Rule of Thirds

When most people take a picture or draw a picture, the natural thing to do is to photograph or draw the subject in the center of the frame.

But one of the big tenets of visual composition is the RULE of THIRDS.

So pretty much, the frame is divided into…well, thirds. And the subject will sit in one side or the other.

This has the effect (so I've read) of pulling the viewer in to the image to take it in more fully, rather than having them just glance at the centrally-framed subject.

When a movie cuts between, say, two people having a conversation, the two will appear on opposite sides of the screen when the flick cuts to each one.

We see this effect in comics, too, with characters in conversation appearing on opposite sides of panels; if the comic "camera" was cutting between the characters but showing them on the same side of the panel, things would look awkward and confusing.

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (and some of his other movies like A Clockwork Orange) are well known by people who are interested in such things, to break this rule and use a lot of centrally-framed images.

This has the effect, over a bit of time, of looking "wrong" to the viewer. This effect would be very bad if used unintentionally and out of context, in most standard films. But in these unsettling movies, used by a director with a mastery of visual language, the impact is powerful indeed!

A lot of us do this pretty naturally in comics; we generally have the character off to the side to make room for the text bubbles! But even when there is no dialogue balloon, or if it's a landscape or whatever, thinking of composition is a good idea. And the first rule is the Rule of Thirds!

A quick Google Image search will show the huge variety of images that have their focal points in the thirds. It's very instructive!

Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Do you observe this "rule" in your comics? Do you observe the feeling of "wrongness" or discomfort when things are framed wrongly?

have a good one!

-Banes the Third