What's the difference between eye line and horizon line?

akitsukino 2016-11-11 05:23:13 UTC #1

The title says a lot of it. A few days ago a put up a post in the feedback forum asking for critique on the rough draft of my comic (the post was here http://forums.tapastic.com/t/looking-for-serious-honest-detailed-critique/14715). I got alot of great freedback (people on Tapastic work fast !), and one of the big problems people noticed was that my composition and perspective were lacking. I've been looking around at a few at a few perspective tutorials and I think I've become a bit confused on what constitutes as the eye level and what constitutes as the horizon line. I'd been told that a horizon line is where the sky meets the land, but there have been time when I've seen artists place their "horizon lines" in what looks like the sky such as in this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SJcvLwQ0yw ). Its also a bit confusing when looking at refernce pictures and not being able to see what could be cosidered a horizon line, such as in big cities crowded with people. If anyone could clarify this for me or maybe give me some examples, say with photos, I'd really appreciate it (it would also be cool if you looked at my comic and gave me some feedback ).

shazzbaa 2016-11-11 06:23:16 UTC #2

They are actually the same!

The horizon line will be even with the eye level of the viewer. If you're looking down from up high, the "horizon" that you see will be really high up in your field of vision. If you're crawling around on the floor looking up, then the "horizon" that you see will be low in your field of vision.

The thing about the horizon line is that everything gets smaller and smaller towards the horizon as it gets further and further away, right? So you can often find the horizon line in a photo that has buildings by looking at where the lines seem to "meet," like this:

ETA:

....I'm not sure about this example; I could be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate. I see why they're doing it -- it's because the characters are high up in some mountain cave, so it logically makes sense that their eye level should be up in the sky -- but due to the earth being way bigger than we are, I'm pretty sure you usually see the actual horizon in the far distance. I DUNNO, I haven't been up on any mountains lately so everyone else, feel free to correct me on this, but googling "view from mountain" seems to be in line with that suspicion.

aran150 2016-11-11 11:25:44 UTC #3

Hnnng! So helpful! Really informative post!

kencoon7 2016-11-11 13:24:53 UTC #4

If I understand it right, the horizon is where the land meets the sky. In the case of a lake or ocean it could be where the water meets the sky.
As we get further away, the air pollution comes into play and makes things difficult or impossible to see. In the photo the paritcles in the air become more dense as you move further away and eventually you cannot see if there is land or water at the horizon.
There is no conflict, just air particles.\
Hope I am right.
Ken

brown4life26 2016-11-11 23:51:43 UTC #5

From what I understand on the eye line, it is there the eyes of a character are. Every eye is put on the same line and maintain that through the comic. It creates a balance of characters, even ones of smaller size. It creates great drama.
Another version or interpretation of eyeliner is the flow of a comic. Where you want the eyes to go

heterodont 2016-11-12 00:03:51 UTC #6

I wouldn't necessarily say every character's eyes need to line up with the eye line / horizon line. But people DO line up, If your camera/character is at chest height, then all characters in the panel are going to line up with the eye line / horizon at chest height. Of course, it changes the bigger someone/something is, which is why if you have a cast with drastic height differences it helps to make a lineup of their heights and see how tall one is to another.

shazzbaa 2016-11-12 06:11:53 UTC #7

yeah!! I actually have some scribbles/illustrations of that handy as well -- some of you guys have seen these already, but I'll stick them in here in case that's useful for others!

Some examples of how the horizon line "hits" everyone in the same place if they're the same height, so if you start with a horizon line and place one figure, you can place all the other figures pretty easily. In the first picture, everyone's head lines up with the horizon line, in the second picture, everyone's thighs line up at the horizon line:
_ _

using this information to roughly figure out perspective in a scene -- once you add some more figures, you get a feeling of 3-D space, and it becomes easier to kinda guess where background elements would be. you just draw out those lines until you see where they run into your horizon line, and you can make a basic perspective grid that fits with all the figures in the scene:

or you can figure out where the horizon line is from two characters (that are the same height) by seeing what points on their body line up, and assuming that's where the horizon line probably is:

and also working with characters of different heights:

And while I'm at it, if you're looking for perspective tutorials, here's my favourite one by Jake Wyatt!