Perspective Tips: Approaching Inside View Compositions - 'Late' Process & File

Hey everyone!

Here is the process video, file, and brief insights of 'Late,' 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

Throughout my Pinterest explorations, I've been lucky to find very talented artists making concepts out of random themes. One of those artists did an interesting and beautiful interpretation of an old clock, which you can watch here, I'm not familiar with the artist's name, but I love it. When approaching these kinds of prop illustrations, I try to use very casual objects like a public phone, a pencil, scissors, etc. I was a bit surprised I had not thought about a clock or watch theme before. So I said, why not!

The first thing that crossed my mind while searching for watches was the "fancy" or "expensive" aesthetic, I guess because of how shiny some of them can be. A watch is a very useful tool but also has become a symbol of status among some social groups. That's where the fancy lady character was born. I wanted to add a different, almost opposite secondary character to the composition. I thought it would be nice to have a very simple black watch as inspiration, something very casual.

To this point, I still was not sure what they were doing together. I figured it would be interesting to look at watch inspired characters being late, as it is the exact opposite of what a watch is supposed to do, which is being on time. To build on top of that layer, I thought this composition would be more interesting if they both were inside of a car. Initially, I thought the fancy lady would be scolded by a taxi driver, but the chauffeur outfit was more iconic and easy to catch at first sight. Also, it makes more sense for a fancy lady to move around with a chauffeur. The list looked like this:

• Color: Yellow, brown, white, black. 
• Ref: Watches, one fancy, the other black and simple, maybe broken. 
• Action: He’s driving very fast, she is scared in the back. Are they late? 
• Costume: Chauffeur (hat, white gloves), fancy girl, fur, big hat, dog, Pomeranian/Chihuahua.

Execution

So many questions on how to approach this particular perspective. Questions like:

• How do I show they are inside of a car?
• What would be the best angle to show their faces and the front of their outfits?
• Should I cover them with parts of the vehicle?
• Where do I find references that meet my requirements?

Turns out the answer was pretty straightforward. I adopted the same perspective view of illustrations I've done in the past, in which characters are sitting in a way that allows the viewer to look at them from above, similar to this one. Essentially, they would be sitting in a car without the frontal part, as it might obscure half of the characters' bodies. I retained the car's wheel to ensure the concept was evident. To further enhance clarity, I added some seatbelts, distinctive seats, and rugs. However, initially, this setup was sufficient to convey the abstract idea of two characters inside a car.

When dealing with similar visual problems in which key information is inside of an object, imagine you have an imaginary knife that's cutting one part of the big object, allowing you to see what is inside. This concept might be rather difficult to understand, but it is actually very common when presenting concept art explorations about environments. Of course, that example made by Mike is way more complex, but my point is that it is a very effective way to approach perspective.

As for both characters, I just did a fair amount of research on fancy lady outfits and chauffeur uniforms, which were plentiful on Pinterest.

Conclusion

I've been asked how "crazy perspective" can be approached. In simple terms, it's positioning a camera for the viewer to appreciate something that is physically impossible or very unlikely to see in real-world situations. This can be achieved by imagining how objects or creatures look at the world from their perspective, or just like this illustration, looking through objects and choosing what to show. If any of these things make no sense to you but you are still interested in knowing more, please send a message and let's have a chat!.

Thank you