Reflections on creating silhouettes

This was a very challenging assignment for me, on a number of levels. The assignment was to create a number of ‘characters’, and to depict those characters, using only black-and-white silhouettes. In the first place, my drawing skills are practically non-existent, so attempts to visually show any sort of posture, movement, intent, or attitude, or ‘feeling’ connected with the character was extremely difficult. Some of the ideas that I had; I felt that I was unable to adequately portray. I am also not used to thinking about the creation of the ‘character’. I just don’t normally think that way, and I have not created a character before. When asking Miles about the concept of creating ‘characters’, he showed me some online animation using very simple silhouette-type imagery, and told me that the drawings could be extremely simple. That helped, until I saw some of the sophisticated imagery being done by most of my classmates. The ego was taking a hit on this one. Mile’s admonition to ‘get out of the comfort zone’ was the one thing that was not going to be a problem, thought I.
What exactly constitutes a character? Does it have to be anthropomorphic? Can it be symbolic? How recognizable should its intended attributes be? Can a rock petroglyph of a spiral be a ‘character’? Is it ‘complete’? Does a partial close-up of ‘something’ fulfill the definition? These were some of the questions that I wondered about when doing the drawings. My tendency was to first do a lot of different, scattered visual notions, so I was going in a lot of different directions. Was this the right way to do it? Should I be trying to do a coherent, evolutionary ‘series of 30’? I really didn’t know. Not being a good draughtsman, if felt like quick, loose approaches was the way to go. Any attempt to nail down detail, or get any sort of intuitive proportions ‘correct’, wasn’t working, and I didn’t want to get too frustrated. Working ‘small’ helped me not get too wrapped up in drawing difficulties. I tried to draw an idea, and move on. Sometimes I tried to continue an idea from a previous image, and sometimes I completely veered off in a different direction. There was nothing I was completely satisfied with, but I was probably the least dissatisfied with the top row of group #3. It felt like a useful exercise, in that it was hard for me, and there is usually benefit in that.