Thread by @delaneykingrox

Detail acts a catch point for eyes, or can be general noise- texture. Placing details strategically to catch and lead the eye around. Think of it like a pinball game.

Details are musical. If you just put a tonne in you get hairbands just doing scales really fast- yawn.

You want to make details a journey for the eye, just like music is a journey for the ear. It can be pauses, redirections, focal points.

A good track needs bridges, hooks, melody, builds, breathing spaces etc

Details on designs are the same.

Even on something covered in details, using small, medium and large details creates interest and makes your eye settle on and travel over the object- for example:

Note that there are round shapes, blocks, wedges and trenches to give you something to look at.

We call the small, medium and large forms, primary, secondary and tertiary forms.

A star destroyer is an arrow head (primary) with a raised bit, a flat hex bridge and two balls (secondary) and a tonne of panels and greebles (tertiary)

Even in the trench run, when fine details are blurred you see secondary forms- darker patches, raises blocks, recesses.

These forms and details can give your surface a RHYTHM. Which helps give it scale and motion.

Not the vertical lines here in the backdrop and the dark patches, height differences.

Look familiar?

See it now?

Lights are bars. Dah dah dah dah de daaah duh de daaah

The wall panel details are musical, they have rhythm and pace.

They give this shot scale and distance but also a driving momentum

Cars are designed the same way- the curves accelerate and decelerate, with details catching your eye and leading it.

This is why Michael Bay's transformers are an absolute design shitshow.

Once motion blurred, their chopped up, flowless secondary forms are lost. That's why he needs so much slowmo to identify and tell what is going on.

Compare to the bumblebee film version- which uses bigger blocks of color, details which flow and enhance the form and have rhythm. It has places with little detail for your eyes to rest, and lines that draw your eye around.

Infinitely better.

Bay made it even worse by putting complementary colors red and blue in essentially camo patterns making the forms even harder on the human eye.

Guys an idiot.

This design is super balanced and easy to read. He looks powerful, in command, his eyes are gentle.

Compare. This is optimus prime, and you can tell at a glance

This is not optimus prime, this is the junkpile of one medocre man's ego.

The concept artists clearly have been busting their ass trying to get rhythm and flow into the details, but I can safely say this is interference over design.

Seriously. Look.

Every single line of action takes you on a journey and look where they end up?

On his intelligent, gentle, living eyes.

What a shit show.

See what I mean?

One of these respects the design, the other replaces it. And does it replace it with anything worthwhile?

Look at the fine notes being played here- like fingers dancing over a piano- dah- di- did-di-daaaah-d-dah-daaaaaaah- diddly-dee

These are like grace notes, and the weight of each pulls and steers the eye of the viewer, keeping us interested on the way with a tune.

Even the highlights from the lighting curve and bend to sit where they are needed. But look at the values in the Bay one... what are the brightest and darkest areas. Where is your eye drawn?

Yep. The nose or just under it, which acts like a slide down to the chin and off into the void.

Details are your little notes, but it has to sit on a rhythm. Remember you eye scans across surfaces and that is like a journey or a phrase in music.

Try this exercise.

Draw a big flowing curvey line at random.

Play star wars theme.

As it plays, make your pen follow the curve and tap down as you feel the music heavy bits, light bits, fiddly bits... try it.

Here is the title crawl. See how the music has moments and flows?

Now join up the surfaces

Then express the feelings in the shapes.

Restart the music and follow around that curve, making the area FEEL like the music is feeling. Heavy, dangerous, tentative, worried, repetitive, light... FEEL your way around

See how using musicality breaks up what is a basic doodle design. Next thing try thinking about the feelings and notes you want from each area

Pew pew motherfucker.

Dah dah dah daaaah daaaaah

If this lesson has entertained and edumicatededed you, you can treat me to a coffee

ko-fi.com/dellak

The worst thing about Michael Bay is there must be hundreds of people who don't get funded and somehow he keeps getting nacked to churn out extremely expensive mediocrity.

Imagine taking beloved things like TMNT and Transformers and then changing pretty much everything about them, adding tonnes of junk over them and then making narratives little better than slow farts in an elevator.

Hold on a sec... really? Really?

Okay I cannot unsee that. Ego much?

Yeah, see they greatly elongate the face and chin, and thin the cheeks when in human face.

This is deliberate.

Aaaaaanyway, go forth and make sweet music.