The importance of silhouette

Recently I read up on some interesting points with regard to character design that I feel can link in with this project. The main focus of the area is the importance of Silhouettes in character development. One of the games that I play in my spare time is a first person shooting game called Team Fortress 2, created by Valve software. Renowned for its unique are style and character, I stumbled across some of the developers comments on the creation of characters in this game.



You may find the full original text here

“Stylization with a Purpose: The Illustrative World of Team Fortress 2.”

http://www.primotechnology.com/2008/02/25/gdc-08-the-illustrative-world-of-team-fortress-2/

Although it was a long talk, my area of focus was drawn to the section on Silhouettes. The team worked on this a lot within their game as a distinguishing feature between different classes and characters. They found that after colour, how can a player quickly analyse another and see what they are class they are playing as.
“On the most basic level, the artists design silhouettes that are easily recognizable. Mitchell showed only the black outlined forms of all nine characters and everyone in the room could easily determine who was who based solely on that.”





When we look at an image on the most basic level, excluding all colour and texture what we are left with is and outline of shape or combined shapes. The shape is the backbone to any character design and during the creating stages you will find that most artists indeed start by working out a suitable silhouette.
Here is a lists of processes that there team followed to create each character









If a character is recognisable by its silhouette it has a huge advantage, at long distance where detail isn’t always clear the character is still readable and this was an important part of Team Fortress’s play style. A good example is a quote I found on a second text.

Team Fortress 2 - Visual Design, Comic Game Action, with a purpose.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4338&page=1

“We found that silhouette and animation were better long-range identification characteristics than texture detail or colour.”

How this relates to my work is that identification of enemies within a limited lighting environment like the bunker, sometimes all you will have are silhouettes in the distance or shadows on the wall. This is a very important factor in the style I want to have in the game, so working on silhouettes is one of my highest priorities. Although some might consider the character design in Team Fortress cartoonish, the same principles apply and here is no reason why I can do the same with more realistic, less exaggerated designs.