Limbo

A while back I posted a test image from an animated short (about the animation industry) that I was working on at the time. That project has been on hold for more than 18 months now, and will most probably not be resurrected in the near future (if ever). But when I stopped working on it, I promised myself that one day I'd finish a short using that silhouette style.

My inspiration has been a combination of Tim Burton's animated films, especially Vincent and The Nightmare Before Christmas, Filmax Animation's Nocturna and a few others.

And just lately, Limbo.

It's an indie platformer game, developed in Flash, and it looks amazing. Especially the outdoor bits.

The foregrounds are just flat black silhouettes, but the grayscale backgrounds stretches far into the distance and gives the environments an epic scale, which you normally would lose the moment you work with an orthographic viewport and a silhouetted foreground (think of those Chinese shadow-plays). This nicely circumvents that claustrophobic feeling, and gives an essentially 2D piece a 3D quality.

The site doesn't give a whole lot of information about the game, but it does feature some concept art and a video teaser. Go check it out.