Thumbnails & Silhouettes

We spent to developing our ideas further, after Xi and I made our own mind maps and mood boards, we were able to see which ideas and styles we both liked or were more drawn to.

In our class we had a thumbnailing tutorial, specifically creating silhouettes of our creature concepts, making sure the first ideas we put to paper were easy to read and understand. I struggled at first, unable to give personality to creatures that are more animal than human, until Luca talked us through shape language, and how different shapes can convey meaning that effects how an audience interprets characters.

I tried to use more distinct shapes in my silhouette, like the triangles for the foxes, to convey their cunning-ness, or the circular shapes for my deer, with pointed antlers. I want to develop my thumbnails further and push how I can distort my creatures even more. I did this by combining even more, different types of creatures, which pushed the “Frankenstein” bodies even more. I need to try and refine the style more and will look for more references to aid me in this.

I received some feedback on my silhouettes, Luca mentioned that they need to be more readable and refined. I think it’s difficult to make my silhouette more obvious as they are inherently distorted animals. Nevertheless, I was given some very helpful direction on which thumbnails have a good foundation and to be developed further. Both from the feedback, and in my own, the silhouettes that combined more creatures, pushed the grotesque feeling Xi and I were trying to emulate more than the ‘Cerberus-esque’ multiheaded, single origin creatures.

I broke up my silhouettes by exploring what could be within my creatures, until I had a direction, I was happy to explore and put to paper. As I struggle to imagine anything in my head, I find I take a while sketching ideas and making them look how I want them too, as I can’t picture what this is. Because of this, I decided to write out my ideas and use reference images to inform my more developed thumbnailing. I think relying on silhouettes to begin with took a lot of the guess work out for me, allowing me to be quicker in my initial idea generation, and more intentional in my development. However, this does mean that I had a broader range of initial silhouettes, and more limited development. This may have been okay for this projects timeline, but in a professional pipeline, especially with clients, I will need to work on producing a wider range of developed idea before beginning my modelling process.