Visual Math 101

I believe that you could break down art into a mathematical equation.

Although I have been thinking about this for about 20 years.... I still did not come up with the math equation to prove my theory.

But someday maybe.

Despite my lack of coming up with a proper math equation.... there is a simple formula that can be applied when the time comes to coming up with a design.

"Formula" may be a bit much to describe it.... most would call it a "trick" I suppose.

It is a very simple trick that is often used by many artists.

It is fairly simple to apply... all it takes is either a good knowledge of what came before... or a good amount of research.

Are you ready??

The trick is this.

You take design A... then you take design B... mix and match various elements of both designs, and you end up with design C.

So in short

(Design A) + (Design B) = (Design C)

Simple... isn't it??
Here is an example

It doesn't have to be just with 2 designs. It can be done with multiple designs by taking some elements of each designs.

Here is a 3 designs example:

Why use such a trick???

There are many reasons.

I mentioned before how a professional artist does not wait for inspiration... he provokes it.

This is a good way to provoke inspiration.

Also (Design C) does not HAVE to be the final result. You can use (Design C) as a starting point... then you can tweak it... and tweak it until you have your new design... or decide to discard the result and go in another direction.

It is often used when you are caught in a tight deadline.

On a production... you are often faced with unreasonable deadlines. So you often cannot afford to come up with everything from scratch and sometimes need to "borrow" from an already existing design.

Imagine if you are working on a show and you have... let's say... one week to come up with a score of new character designs.... two scores??

Kind of tough to do that from scratch.

Even the best artists will have tough time coming up with scores of new characters in such a short time.

So when they need to... either they will use an already existing design that they have done in the past... or they will take out their TI-59 and use the equation mentioned earlier;                               

(Design A) + (Design B) = (Design C)

Until next time.