internal silhouette: an animation tip
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December 19th, 2007
As animators, one of the fundamental elements we try to get into our poses is a clear silhouette. This means that a pose should read clearly, even if the entire character were shaded in with solid black. We should still be able to tell the character’s attitude, and their place in he story of the scene.
But I’ll tell you something: it’s not always true.
Sure, having a great silhouette can be great. And it’s certainly something to strive for. But sometimes, you just can’t have the arms and hands clearly extended from the body. Sometimes the head is tilted down so far that you can’t tell its position in relation to the neck and the rest of the torso. What do you do in these situations?
Why, you rely on the concept of the internal silhouette.
Have a look at this pose of Sylvester the Cat.
It’s pretty clear to us that he’s looking sneaky, sly, and mischievous. He probably has evil intentions for that egg he’s cradling so gingerly away from its nest.
But Sylvester’s silhouette is really muddled together. Check out what happens if we fill in Sylvester’s shape with black, leaving the rest of the scene blank:
We can’t even tell which direction he’s facing, let alone what any of his body gesture is. Still, I say that this pose reads clearly, and here’s why: The internal silhouette is clear.
See, the idea of a silhouette is really an exercise in contrasting colors. That’s what we mean to do when we shade in a character with black: we’re contrasting the character’s shape with the background. Black on white, see?
So we have this opportunity to take advantage of a character’s design, using the design to contrast the character with himself. Sylvester is a black cat, but his body is white, his cheeks are white, and his hands are white. These help provide a contrast so we can see the shape of his internal silhouette.
Don’t believe me? Check it out. Here’s that same silhouette, but this time we’ve shaded in all of Sylvester’s white parts to see their shape as well.
Much clearer now, isn’t it?
That’s one of the reasons the character is designed the way it is. As an instructor said to me at school: “Why do you think all of those 1920’s and 1930’s cartoon characters wore white gloves?? It was so you could see their hands when they brought them in front of their black bodies!!”
And it’s absolutely true. You can even see it in live action. Here’s a shot from American Psycho:
This character’s attitude seems very clear to me. In control, and maybe a bit pompous about it. But here’s the blob of a silhouette we get when we shade him in:
How do we figure out what to make of this big black nothing? Have a look at how the skin tones contrast against everything else:
Now it’s as clear as day!
An even better example can be seen here, in this shot of Jack Lemmon in The Apartment:
Look at how constricted and balled up he is! Is there any way that we could tell what he’s doing just from his basic shape? Nope!
So how do we figure out what’s going on here? Internal Silhouette to the rescue!
Yes, I’m being a bit indulgent in choosing scenes from two movies I’ve recently blogged about–and if you’d like to read those posts, you can find them here and here–but the point remains valid.
Let’s get back to animation.
I think that a lot of the idea of silhouette has to do with a character’s main body pose. The spine, the head, the legs and feet. Internal silhouette, it seems to me, often has a lot more to do with hands and smaller gestures.
Check out this one from the classic “One Froggy Evening”:
The hand is so important to the composition of that shot, it’s not only huge, but it’s bright yellow! You don’t even see anything else close to yellow in that shot. The hand practically has its own silhouette, apart from the rest of the man’s body.
Here’s one of Porky Pig demonstrating that white glove thing:
Here, Dean opens the door for Hogarth in The Iron Giant:
Even cast in shadow, that hand shows up really nicely in contrast to his dark burgundy robe.
Speaking of Hogarth, here he is in Downtown Coolsville:
One hand is in clear silhouette out in the open, and the other has to rely on its own contrast with Hogarth’s dark shirt. The two hands, each silhouetted in their own way, work together to read as a single pose.
Finally, from the uber-classic “What’s Opera, Doc?” we see Elmer Fudd, whose cuirass almost disappears into the background, but his hands are nice and readable as he plots to get dat wabbit:
So, the lesson here is that although a clear silhouette is something you should always strive to work into your poses, be aware that sometimes silhouette is more complicated than a first glance would indicate. Our eyes don’t see shapes so much as they see contrasts. The contrasts are what make the shapes.
Use those contrasts to create clear silhouettes and recognize when you can use them to create clear internal silhouettes and you’ll open up a whole new range of what you can communicate with a character’s pose.
Cheers!
