Wednesday, April 30, 2008

FV Character Silhouettes

My first experiment in cartoon silhouettes was a blast, and I've been surprised by how much attention it's getting in the blogosphere. I even found blogs that picked up the image in Finnish, Portuguese, and Spanish, to name a few. So thanks, everyone! But this post is targeted at those of us within the FableVision bubble. I gathered up a bunch of our recent characters and assembled this massive group silhouette. Click on the image above to see a larger version. Sorry if I left any out, but I think this is a good sampling of FV-designed characters from recent projects. I've broken the rule again about posting client work on the blog, but my excuse is that they are "disguised" in shadow. Some are more obscure than others. If you don't know the characters, at least take a moment to look at their shapes and forms.

You should notice a couple of things. Some characters look very different from one another, while others very look similar. There is overall less variation when you compare it to the Cartoon Silhouettes image. I see a lot of thin characters that are about the same height, baseball hats, big heads, skinny necks. But we do a lot of people, so that's not surprising. But we can strive for more variation. Animals and creatures are at an advantange (which is why some of the most iconic cartoon characters are not human). Strong poses help make a silhouette more prominent, and a lot of the time we design are characters standing straight up and down. So think about personality when you draw your characters.

I have the cheat sheet if anyone wants to see it.
(But it will come at a price...)

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