6) let the look on her face be the final clue. Is she fearful, smug, mocking, scared?
All of that - tells me what happened before and what's about to happen next.
You can also pick a pivotal moment AFTER or BEFORE that action.
A soldier lighting a cigarette surrounded by fallen men says something.
A soldier loading his weapon just before the clash could be that quiet, meaningful moment.
Leave us to speculate what happened or what is about to happen.
I don't think everything has to a portrait or an action sequence to have impact.
There are whole university courses on this subject. Effectively there are 2 types of still images: Posed and Moment in Time.
Posed images may be "still life", studio photographs, pin-ups, or images that impart an opinion, emotion, or thought.
Moment in Time images tend to capture a moment "in between" meaningful events. It doesn't necessarily need to be sandwiched between action. It could be something as simple as the capture of an image at a funeral where one part is leading into another -- for instance after an invocation and just before a salutation. It could be a contemplative scene at a bubbling brook where a young person (maybe Huck Finn) is watching a dragonfly over the water while a frog sits below the dragonfly on a rock. In most cases, the image must be recognizable enough in general context for the viewer to understand the probable "before" and "after". Making an image about a fantastical world that operates with non-recognizable physics (magic) with characters of unknown origins is not likely to be able to show enough context for the viewer to visualize the "before" and "after" in the way that the artist might envision.
In fact, this is exactly the problem with recent Movie Posters and why there has been such an uproar about the artwork of such posters. "Spiderman: Homecoming" being one such egregious example. The stories being told in the movies are not conducive to single image formats, so the artist(s) fall back on overly busy collages of the "stars" and characters in the film since there is no single point that can summarize any part of the story with any clarity.
So, to make a meaningful "moment in time" image requires that one be able to congeal the story/plot of the time depicted in the image into a recognizable and relatable sequence.
Kendall
I'm not a great artist but I do every once in a while find good tips from people who are! Here are a couple of ideas pulled from animation but which can help with setting your characters and viewpoint up to tell a story visually. First, one on giving the characters some dynamism via the line of action:
http://www.drawinghowtodraw.com/stepbystepdrawinglessons/2010/03/how-to-draw-cartoons-in-action-for-comics-and-animation-with-line-of-action/
Also really recommend this, a breakdown of the cinematography of "The Incredibles". Most of it uses still shots and points out (1) how they are framed specifically to draw the eye to your subject and (2) how they convey a story very concisely. Very useful info, link below is to part 1 of 3.
http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-cinematography-of-incredibles-part-1.html
Maybe you'll find some of this useful to give you some ideas. I hope so!
I am doing renders and it's is not easy to do a render as if you were Peter Parker taking news photo snapsnots to earn extra money.
I look at some in my gallery and for most of them I think OK, the viewer has a good guess what's going on but I wouldn't call them story telling.
Here is a screen capture of my latest render. I am doing this render for an entry for the PC+ contents they have all the time.
....very slow & long render. And I'm questioning if the viewers know what is going on & if the render looks too 'posed'. It is one reason I want to learn to animate by hand.
I always think in terms of story. Even when doing character snapshots for RPG's, I take the character's background into account and try to hint at it through little elements. I don't always make pictures that have story per se, but even now, I'm testing out some Iray shader presets I put together - just five simple pendants, but I've put thought into the normal map I'm using with each one to make it an emblem of something - like a mon or a royal badge, or even some cheezy Power Rangers-esqe transformation trinket. (Also Death of the Author is a thing. Don't worry about people seeing the same story you were thinking of when you put the scene together. Let them see the scene through their own experiences and put together their own inferences. I did one Exalted fan art picture with a woman staring towards an arena with a big, four armed guy silluetted behind it. Now said four armed guy is a good guy, and so to me, the image was hopeful, because it represented the end of the character's quest. Someone else found the big shadowy guy with four arms scary, and it looked to her more like he was the final boss of a video game.)
I also don't try to cram an entire story into one frame. Just enough of one that people can infer the rest (as they please. avxp's example of a soldier lighting a cigarette surrounded by dead bodies - did he kill them, or was he the only survivor? The scene can be read either way, and I'd leave it to the viewer, myself)
LeatherGryphon is right that expressions are key, or even making poses convey expressions for animals which may not be as expressive (and horses are more expressive than chimpanzees... just sayn') Show beings reacting to things. It doesn't have to be an action scene. Another picture I did, I made two versions. Both had an older teen/young adult woman finding a dragon in a cradel in the attic. One was a toy dragon, and I was aiming for a feeling of nostalgia, so had her face and her pose reflect that. This was an old toy of hers from when she was younger. One was a real dragon, and this time she was reacting with surprise and a little bit of fear, and the intended mood was wonder.
