Character Design Brief And Silhouettes

For my final task for this project, the brief is to design a character from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Tinderbox", a German fairy tale about a soldier who meets a witch who promises wealth in return for a favour

The Tinderbox (http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/tale114.pdf).

Everyone on the course is also given a randomly assigned time and place for their character and I got 1800's America. I immediately was pleased with this because I had recently seen a few trailers for The Revenant, a film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, an early 1800's fur trapper who is left for dead after a bear attack. The idea of the soldier from the Tinderbox being a fur trapper interested me. Fur trappers at the time were party the American army that were tasked with exploring past the rocky mountains, and hence also became known as 'Mountain Men'. These weren't typical soldiers either as they had to know how to hunt for rare fur and skins and attempt trading with native American tribes in the region, many of which were very hostile to outsiders.

 I found it very difficult to get the human form right in these silhouettes as I never have been particularly good at it anyway so this project should prove challenging.