BLOCKING: STRUZAN S-CURVE STACK

I’ve been studying Struzan’s work more and more, and I thought it’s be fun to do another blog study on his work - this time for graphic character blocking.

While it’s difficult to simplify Struzan’s compositions to just one style of character blocking, one style that is pervasive is the what I call the “Struzan S-curve Stack”. It involves usually stacking characters in “Z” depth from farthest to closest and weaving them in an “S” curve. What I’ve noticed within this technique is Drew Struzan’s “image casting” - or what pictures he selects of the characters and why. Struzan picks images of characters with variations in eye-lines and body rotations to add even more variation on top of the s-curve. Another layer of variation he adds is sizing from large to small as the eye moves down the artwork.

WEIGHT

This descending size change makes the design feel very top heavy with such a small base and can make the design feel almost weightless.

I first learned of the top-heavy weightless concept from studying lighting design in college. ERCO, who provided the lighting equipment for the Grand Hotel Principe di Savoia lighting design in Milan, wrote in their summary of the project:

“By manipulating the light distribution across the facade to intensify from base to soffit, the light artist toned down the hotel’s seemingly massive exterior, creating instead the impression of weightless architecture towards the top of the five-story structure, with a roof that appears to be floating”

https://lightjourney.com.sg/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Hospitality-Lighting-Project-Grand-Hotel-Principe-di-Savoia-Milan.pdf

EXCEPTIONS

Of course there are exceptions, but what interested me was what made the designs still work. Below is Struzan’s Star Trek Next Generation artwork where all characters generally have the same eye-line, but what adds variety is the s-curve composition, and the Geordi and Data’s reversed body posture/neck rotation to shake up the image casting - as well as the color variations.