Silhouetted Heroines

By | Saturday, November 12, 2011 1 comment
I'm working on an art project, and I thought I might use some silhouetted figures as part of the design. So I go trolling around the interwebs looking for royalty-free silhouettes to use, preferably in vector format. And I quickly find the website All-Silhouettes.com which not only has many vector drawings of silhouetted people and objects, but also has them conveniently sorted. One of the files I stumble across has about 40 superheroines. Well, they're silhouettes, so 40 women-wearing-tight-clothing-with-a-few-flowy-bits-trailing-behind-them-in-dramatic-poses. Here's a sample...
And I'm scanning through them, and I'm thinking, "Yeah, that kind of looks like Ms. Marvel. That kind of looks like Hellcat. That kind of looks like Supergirl..." I figure they flipped through some comics for inspiration. Hardly surprising, really. But then I saw these two...
Now, if you don't know your 1980s Marvel comics very well, let me suggest where I think the inspiration for those two figures came from...
Nebula and Dagger. I don't know where these specific images were first used, but I know I saw them repeatedly in the various Handbooks and RPG materials that came out in the mid-1980s. I remembered them specifically because they had pretty unusual poses and, frankly, cast memorable silhouettes. Which leads me to wonder several things. First, are all of the superheroine silhouettes traced from specific artwork? Second, what about the other files from that same host; have they all been traced from existing work? Third, if they have been traced, what's the legal culpability of using them? I don't have answers to any of those questions, but it's something to think about.
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1 comments:

Hi there! I was wondering if I could talk to you about one of the silhouette of Dagger you made? I was wondering if you would allow me to use an altered version of it for a logo? I'm also a photo editor and graphic designer but never found a pose I could work from until I saw your post. I altered the shape of her hair slightly, hand, and pose in general but wanted to ask you for permission to use it since I used your work as a base work. I could just make a silhouette from the actual Dagger comic image you provided but if you spotted it anywhere, you would think it's what you did anyways so I thought I'd just ask you, haha. Just let me know your thoughts. I can even send you my altered version so you can observe it for yourself.