Of Mice and Pen: Pirate Art - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 240

To rectify this problem, these see-through areas are filled with white, and the results are
immediately much better. It might take the characters a step away from being true silhouettes,
but it does allow them to show a little more detail, and in doing so a little more personality is
added (see Figure 10-19).
However, our hero Flynn became an interesting exception to the rule. He was given detailing
and features just like every other character, but we found we didn't like the result. Giving Flynn
eyes and nostrils gave him a very fixed expression, which didn't always suit the conversations or
situations he was in, so we decided to keep him all black. We think it works better this way as it is
now easy to imagine different emotions on his face, without the fixed one getting in the way.
It is worth noting that this legibility issue was not so important for the environments as it was
for the characters, so any “erased” detailing in the environment elements were not filled with
white. This also sets the backgrounds apart from the characters quite nicely.
Figure 10-19. A comparison of Flynn, Archie, and the pirates with and without detail