How We Make Silhouettes

 

You may be wondering how we make our silhouettes for use in our custom stone designer.

We offer two types of silhouettes for each dog breed. One is more of a straightforward outline of the pet and another shows some detail and character within the silhouette. Sometimes internal detail is necessary to show the difference between breeds such as with a border collie and an Australian Shepard or a Newfoundland and a Tibetan mastiff. Cats breed differences can be less distinct so we offer a good variety of differently shaped cats with fewer distinct breeds.

The difficulty is representing your pet. We don’t want to be so specific that the shape you find in the designer doesn’t match your pet and at the same time we hope to incorporate enough signature detail so you can recognize your pet in the representation.

Here is how it works:

Here is a close up of a Tibetan mastiff’s coat to demonstrate how we make a finer detailed silhouette.

We want to capture the essence of this because it really is a characteristic feature of this dog. So I’ll firstly turn it black and white while increasing the contrast and grab some features but not all.

Although it’s a close up, you can still get the sense of the fur from the movement present. Now I’ll vectorize the image to optimize it for our custom mold creation process.

Which again is a close up but looks almost like a streamlined version of the original. The grand effect when looking at something with context is quite stunning. Here’s the end result of such work on our very own Tibetan mastiff.

If you’d like to see this silhouette on a memorial stone use our custom designer on the Stone designer page. We’re always updating silhouettes, if you don’t see one you’d like you can request one by sending us a quick message here: info@ashstonememorials.com