Aesthetics of One- and Two-Point Perspective.

Years ago, I designed an online perspective drawing class in which I attempted to cover WAY too much material – such as the aesthetics of one- and two-point perspective. It was too much for one class, and during the editing a lot of interesting material ended up on the cutting room floor. Revisiting those ideas years later, I hope to dust them off, fix them up, and find a place to properly showcase them. So, here is some of my old material – freshly rewritten with new example images (the two head studies above are fresh off my easel!)

Most of my teaching has focused on perspective technique: how to draw architectural environments in one- or two-point perspective.

No doubt, technique is important – but successful drawing is more than technique. Perspective also shapes mood, symbolism, and the psychological relationship between viewer and subject. It’s worth pausing to explore that aesthetic dimension.

So, let’s look at a series of images through a pair of contrasting ideas:

One-Point Perspective = Symmetry, Stability, and Direct Engagement

Two-Point Perspective = Dynamism, Obliqueness, and Psychological Distance

One-point perspective emphasizes central recession - space recedes directly away from us. Since all major lines converge to a single vanishing point, the resulting compositions often feel symmetrical, formal, or even ceremonial. They present the world as orderly and stable.

Raphael’s School of Athens comes to mind: the architecture frames the philosophers in a perfectly balanced space, reinforcing the painting’s theme of a harmonious, rational universe. It has been said of this painting: “The perspective isn’t just a technical device; it’s a philosophical statement.”

Two-point perspective, by contrast, introduces diagonal recession. Instead of a single, central pull into space, we get two competing directions—two oblique angles that create tension and movement. The result is often more dynamic, energetic, or unstable.

This makes two-point perspective ideal for action scenes. Think of the light-cycle battle in the original TRON (1981): the angled grids and racing diagonals heighten the sense of speed and danger. The perspective itself becomes part of the drama.

Applied to the human figure, perspective can create a sense of directness verses indirectness, engagement verses psychological distance. Here again are my head drawing studies from the top of this post.

The straight-ahead head study (on the right) directly meets our gaze. There’s an inherent confrontation - or at least a clear engagement - when a figure aligns with the central axis of the picture. One-point perspective amplifies that feeling, as if the viewer and subject occupy the same visual corridor (i.e: he is looking at you “straight in the eye”). On the other hand, two-point perspective tends to produce more incidental or intimate views. The three-quarter head study (left) looks away, not confronting us directly. The rotation introduces psychological distance. We observe the figure, but the figure does not necessarily observe us.

Finally, let’s compare two very beautiful - but very different - paintings by Burton Silverman. In the portrait below, a woman looks straight at us, scrutinizing us as much as we scrutinize her. The one-point alignment intensifies the psychological exchange. We are not just observers; we are participants.

Painting by Burton Silverman

In this next painting, the figures turn away from each other - but not quite directly towards us. The oblique angles and off-center viewpoints create a sense of interiority - private thoughts, private emotions. The psychological complexity is entirely different from the direct, frontal engagement of the above portrait.

Painting by Burton Silverman

Perspective is often taught as a technical system, but it’s also an expressive one. One-point perspective tends toward clarity, order, and confrontation. Two-point perspective leans toward dynamism, obliqueness, and psychological nuance. Neither is inherently better; each carries its own emotional vocabulary. 

Understanding that vocabulary gives you more than a way to construct space - it gives you a way to shape meaning. 

[NOTE: I want to thank my editors at AAU who gave insightful feedback on the original draft of this material years ago (even though it was ultimately discarded in the final version of the online class build). Also, I recently ran it through an AI to get more feedback. While I hate AI (I intensely loathe anything that threatens "to do my thinking for me"), I must admit, the AI provided some useful feedback to improve what became the final version of this article. So - like it or not - I must grudgingly give credit where credit is due.]

Memories of Oswald

Of all the animation productions I have worked on, it’s really tough to say which one was my favorite. I’m not sure I could pick just one, but if I had to, I might choose Oswald the Lucky Rabbit – mainly because the environments where so much fun to design, but also because of the history/legacy of the Oswald character.

Walt Disney created Oswald before Mickey Mouse, but lost ownership of the character to Universal Studios way back in 1928. Nearly 80 years later - in a strange and unexpected turn of events - Disney CEO Bob Iger negotiated back the rights from Universal, trading Oswald for ABC/ESPN sportscaster Al Michaels (fascinating read on this story here).

Following Oswald’s return to the Disney fold, a number of attempts were made to revive the character, including video games, merchandise, a short film, episodic TV series, and apparently - there is now a live-action/animation hybrid in the works. I should note that I was/am not involved with any of the other efforts to revive Oswald – just this one from around 2016-2017, when I was freelancing for Disney Interactive/Disney TV. For unknown reasons, the series never materialized.