Even portraits... one I did recently was character art of my old Star Wars character. a blatant Gender Flipped Han Solo esque Mary sue. So she's in the cockpit of a space ship, her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, a slight sardonic smile, her hands behind her head as she leans back. Maybe she just made a major score of a job. Maybe she just escaped the Empire. Whatever happened, she's certainly pleased with herself.
I was trying to do a basic pin up a few weeks ago. I couldn't do it. Partially because I have a lack of skimpwear (quite deliberately), and partially because, well, I just couldn't. Instead the girl was climbing steps towards a partially opened door. Maybe she was going to a clandestine meeting. Maybe she's a call girl. Maybe she just finished a date and is going home. But she wasn't just standing there looking pretty. Something was going on.
When I do a render, I try to tell a story with my pictures. Which means I avoid the status quo. I try to make a point of adding props in scenes that aid the visual. So for me, I add tools, imageyr, and things that give a hint to what the character is doing to aid in the storytelling
Excellent topic!
This as been bothering me for about a year now.
I might be biased, being a comic book artist, but comics can give a good idea of how to do visual story telling. Good children's books illustrations can too. :)
Indeed, this can be a hard thing to accomplish,.. I think setting up a tension, perhaps is key, as the others have said...to that end, what do you think of this feeble attempt?
I've got to get the Genesis 3 Superhero Suit bundle so I can try & make Electro & Spiderman!
I agree with divamakeup, comics (and cartoons) are great sources of visual storytelling, especially covers. They have just one picture to grab you on a cover. Take a look at the image below, taken from a classic Spiderman story called "if this be my destiny". Spidey doesn't really have expressions except his expressive eyes lenses (how does he do that?) but in this one they are neutral. Yet the pose, the water cascading over him, and the object atop him not only convey his plight (stuck) but more importantly convey his emotional state (defeated and broken). All with one image.
hahah That would be cool! :D If you ever do it, send me the link to the image(s). I'd love to see!
Greetings,
This is a topic dear to my heart; I only have a few images I've made that qualify, and most of them fall into my NSFW category. Not as much for prurient reasons, although the most recent example does qualify, sort of.
The most recent and best example I've ever done is this image done for a challenge. (NSFW, definitely.) There's some useful talk in the comments, also, about the way your eyes move through a picture, guided by lines and gaze to find all (or most) of the aspects.
I'm not subtle enough to tell a story in a still image without action or evoking a strong emotion. That takes a level of skill I doubt I'll achieve without taking it a lot more seriously than I do. The more subtler the emotion you're trying to evoke, the better you have to be at all the details.
You could also just give up and put words in the picture. :)
That said, the other direction you can go is to present an image that appears to tell a story, but it's really just whatever story the viewer makes up for it. I did a crappy job of leading the eye through that scene, but I like the occasional Note I get with ideas of what's going on.
Comic book covers are very good, I have to agree. They give you a glimpse into the story, and make you want to open it...find out what got the characters to that point, or how they get out. That said, comic books have well-defined visual shorthand for almost everything, which makes it easier than if you're trying to make a viewer care about characters they've never met.
tl;dr - Dynamism and using lines and angles for guiding the eyes through the story the image is telling will get you a long way. Make them curious how it got to this, and/or what's going to happen next.
For subtler stories... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
-- Morgan
They say that a picture tells more than a thousand words, if that's true, why do they use speech bubbles in almost every picture in a cartoon?
The most basic "trick" I use to tell a story in a picture is to put something in the scene that is out of place. Something that by all rights should not belong there. Then you have an instant story. "What is that doing there" and you leave the viewer wondering.
It does not (and likely should not) be the center of focus for the shot, that would be too obvious, but just a secondary prop that makes you go "wtf?"
If you have a medieval shot, drop a robot in a doorway, or if you have a high tech future society, have a stray cat in a corner. Things like that and you have an instant story.
This is how I tell a story with one frame Gallery post#
According to folklore back in the dark ages they believe the world was flat. when sailing the oceans when you reached the horizon the water & along with the ship would fall off edge of the world. the people of this time had believed that is where the rain came from returning back to earth after falling off the edge. This was my version of the Kansas Album Cover point of no return. and that lore. using a dramatic story effect in one frame
this is the results of the image in post work
My Conclusion. I try to make my frame interesting with lots to look at. Keeping my frame in the theme of my story and i'm not afrain to mix it up with humor and dramatics to get my point across . :) my 2 cents anyway
The best cartoons don't have any.
