Ch. 5: E̋̍̓lͥyͯ͛̑͐ͧ̓͡sͬs̒͜ȧ͋͑̀͟ ̋̆̓̓ͫ
Music played in the background. A large semicircle arc. A few brushes of shading. No color at the moment, just pencil and paper. Diagonal lines, and a few smaller arcs to add the background scenery. The characters stood ready on a sheet of paper. Meanwhile, in the background, the scenery came together. Like a cathedral covered in scaffolding, her work slowly became clear.
No, something wasn't right. Natsuki scanned the page. Something was missing. She looked at the center of the page. Five characters stood in the center. Four girls and one boy, all in high school, smiling as if waiting for a picture to be taken. They looked fine, but something was off about the background. Perhaps it was the positioning? Maybe. She was trying to draw the five characters in a high school setting. The school building was supposed to be in the background, and while it wasn't very important in its own right, Natsuki knew that the shape and positioning of the background would greatly affect an artist's work.
She looked over the paper. Usually there would be no problem. After all, she drew all the time and knew how to incorporate the background around vanishing points in order to give her drawing depth and inner space. Wait, perhaps it was the ratios. She pulled out her ruler and measured the height of one of her characters, then measured the edge of the page. Sure enough, the ratios of height to border were slightly off. Natsuki slapped the side of her forehead in frustration.
It was a subtle, almost imperceptible flaw. Most people wouldn't care, but then again most people paid no attention to any type of spatial detail whatsoever. Even other art and design majors who loved to draw almost as much as she did could often not tell when something was spatially off.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
Natsuki turned to face the voice. It came from a girl about her age, or perhaps a little younger. She was rather tall, but not quite as tall as Yuri, and had light hazel eyes in contrast with her long blond hair, its ends dyed in blue highlights. "Oh, I just oofed our art project up," said Natsuki, "no biggie!"
"What did you do?" the girl asked.
"Just come see, Elyssa," said Natsuki a bit sourly as she turned off her playlist.
Elyssa rolled over on her swivel desk chair. "What up?" she asked looking at it in confusion.
"Just look at it. What do you see that's wrong?"
Elyssa stared at it. "I don't see anything," she said, "I'm working on a scene from the second story arc, so I really have no idea what you're going for besides the fact that you said you were doing the park scene."
Natsuki sighed, "I messed up the ratios. Just look at the height of Minori compared to the height of Alice."
"They look fine. Isn't Minori supposed to be rather average height while Alice is relatively tall?"
"Yeah, I was able to make them proportional, but then notice how much background space there is? It's almost as if the entire focus of the drawing shifts from the characters to the park in the background."
Elyssa thought about it. "Is that really so bad though?"
"Yes! I know it's the park scene, but the park is not the most important part. The important part is that this is the part where their friendship really starts to grow, and the seeds of romance are sowed between the main character and Minori. The whole point is not the park at all, but the concrescence of the characters and their feelings with the park itself as only a catalyst!"
"Woah, woah, slow down. Catalyst? Concrescence? Have you been reading a thesaurus or trying to use the fanciest words possible or something? I don't even know what the hell 'concrescence' means!"
"Uggh! I guess I've been spending too much time with Yuri. We are roommates after all, so she must have somehow rubbed off on me."
"Heh, didn't you say that she was trying to get you to read some book and you wanted to get her into manga?"
"Uh, yeah. That didn't work too well though." Natsuki laughed a bit.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, I'm just saying that she wanted me to read a book called Portrait of Markov and I've barely touched it, but I guess it's fair. After all, I tried to get her into manga, and while she was willing to read a little, I doubt she'll ever pick up Parfait Girls."
"Aww, she would like it. Especially once it gets into the second arc."
"I tried telling her that it has horror elements as well, but she doesn't seem to buy it."
"Was she willing to read anything else?" asked Elyssa, "The local library has the entire first three arcs of Pokemon Adventures."
"I don't know. I know she loved the old Pokemon Platinum and SoulSilver games, so maybe."
"Worth a try. That would be great if we could fangirl about it together, ahaha." Elyssa smiled awkwardly.
"Yeah. Anyway." Natsuki slapped the paper. "I still need to figure out what to do with this."
"What was your goal for it? Like, spatially-wise?"
"So, I wanted to arrange the characters in such a way that it hints at the beginnings of romantic affection while still being fairly innocent and normal, and I think I got that down pact."
"Yeah, their body language and posture looks great."
"But notice how much of this is empty space? Well, I guess not empty, we can see details of the park, or at least you would more so if I continued on this route. But the deal is that the more attention is paid to random trees and lampposts and shit, the less is focused on the characters."
"Hmmm. I see what you mean."
They looked at it for a while. "Got any ideas?" asked Natsuki.
"Well, could you add a border?"
"I was thinking about it. Maybe I could add one in such a way as to make it look like a picture hanging on a wall. The only problem is that to do that would require much more space than I currently have. If I shave off enough of the park to make a, say, one inch border, then there would be almost no room for any of the park at all. It would be like a close up on the characters which would exclude the park entirely. Basically it would defeat the purpose."
"Yeah, you're right," agreed Elyssa "If you could shave off an inch from the top, that should be great, but to do that on all sides would drastically decrease the picture's overall volume." She thought about it some more. "What if you could make, like a one centimeter border? The ratio of border to park would shave off most of the empty space while still leaving the focus on the characters intact."
"That could work," said Natsuki skeptically, "but I can't think of any picture frames that are only one centimeter thick."
"Who says it has to be a picture frame? Just make it like the picture of one of those old-style cameras that prints out it's picture with a slight background."
"Oh, oh, I think I see what you mean!" Natsuki pulled out her phone and googled 'old camera that prints out pictures.' The browser came up with links to Amazon and Ebay where she could buy an old Polaroid camera. Natsuki then googled 'polaroid picture' in images and looked at the results.
"Yeah, that's what I meant," said Elyssa, "Notice how the photo has a thin white border in a distinctive shape. If you do that, you could shave off the extra space while still keeping the dimensions of the paper intact."
"That's great! Thanks," she said as she high fived Elyssa.
"No problem. Now if you'll excuse me..." Elyssa pushed off against Natsuki's desk and went spinning across the studio floor, almost crashing into her own desk. Natsuki laughed and put on her playlist which consisted of a Frankenstein monster hybrid of game themes, anime intro songs, and 80's rock albums. Natsuki went back to drawing as 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Tears for Fears came on.