For nearly a decade, my work on Oswald remained unseen to all but a few people, but now that Oswald is public domain, I hope it's OK to post these. So, I put together the video at the top of this blog post using a bunch of my Oswald backgrounds (the video is mine so any bad editing is my fault, and the music is courtesy of Google Vids, and not from Disney). To create these backgrounds, I worked with the amazingly talented production designer, Edgar Carlos, who has a great eye for design and composition (without his input/advice, my drawings would never have worked as well as they did). My role was primarily background design, so I only claim credit for the backgrounds (not the character drawings – those were done by other artists). Also, this is early development work, so some of the drawings are quite rough. All of these backgrounds were drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet.

One of my favorite scenes was this establishing shot of “Coneyopolis”. This first version (below) was an early rough concept.

Later, we reworked the idea, making Coneyopolis more expansive. This version includes a field guide to indicate camera movement – the camera was to pull out wider, while the foreground hills fall away, revealing the extra-wide shot of Coneyopolis (second drawing below).

I must give credit where credit is due. The above drawing was so detailed and it was taking me forever – so Edgar stepped in and drew in some parts, helping to finish on time.

The next scene (below) is an even wider shot where we digitally transplanted the previous drawing of Coneyopolis into the wider landscape, with endless rows of windmills covering the hills. Very time consuming, but very much worth the effort.

I regret that this Oswald series never materialized, but I’m just grateful for the opportunity to contribute in some small way to the legacy of this iconic character. I really enjoyed drawing these backgrounds!

CrocPond: The Dream Job that Lasted for a Moment

Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about old projects from the course my career. One project for which I had the highest hopes was the ill-fated world of CrocPond. Originally, it was intended to be a direct-to-DVD film series aimed at teaching life lessons to children. But as all too often happens in this industry, the project ran out of funding and was eventually abandoned. (I will refrain from commenting on specific events, controversies or conspiracy theories surrounding the demise of the project or the closure of FatCat Animation – I have no dog in those fights. For this blog, I just want to focus on the artwork).

In early 2005, I was contacted by someone from FatCat Animation, a studio founded by Len Simon in Tempe, Arizona. Initially, the job involved cleanup animation on the Curious George movie, but when I enquired about layout work, they said they would need to send me a test. Not long after, a package arrived by FedEx. Inside was the test: a couple of penciled line drawings for which I was asked to provide tonal renderings. I had seen no other CrocPond material, and I was given no reference or direction for the lighting – I just had to invent the lighting myself. So, I put my whole heart into it, and the result was the pencil rendering you see here, as well as the one at the top of this blog post. Needless to say, this test got me the job.

As I child, I loved the animated film Secret of NIMH, as well as the laser disc video game, Dragon’s Lair, both created by Don Bluth Entertainment (or its various incarnations). Fatcat was staffed with artists who had worked for Fox Animation Studios, which in turn, had absorbed talent from Bluth. While CrocPond was stylistically distinct from NIMH, I couldn’t help but feel excited to be working with people who had some connection to one of my favorite childhood films. In my mind, CrocPond was an opportunity to create environments which had the kind of atmospheric, mysterious, magical quality that reminded me of Secret of NIMH. For me, it was the dream job. I was very disheartened when the project came to an end.

I worked at FatCat Animation from about mid-2005 to mid-2006, the first part of that time doing cleanup animation on Curious George, the rest of that time spent drawing backgrounds for CrocPond and Rindin the Puffer. This was still the age of traditional pencil-on-paper animation, and so all of the drawings here were created with graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, and blending stubs. For many of these scenes, I was provided a rough layout (usually just a line drawing with no tone - so I had to invent the value pattern and lighting myself).

For others - such as the next two drawings here - I designed and rendered the background, so both the composition and finish are my own.

The last two drawings (below) depict the “House of Knowledge”. The exterior was initially designed by the amazingly talented Filipino artist, George Villaflor. George gave me a line drawing of the exterior, and a very rough line drawing suggesting the interior (for which I was to provide the finished renderings). Another artist had made a drawing of the interior, but from a different camera angle, and not all of the room was visible in his scene. So I had to design the rest of the room and match the desired camera angle. The script called for a room crowded with objects from every continent, representing every culture around the world. This assignment had my name all over it – a job perfectly suited to my tastes, skills, and artistic ambitions. I spent days researching reference material for everything that needed to be drawn. It was very time consuming, but I genuinely enjoyed the work.

While I am disappointed that Crocpond never reached the screen, I have fond memories from my time working on it. It was a moment in my career when imagination, craftsmanship, and opportunity aligned – however briefly – and I am grateful to have been a part of it.

By the way, I recently found some clips from FatCat Animation on YouTube (thanks to WorkOfZen for posting these!) This one provides a sense of what CrocPond might have been, if the funding had not dried up.