Bootyfull Composition Analysis: Rogue's Ass
(Now with 100% more commentary)
I am going to do this in reverse order from what you do when creating a composition.
I will use these 3 sections to explain why this comicbook cover is bootylicious.
1. Color Theory (values, hue, and saturation)
2. Gesture lines (lines of action)
Looking at this cover, the first thing I notice is Rogue's butt (obviously). More specifically I notice how light it is compared to the rest of the cover. There is a glow to the to the gentle curves. This light is achieved through three components of color: value, hue, and saturation.
Value is how bright or dark is a color (white being the brightest and black being the darkest). If a small region has a high contrast with the rest of the piece then it will generally catch the eye of the viewer.
The image below is put into greyscale to evaluate value. The lightest values that we see on this piece are on Rogue's butt and the X-men title/branding. This emphasizes these components of the composition and separates them from everything else. You do see other bright highlight lines in other parts of Rogue and Gambit, but those are to help separate the foreground characters from the explosion happening in the background.
Hue on the other hand is all about which color is chosen and comparing cool and warm colors. Cool colors are generally blue shifted and warm colors are generally yellow shifted. Other colors can be either warm or cool tone depending on how much blue or yellow they have in them. (This is a baby version of color theory so this is not a hard and fast rule and color appearance absolutely shift based on the colors around them). For the sake of this analysis we are going to pretend what I said is true.
In the picture below I have color picked and blurred either the midtone or the main shadow and highlight of each component of clothing and the background around the butt. This allows us to see the blocks of color used in this area. Notice first that yellow is used directly on her butt. The logo and Rogue's behind are the only two places where yellow are used. This yellow is surrounded with cool tone purple, blue, and a neutral brown. The cool tone colors on gambit contrast with the warm yellow. The browns are all almost identical so Rogues jacket, gambit's hair, and his jacket all turn into one block that becomes uninteresting to look at.
The coolest thing about this was finding the thin purple outline that surrounded both characters. This further separates them from the background and compliments the yellow on the seat of Rogue's pants. Image below zoomed in to see the purple outline.
Saturation relates to the intensity or amount of pigment in a color. If there is low saturation the color will be closer to grey. High pigment color will be a really intense version of that color. The yellow, green, and purple in their clothing is all highly saturated. The background has much more muted, low saturation, colors. This is especially true of the background around, you guessed it, Rogue's rear end.
These are the big lines that define a shape or the movement of a object (shape or action lines).
In the image below I have marked a few of the important gesture lines. The yellow circle shows the booty.
The blue line underneath the X-men logo shows where we loose the upper third of the drawing to the logo. Anything that is up there will compete with the X-men logo for attention. However, there is also gambit's staff (marked in maroon) that pulls the attention back to the two characters. It crosses behind Rogue's back, and rogues back points to either her face or her butt. Rogue's face is a tan similar to her jacket and her hair is the same saturation as the background. These factors, combined with her head competing with the logo for visual space makes the viewer to look away towards her butt first.
To ASSist, the broken bricks curve up in arcs on either side of the characters in a fram that points directly to her derriere. (Bricks and body line marked in a peachy-orange)
Finally, there are Gambit's legs. The white arrows trace up his leg lines and sure enough they point towards the tuchus.
Draw two evenly spaced lines horizontally and the same vertically. Where the lines intersect are natural points where human eyes like to rest when we scan an image. Placing something of interest at one of these points will make it stand out to a viewer. If you want to draw attention towards a particular point, then make sure gesture lines that point towards the intended direction pass through the other points.
I free-handed the lines in this image because despite the amount of time dedicated to this task, I am not taking it seriously. Note that the Booty is right in the crosshairs.
