Artist Creates Incredible Nerdy Silhouette Art Bonanza

[John Funk]

Artist Creates Incredible Nerdy Silhouette Art Bonanza

This videogame (et al) silhouette art is so amazing it ought to be in a museum.

Part of the mark of a visually well-designed character is a recognizable silhouette: If you took that character and looked at him or her from the side in a totally black-and-white environment, could you recognize who it was?

One artist decided to test the limits of that, and filled a gallery with literally dozens (if not more than a hundred) of silhouettes, almost all made from cutting white and black paper together. Other than a handful of exceptions, they're all completely monochrome - and they're incredible.

[gallery=260]

It's a testament to both the skill of the artist as well as the original character designers that so many side-on silhouettes can be recognizable in only black and white. Perhaps it isn't so surprising, though - the artist is negative space [http://www.ollymoss.com/].

We've only taken the videogame characters from the gallery because there are just so many from all walks of nerdy life. You have Buzz Lightyear, Conan the Barbarian, Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop - it's a really incredible gallery, and well worth a few moments of your time [http://ollymosspapercuts.blogspot.com/]. Seriously, go check it out.

(Blogspot [http://ollymosspapercuts.blogspot.com/])

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[rsvp42]

A friend showed me this earlier and it's just phenomenal. Not only is it a great example of the power of silhouette in character design, it's also a game of sorts for some of the harder-to-identify ones (no captions or file names to give them away) and a great test of one's pop culture savvy.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

I think its:
Pac-Man and Mrs Pac-Man
Pyramid Head
Guybrush Threepwood
A grim reaper of some sort, from Grim Fandango by the looks of it
Um...EDIT: Oh wait, no, it's Link, I totally see that now
The Heavy
The Engineer
Carmen Sandiago (nice use of maps)
Gordon Freeman
The Soldier
No freaking clue
Princess Peach
Snake (Snake? Snaaaaaaaaaaake!)
Some Mario villain I think is called a Shy Guy
Chun-Li
The Brothers Mario
Uh...is this the guy from Kingdom Hearts?
No idea who the last one is either

 

[rsvp42]

snip

I think the guy after the soldier is from Street Fighter
Last one is a low-poly Cloud from FF7, I believe

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

The last two are Cloud from Advent Children and original Cloud sprite from FFVII
and the weird hair one is Guille I believe

 

[Not-here-anymore]

I think its:
Pac-Man and Mrs Pac-Man
Pyramid Head
Guybrush Threepwood
A grim reaper of some sort, from Grim Fandango by the looks of it
Um...EDIT: Oh wait, no, it's Link, I totally see that now
The Heavy
The Engineer
Carmen Sandiago (nice use of maps)
Gordon Freeman
The Soldier
No freaking clue Guile, from Street Fighter
Princess Peach
Snake (Snake? Snaaaaaaaaaaake!)
Some Mario villain I think is called a Shy Guy
Chun-Li
The Brothers Mario
Uh...is this the guy from Kingdom Hearts? No idea either, but may be Cloud from all updated FF7 stuff, like Advent Children
No idea who the last one is either Cloud Strife, of FF7 fame

These are awesome! Loads of them I can't get in the general gallery though... Personal favourite is the Calvin and Hobbes one, just because I love that entire comic series.

 

[TimeComando]

These are awesome!

 

[Formica Archonis]

My goodness, the sheer volume of these on his "Paper Cuts" page is amazing. I think I might have guessed half of them...?

Though I did catch the double. I guess even HE doesn't pay attention to Zoidberg.

 

[KezzieZ]

Those are some great silhouettes and some wonderful subject choices.
I thought his polygonal Cloud one was particularly amusing.

 

[LeetheGirl]

Whoo! Those are awesome!!

 

[Hulyen]

Is that Gob and Franklin I spy on the full gallery? Someone please tell me it is.

Edit: It must be, I spy Buster and a seal with a yellow bowtie further down.

 

[Twilight_guy]

That's pretty cool and it also illustrates the effectiveness of good silhouettes and easily recognized characters. (The irony being that the TF2 characters were designed expressly so these types of silhouettes are highly distinguishable in the first place). Another interesting thing is the number of characters not present. Characters that lack distinctive silhouettes are not here and that a sign of bad design in many circumstances since your characters aren't recognizable.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

There's a game in going through all of them, for sure. Loved the Reservoir Dogs one.

 

[AvsJoe]

Guile and Snake made me lol. Great gallery!

 

[Frotality]

frank the bunny, jules, the seinfield characters, wayne and garth...too much pop culture for one sitting.

seriously awesome gallery; brilliant design choices that make it ingeniously apparent who is who.

 

[infohippie]

That's really cool, I'm off to view this guy's full gallery. Most of those shown here were pretty easy to recognise, except for the last two - both of which I just wrote off as "some JRPG tosser."

 

[Simalacrum]

that is very cool, although...

Are they hand-cut?

The thing is, my father being generally known as the finest silhouette artist alive today (no joke, he's a fully professional silhouette artist [http://www.roving-artist.com/charles/index.html]), I've kinda seen a lot of silhouette's and, while those are very well done, they kinda strike me as a bit... artificial. As in, not done by hand (which is really the proper way of cutting them).

I'll have my dad look at this article and see what he says and get back to this - he's a better judge upon the quality of these things than anyone here, really

edit: Right, my dad's had a look at them and this is what he said:

Thanks for sharing this. Actually I quite like these. They could be cut from paper with a little planning, but not freehand. Interesting idea to make portraits from popular culture. I hope he checked with Disney before making their characters, they'll come down hard on him if not!

...He may be a professional artist but he certainly doesn't know about gaming culture, considering he thought that they were Disney characters

 

[infohippie]

I've just been to visit that guy's site, and I am impressed. That's seriously cool. One thing it's made me realise is that Harrison Ford has a very distinctive profile. I've seen him at least three times now and each time I could recognise him as Harrison Ford immediately, but it took a moment longer to put a name to the character role in each one.

 

[KefkaCultist]

The last two of Escapist's samples are both Cloud I believe. The former being the Advent Children model and the latter being the original FF7.

Checking out the other stuff this guy has done now. Love the MGS one lol.