Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: Designing Ways: Gravity and Motion, Movement in Design

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Designing Ways: Gravity and Motion, Movement in Design

10:27 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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We talk about designs moving. But in reality, unless you're dealing with a series of images, they can't. A two-dimensional image is stuck in one place forever. What moves is not the image. It's our imagination of what happens next to the image. We imagine the movements that must, in our experience happen after where the image is now.

We have a life long experience of gravity. We know when things are going to fall. We also can see from that same life experience when something appears balanced and stable. Our life experience supplies the suggestion that something is moving. The picture itself stays stable.What is the defining element? The angle of the object.
Our tree moves here because she's off balance. Her yellow background is at an angle against hers and the feeling is that she's in extreme motion.

Our tree here is reaching up at a slight angle. But she's not really moving because she's stable against her background.

This tree is completely rooted and solid where she is. Her angle is straight and vertical to the sides of the work. She's

not going anywhere.

Summing it up, all movement in design is an illusion formed from our memory and experience of gravity.
If we recreate the feeling of falling or motion in a design, the design will appear to move.
All movement is created in the angles we apply to our designs.

Next, Moving in on and around a grid.

Labels: design

1 comments:

Gloria said...: Well Said! I'm looking at some of my own work and see what you mean. Whether the sun will soon fully rise above the horizon or the ocean wave will finally break upon the shore...; June 4, 2011 at 8:04 AM