Research- silhouette

 

Silhouette work documentation

As a part of our introduction into digital skills we are asked to designing characters via a silhouette as opposed to starting with the line work. This allows a designer to think more about the character personality and shape without having to think about the finer details or colour palete.

For this ask I am primarily using Adobe Photoshop is closer to working with a pencil or paintbrush that something that works more with Bezier curve’s and vector-based graphics like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape. Though I may experiment with vectors for designing silhouettes later if I have the time.

Before going straight to digital I had made some quick sketches on a A4 piece paper of some simplified figures. This acted as both a warm-up as well as to act as a visual note on what shapes I many want to experiment with. I scanned the document onto my computer so it could be shared easier.

Some shapes I wanted to work with were chestnut/teardrops, almond and half-circles.

Sadly, I forgot to document my process for my first couple of designs, but I should still be able to demonstrate my though process and the methods used. Also, I’ll be using nicknames to refer to my designs as they don’t have any official names yet.

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My first design which I will call chestnut was designed with a teardrop or chestnut shape in mind. I started with body and legs as I wanted to give this character a lot of personality by giving them an interesting and expressive pose. I didn’t really worry too much about anatomy as I wanted to focus more on expressiveness. 

Once I had a pose I was happy with I used the chestnut shape as the head as was somewhat unusual looking and thus more interesting.

Though one of my favourite designs it’s not very unique as similar designs have been used in animation and video games before though it could made unique I design everything else well. 

Once I was happy with overall shape of the design, I used the eraser tool to smooth out the outline.

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For my next design I wanted make design inspired my fashion illustration since silhouettes play a large role fashion especially with more outrageous and sculptural designs. Fashion illustrations also have figures that a long a lanky that could easily translate into the exaggerated proportions seen in cartoons.

With this drawing I drew with a lot of loose, flowing lines and quick gestural marks.

Then the figure would be bulked out the basic shapes and lines. There was a lot of rectangles, squares and sharp angles in this design.

Once I had the shape filled out, I used the eraser tool to create smooth lines.

Using the eraser tool can also be used sharped points.

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With the next design I wanted to try and give the silhouette some sense of anatomy by giving a bit of muscle to the arms and legs. However, I also wanted to create an exaggerated figure with a large body, small, long lanky arms and legs.

I started by drawing the shape of the torso to then fill it in. 

Afterwards I loosely marked out the pose I wanted with basic lines. From here I would build up everything else as a when along.

Building up the figure, I continued to work with blocky shapes by having a square head and blocky chin as well as large square shoulder pads to match.

Arms and legs were also filled in with an attempt to convey the idea on muscles without being too detailed. 

Even with a basic outline I still thought it needed something to give the silhouette a distinct look.

 I find that an easy way of doing this is with things like with the hair or adding in some sort of accessory on the face or head since that is what popped out to be the most in a lot of iconic characters. Some good examples would be Mickey Mouse’s big ears, Hello Kitty’s bow or Bart Simpson’s spiky hair.

I tried just drawing a rectangle for the hair, but it blended into the head so well it might as well have been a very long forehead and it reminded me too much of some other characters that exist anyways. So, I just added a simple superman like curl the to the front. 

I still wasn’t happy with the design so used a mixture of liquify and free transform to exaggerate some parts. 

I wasn’t super confident using the liquify tool, so I mostly used it to tuck in the waist and shape out the hair some more.

Afterwards I used the lasso tool the shrink the head down quite a bit which made shoulders look broader in comparison and made the character look a lot older.

It was around this point I would smooth out the shoulders and chest and add in the shirt and shoes.

I didn’t really like the pose all too well so using the lasso tool I moved each segment of the arms to have his arms down by his sides. 

I used a similar method to elongate the legs since I liked the idea of this ridiculously large man being held up by a set of long, lanky legs.  

Since his hand were no longer partly hidden by his hips, I had to draw in some hands which I had clenched into fists as if he was ready for action.  

I then changed my mind about the pose again and put on of his arms on his hip again to give the figure a sense of personality. 

Finally, I selected the whole figure using the object selection tool elongating the silhouette to make them appear a lot older and a lot bigger compared to the pervious silhouettes.

I could probably keep developing this figure to have a more unique design and dynamic pose but I wanted to move along at this point.

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After the last figure I stepped away to take a quick break since I really didn’t have any ideas. I started to think about things that were associated with autumn since my first design was based on the chestnut and I was starting to notice that conkers (which are apparently called horse chestnuts) were beginning fall from the trees. I also wanted it to be something that has a very simple and iconic shape that I could work off.

So I went with a mushroom.

I then added in the 'frills' that mushrooms sometimes have which made me think of a frilly shirt and a poncho.

Afterwards, I looked up some different types of mushrooms for inspiration about found a site that was made by the University of Saskatchewan which discusses the various types of mushrooms of the region.

I came in useful as diagrams which showed a variety of shapes of mushroom caps which give be a idea of shapes that I could of use which I could use to build my design off of. 

For example, I used the bell shape for the hair and I tried using the knobbed shape as a hat though I couldn't get it too worked unfortunately. 

I gave the character a necklace as another reference to the various frill and gills or mushrooms.

 

Next was to add in the legs and arms which affer the more defined muscle's of the last design didn't go so well I tried going for the complete opposite by having these more 'rubberhose' limbs. I shaved of of the bottom of the dress/skirt so show of more of the legs.

Next, I added in the shoes which used the same semi-circle shape that as appeared throughout the design. Then I add the arms which I would use free transform so I could get the position I liked.

Finally, I added in the hands. My first attempt as actually looked a lot more detailed but it looked very out of place on the more cartoony design so I took a a while to get the balance between detailed and stylised just right. 

The basket was add in just to give the design a little more character. 

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For my last design I wanted to keep to the Autumn theme with a pumpkin design but I found that I couldn't get to work so I went with more of squash shape to work with.

There isn't too much to say about this design at this point as I used a lot of the same methods and techniques that I used for the last couple of designs. I started with the torso and legs having them in the slouched position which already give of the idea of this character being tired, bored or sad.   

Next I drew in the head which I used I similar squash shape for.

 At this point I was influenced by the designs of Masaaki Yuasa's 'Kaiba', which I had stumbled onto some clips of the show online and loved the the very stylized characters designs though I haven't seen the show in full for myself.

I know it's available on Amazon Prime if anyone is interested in watching this series for themselves, just be warned that it does cover some dark and adult themes.

Anyways, I would block in the arms and hands which was a nightmare as I would either end up having parts of the body covered or the hands wouldn't be visible on the silhouette. This was mostly likely and effect of the character being stood in a 3/4 angle but I did the best that I could.

  I added in hair and ear to better define the shape on the head.

I used the free transform tool to shrink the head down to a more reasonable size.

Finally, I added I some small details just in imply the existence of clothes. I like to think that there are wearing a woolly jumper.

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Overall, I am quite happy with most of these designs though I feel as if there unoriginal in nature. I think went to comes to designing anything my first ideas are heavily inspired by things I've seen online and in popular media but as I go along I'll hopefully be able to develop them further to give them there on flair. 

If was anything to be learned is that you should probably never use your first draft of a design.