Norman Rockwell
While that's often true, blanket statements like that are rather akin to saying that the best books are the ones that don't have any pictures in them. In many cases the right caption is like adding icing on a cake. One of the greatest cartoonists of the 20th century, Charles Adams, produced dozens of masterpieces with no dialog at all, but some of his best work wouldn't have played at all without the dialog adding the final counterpoint. Two good examples:
I think I got the link right for this...
Here's one I tried to create a story with:
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/69277/
Monty Phython Style Humor Art Gallery Post#
Love, love, love Rockwell & Anker...
The challenge I find with being illustrative is the lack of day-to-day items. It is far easier to show a zombie attack than it is to show a character getting out of bed, dressing, and getting ready for work. In fact the latter would entail a great deal more in the way of props and content and morphable items and poses than a zombie invasion.
Just illustrating a character eating a dinner, instead of sitting with a full plate in front of them, chewing, swallowing, and reaching for more, while having enough props to make it look like a natural setting would be hard.
The store provides a lot of content- but ilustrating ordinary stuff and making that interesting is quite challenging..
I recently did a render of 3 folk in a diner, the waitress complaining about a small tip, empty dishes on the table and the busboy & cook offering gossipy sympathtic ear & it was actually a few hours of work and that's not counting render time. To look at the scene though it looks like it was easy and no work at all but let me tell you those coins I placed don't react to gravity or have a set of physics colliders and the same with the dishes & the chewing gum & the clouds & so on.
Setting up scenes is difficult in DS - placing, moving slightly, using the cube in the viewport to circle around the item you ae trying to place, & repeat until that item is OK...next item...& repeat...
It is fun though to get a scene that looks positively mundane and with more practice at lighting & materials the scene could be made to look very realistic.
That diner scene sounds fun. I like how you managed to work all that into the scene. For easter, I tried to do a scene where the character's were cooking. It was a failure. May try it again in the future. =-)
I tried 2 Easter scenes but the 1st was a failure because the wives with the baby wouldn't be in a field with a pushing a pram through tall grass...and 2nd Eastern was just cartoon silliness. I need scene I have experience with like working in hotels & restaurants & farming. I want to do some complex diner scenes that look natural but I will need 32GB of RAM as 16GB is not enough. Also likely & nicely, an nVidia card what is it? The GTX 1080TI.
what do you think of this feeble attempt?
I dunno. I didn't get any tingles.
It's simply a soldier carrying his weapon- at the ready with a stern look on his face.
Maybe the better question is, what are you trying to say with this image?
And maybe switch that out for what did you want me to feel- and what specifically was the tool(s) you intended to use to convey that?
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Taoz: "They say that a picture tells more than a thousand words, if that's true, why do they use speech bubbles in almost every picture in a cartoon?"
I didn't take this as a serious question when I first saw it posted, but since it's here languishing, I might as well.
Firstly, you probably need to be more specific with the word "cartoon".
Cartoons are usually an illustrated joke or a political poke. The meat is the (con)text. You react to the text, not the image.
Books have covers, which, when they rely more on your imagination i.e. the "image in your mind" they use an image to spark interest.
Thus, the more removed the content is from cold facts and a document-style-format, the more the illustrations play a role.
"Textbooks" with their very deliberate name, usually use symbols and icons on the cover.- not images that tell a story. lol
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Comic Books.
Comic should be considered in terms of exaggeration. Comics (Comedians) exaggerate life to be funny. Comic books are an exaggeration through extreme imaging and storytelling. What's over the top, in comics? The speech and action. The WHAT'S happening and HOW they show it to you.
Telling a story with a single image is different than capturing lots of action in a single image.
When you comb the image, you're not really getting more story elements, you're getting more bits of action.
"Oh, this is happening at the same time as this..."
There's also the 'Easter Egg' approach where little, hidden details give clues.
For the image above, it might be the badge on his beret/ uniform/suit is a hint. The building/rubble might be someplace recognizable etc.
Personally, I try to keep it simple. Not necessarily the scene itself, but the story. When a story becomes too complicated, that is when it becomes too difficult to tell with a single image, which is similar to what others have been suggesting, I believe. And you are better off trying to tell part of the story and succeeding, than attempting to tell the whole thing and failing.
P.S. I agree completely with the others who have commented on the relevance of story telling in our images. It can be simple, but is so much better than simply cranking out renders that are "here's a picture of" to be assessed entirely based upon the technical merits of the technology. The latter may very well have its place, but for me, a little goes a long way. Even the Mona Lisa is telling a story, although it may be left entirely up to the viewer to determine what.