World Building & Compositional Techniques for Illustration
Course final project
A course by Ben Newman , Illustrator
About the final project for: World Building & Compositional Techniques for Illustration
World Building & Compositional Techniques for Illustration
“Thank you so much for trusting me to guide you through this adventure! I really hope you’ve enjoyed learning how to create a complex and fully-developed world in a single-page illustration! It is such a fantastic feeling to free yourself from pressure and just let your creativity flow. Now, let me show you an example of what I would like to see in your presentation: The First Steps Finding reference materials for your location - the key starting point. Then, break down your complex reference into consumable shapes. Sketches Start making initial sketches. I showed you some handy timed exercises to free you from the fear of starting a complex composition by sketching out the basics quickly.







Partial transcription of the video
“Thank you so much for joining me on this course. I really hope you've enjoyed learning how to build and create a complex, busy, single-page illustration. It's such an incredible feeling to free yourself from pressure and let your creativity flow. So, let's quickly recap. We started by finding reference material to select our key anchor point for our image. From this, we thought about color, too. We began to break down our reference material into simple shapes. From there, we used handy timed exercises to free us from the fear of building a complex, busy image by working quickly with our ini...”
This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.
Course summary for: World Building & Compositional Techniques for Illustration
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Category
Illustration -
Software
Adobe Photoshop -
Areas
Character Design, Children's Illustration, Digital Illustration, Drawing, Traditional illustration

Ben Newman
A course by Ben Newman
Ben Newman is a freelance illustrator based in the UK. He has worked with the likes of the New Yorker, Apple, BBC, and Google - but his true passion lies in illustrating children’s books and games. Inspired by children’s space books he flipped through while working in a bookshop, he co-created a book series with his friend, Dr. Dominic Walliman, called Professor Astro Cat. It has since been translated into 28 languages and has been turned into spin-off series for different age groups. He has also written two books inspired by his sons — the sounds Wilbur made to imitate crocodiles motivated him to write Snip Snap, while Rumble Tumble was inspired by Ernie’s frequent accidents while learning to walk.
Growing up, Ben loved watching Pink Panther and Tom & Jerry reruns on television and reading American Superhero comics. Those references have stuck with him throughout his career and he hopes his characters and worlds will be passed down to the next generation in the same way.
- 100% positive reviews (47)
- 1,259 students
- 15 lessons (2h 18m)
- 11 additional resources (0 files)
- Online and at your own pace
- Available on the app
- Audio: English
- English · Spanish · Portuguese · German · French · Italian · Polish · Dutch
- Level: Beginner
- Unlimited access forever