Using Composites Tutorial

Using Composites Tutorial

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Using composites tutorial. In this article, I’m going to show you how I used composites to save myself time when I am creating a theme of images or creating elements for a story.

Here are my completed images for my fantasy Christmas holiday world. I used Clip Studio Paint and Sketchbook Pro to draw and color these images. I picked the best four to make a collage with using Canva tool put them together into a pleasing design which I then exported as a GIF. Where do I start? I start by building composites of the elements that I want to use. You may have seen some of these that I have poste before. I’ll describe my process below.

Creating and Using Components Saves Time

Creating and using components saves so much time. I create designs into separate component sheets and then copy and paste them into new projects as they come up. The Elf and the cottage all came from components from digital art that I created recently. For example, it took me four hours to draw and color my Elf. The design I used the elf in took six hours. If I had created them together, it would have been 10 hours of drawing. It’s also a nice idea to use space outside of your canvas to save any conceptual designs used to make the final. It’s so much simpler to change and old idea sometimes rather than to start from scratch.

In the example below is a screen share of my elf. All of the information for the elf is saved into it’s own layer folder. This folder can be copied and pasted multiple times into other projects down the road. Don’t like the pose? Just go into the layer folder and modify the stance, the position, or you can just paint right over it and make the elf look at the viewer instead. A lot of time is still saved.

Using Composite Sheets for Composition Planning

You can use composite sheets for composition planning. If you already have elements that you want to use, import them into your canvas, move them around, even sketch behind them so that you can build the layout that you want. You can quickly put together four or five concepts that you could show to a client in a matter of an hour by having already predesigned elements. By being able to produce different versions of content at a quick pace, you will demonstrate value to your clients. To them, time is money and it should be for you as well.

Putting It All Together

Putting it all together, I can take these images and design a short Christmas fantasy story. From a writing standpoint, it’s probably better to write the story first and then create the images. I did it in reverse. I visualize segments of a story I would like to tell and then write the story around them. Each to their own though.

What would you write?

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