Mentor Experiment: Animal Anatomy Silhouettes Critique

This week, Barry and Kyndra worked on developing silhouettes for two animal “hybrids”. The first was a monkey crossed with a tiger. The second was an aardvark crossed with a kangaroo. Let’s take a look at how our students did.

Kyndra goes for the iconic monkey tail, which reads very clearly within the silhouettes she drew. It’s a little bit more difficult to see “tiger” in the drawings, although there is a hint of the tiger via the face and hind legs. I would play up the tiger’s elongated body a bit more, possibly exaggerating the tiger’s head. The kangaroo / aardvark combo was a difficult mix, because both animals share similar traits in terms of their facial structure and their long, tapered tail. We’re definitely seeing “kangaroo” in the drawings, but the silhouettes are not as clear with the aardvark. The big difference between the two are their relative heights, and their hands / feet. The aardvark has stubby hands /feet, while the kangaroo’s appendages are thin and (relatively speaking) long.

Barry takes advantage of the monkey’s iconic tail in his drawing. He does a good job with showing the silhouette of the tiger’s teeth, an important consideration to make him more distinguishable from other animals which share similar facial features. Less convincing are the hands and feet, which need more definition. Barry does a better job with the kangaroo / aardvark, showing the flattened aardvark nose and the tail and thin hind legs of the kangaroo.

Overall, I think Barry and Kyndra’s silhouettes are a fine start to exploring animal anatomy and design.

I took a few minutes to work up the tiger / monkey concept by grafting a monkey’s head, arms and tail onto the tiger’s body (top row) I took a different approach by grafting a tiger’s head with monkey arms, legs and tail (bottom row). In addition to working with silhouettes, I used Photoshop’s perspective tool to exaggerate the overall look of the designs a bit further.

-Krishna