The use of Silhouettes in Concept Design

Silhouette thumbnails are among the most helpful and productive methods of design when it's necessary to produce a large quantity of variations of concepts within a short period of time. It's not a method used by all concept artist and it's certainly not a necessity to design a creature or a character purely based off of a silhouette shape. That doesn't go to say that all designers don't subconsciously focus on shapes and designs that make a strong impact on the viewer. We often refer to a silhouette as a black outlined shape, much like a shadow. Whether consciously or subconsciously we are always designing through the use of interesting dominate shapes that work well together. Typically the use of this type of design is a pre-production phase of concept art that is generally only seen by the artist or art director if working on set or in-house. (Note: Designs by Ben Mauro, copyright Sony Pictures Animation) Ben's work can be found at The Art of Ben Mauro

20 character design tips | Character design Character design can be a tricky illustration beast to tackle. You may know how to draw dynamic characters, but designing your own character from scratch involves a lot of creative thinking. Although many of the classic characters familiar to us all through cartoons, movies and advertising look simple, that simplicity usually belies the many hours of work that have gone into their development. From Mickey Mouse's famous three-fingered hands – drawn to save production time when he was first developed for animations in the 1920s – to the elegant simplicity of Homer Simpson, character design has always been about keeping it simple. Get Adobe Creative Cloud But aside from clean lines and easily readable features, what else are you going to need to know about character design? Getting started can be the trickiest part in any character design project, but once you've got some ideas these tips will help you breath life into your creation. 01. Think about your audience. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07.

Top 40 character design tips - Part 1: Animal based characters | Animation Nothing comes from nothing. It’s an oldie but a goodie, and as far as character design goes, the final word. Characters require a story, a world and a purpose. Once you have this, ask yourself: what should his/her/its body plan be? Are there teeth on show? What accessories are needed? There are, of course, a number of important techniques that can be applied to any design: keep things simple, always ensure you have a strong silhouette, start with general shapes and work towards detail. Here, we speak to a range of character artists, each exploring their own worlds using expressions unique to them. 01. “Take advantage of what psychologists know about how we react to each other – things like the baby-face effect and the five personality factors, which are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. 02. “Bring some contradictions to your characters. 03. “Many of my illustrations have come from doodling. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. Next Page: Don't... 11. 12.