Silhouettes

The fist part of the project was to create 100 silhouettes of either environments or vehicles.
This was to empty all the creative thoughts on the project and get all the pre-thought ideas onto paper in a quick and easy way. It also enabled interpretation of abstract shapes into potential cityscapes and environments.

The thumbnails that were created could then be sought through and the best pieces selected to begin the iterative design process.
The reason for this process was to end up with an end product that is far removed from the first conceptual ideas.

At first, it appeared that creating silhouettes of environments would be challenging. This is because in the previous project, there were mostly interior or tunnel pictures. Silhouettes can only be used to outline and object, person or scene. None of the interior detail could be shown.

This restriction created a diverse number of results within the thumbnails. Experimentation took place with the idea of either the black or white parts of the thumbnail being the physical environment and the void. The idea of not being able to tell which was the environment and which was the void aided the visual ideas of a busy futuristic dystopia, creating a sense of confusion and uncertainty.

The silhouettes also helped refine any pre-thought ideas into more striking visual concepts, buildings, walkways and tunnels were iteratively designed by reworking them and changing parts to create a different look than the original concept. The buildings that were originally designed became more jaggedly with acute angels. Ropes and cranes were added to give the buildings a more industrial and sinister feel.

I understand that It is industry practise to create several thumbnails of characters, objects, assets, and environments as a starting point on a project. Chris Goodswen advised this in his lecture at the University last year.