Cutouts

Cutouts are the ready-made people, trees, vehicles, furniture and objects you drop into a render, elevation or collage. They are the fastest way to give a drawing scale and life, and the fastest way to make it look cheap if they are chosen badly.

This collection covers the full range: photographic cutouts for photoreal renders, flat vector figures for diagrams and collages, silhouettes for elevations and sections, and illustrated sets when the drawing has a graphic style of its own. Vegetation, animals, vehicles and interior objects sit alongside the human figures.

The rule that decides whether a cutout works is consistency. A photoreal person in a flat vector diagram reads as a mistake, and a grey silhouette dropped into a lit interior reads as a hole in the image. Match the cutout to the drawing, keep the height consistent at roughly 1.75 m for adults, and put the feet on a believable ground plane rather than floating them above it.

Our guides to using cutouts in renders and placing scale figures cover placement, lighting and the licensing questions that catch people out.