Silhouettes In concept

Silhouetting for the use of concept art is one of the easiest yet most effective ways to come up with a bunch of ideas fast. Back in college, I had an assignment to cut up some pieces of paper into interesting shapes, then place them on a table. The idea was that the spaces between the pieces should leave shapes for us to be able to create characters or objects from. Since then, I've found it useful quite often, and even see characters and shapes in every day life. This is one of the reasons I have chosen my approach of the silhouette pushing, as I want to see if it's possible to still see the original form even if it's distorted beyond proportion, or if an entirely new object reveals itself.

A Fantastic example of someone that uses silhouettes for concept design is the artist Feng Zhu. Zhu uses silhouettes to establish a base concept, then adds detail to the shape to create a character or an environment.

(Image belongs to Feng Zhu Design: fengzhudesign.blogspot.com)

Commonly however, silhouetting is often only seen by the artist themselves in a pre-production stage of the artwork, before anything is taken further in forms of design or colour.

Ben Mauro is another example of a fantastic artist who demonstrates the use of silhouetting widely in his work. Mauro often displays the silhouetted versions of the characters before showing the final one, to demonstrate how he handles his ideas and concepts, and how he puts the silhouettes into practice.

(Image belongs to Ben Mauro copyright Sony Pictures)

Mauro uses complex silhouettes when finalising the designs in order to push the image he wishes to portray from the silhouettes. The first one for example, even without seeing the bottom image, the viewer can clearly see what Mauro is portraying without the use of detail or colour, kind of allowing you to see his work before it is done.