Shape is very important

Going through the chaarcter design research it is clear to me that the silhouette is very important for the design of your character, by looking at the examples below you can easily make out who the charatcer is without have the need for the shading, colour work or texture. The simple theory is that is the silhouette is good then the character will become a much more recognisable to the observer. Depending on the designer of the character and their preffered workflow the silhouette will be checked at different times, artists such as Feng Zhu checks his afetr thumbnailing where some preffer to play with sihouttes at the beginning loosely looking for and interesting and striking shape that is both pleasing and catching to the eye.

Below is a silhouette board os various cartoon character that are iconic and easily reconisable, how many can you pick out?

And who is this one? This is an advert for apple using a very popular television program and in my mind one of the most recognisable in the world even without the catching colour.

Taking this element of charcter design I am going to incorporate it into my design workflow curing concept phase to check if the overall shape is striking enough to easily recognisable and pleasing to the eye, how I work this in is still up in the air though as I am yet to start my concept phase (3rd December!!) but I will experiment by either trying it after thumb nailing or at the very beginning and then try to work out the features of the character.