Hey guys, this is Matt Cor from ControlPaint.com and today we're going to finish up the principles of design series by talking about unity. If I had to guess, I would assume I'm not alone in coming to a certain point in an illustration and just feeling like it's not working. Something's not quite right and I can't figure it out. Well probably what you're seeing is not bad drawing but rather a lack of unity. There is not an overall sense of balance in the image. In a compositional sense, you can think of unity as a nice mixture of the principles of design. These are pretty polished thumbnails that I want to make one into a final illustration. And these six choices are just exploring different ways I could do that. Well here I could use the principles of design to critically assess how they're going. Which ones work in the best? Where are my problem areas? If you look at this first one here, it's got a great sense of emphasis but not much motion. It feels sort of stiff. And if I want to do that intentionally, that's fine. But it's important to know that it's not very active composition. Instead if I were to look at this one here, you can see there's a lot more motion. I'm also using shape repetition in the three arches to my advantage. If we look at this one here, you can see I've pulled the camera back a little bit. I'm still using shape repetition but it feels unbalanced. Something about the left side of the image and the right side of the image aren't quite balancing visually. This one here has a lot of motion and emphasis. I'm using a strong focal point going straight down the bridge and to the front door of the castle. And that's a good aspect of it. That's very action packed. But since I don't have any characters in the foreground here, it's hard to tell the sense of scale. So I might want to work on the sense of scale. This one here is a strange idea. I thought I'd experiment with a different aspect ratio for the canvas and I don't think it really worked out. It doesn't feel balanced. It doesn't have a focal point and really there's no sense of storytelling here. So that one's out. This one has a totally different camera angle and it makes for a really interesting sense of emphasis. The sense of scale is a bit harder to tell in this one though because there's not much overlapping. But it does have a nice strong directional quality about the bridge. So in this case, I might decide to go with this one because overall it has the strongest sense of unity. And by that, I mean it's using the various principles of design to its advantage. There's overlap, shape repetition, motion, it's all there. And I might take this one to the final as a result. So looking for unity is a great way to critically assess your own work. What's working? What's not? The principles of design give you practical things to look for. So next time when you feel like there's something wrong with your image, try a couple things. First, try flipping the image horizontally. That is a great way to get some fresh eyes on it and see problems that you're missing. Something that felt like it was balanced before might be not very balanced when you get a fresh look at it. And if you really want a fresh look, just try going to sleep. In the morning, wake up, take another look at your painting, and then you might see some problems that you had no idea where they were to begin with. Ultimately, unity is not an exact science. This is where you are going to use your artists' eye to make some judgment calls, and find out what's the best mixture of the various principles of design. So good luck achieving unity and harmony in your composition. It's a subtle balance, but believe me, it gets easier with time. Thanks for watching, guys.