DE4403: Games Design (MA): Character Designs + Explanations

As an artist who specializes in Character Design, it is important that my process is documented to explain the path the design took, and any changes made in between, along with the finished product as proof of the concept that I am trying to achieve.

How my process starts is to think about what character I need for the specific purpose in a project. This could be a main character, a side character, an NPC who has the purpose of interacting with the player, or an enemy that needs to be placed in a certain area, more importantly, bosses and villains fir in that catergory.

Designing part of a world before designing a character helps to give me an advantage when designing how a character and their outfit should look, because it is able to tell a lot about their culture and personality.

The features I usually focus on when first designing a character is the face and hairstyle, most importantly the eyes, as a lot of the expression of a character comes from the eyes and the position of the eyebrows to illicit a certain emotion.
CHARACTER DESIGN:

The character I have put the most time into developing, Tarant Mortarson, has gone through many different designs over the years, as my own skills have improved significantly, so has the methods I have undertook whilst designing him. His main colour palettes started off as red and blue, which was to evoke more heroic colours often seen in fiction, but this was slowly decided upon as an unsuitable choice for the outfit. 

This evolved into Tarant wearing more conventional armour, such as chain mail and shin pads, despite him also being able to cast spells like a wizard, which was when the idea evolved further to giving his outfit more identity with a defined colour palette of blues, and the new refinement of the outfit, including the pointed shoes and cape, shoulder plates and tabard that evoked more of a heroic identity and made a lot more sense with how much protection it would give him in a fight. This is all in context of his story, where the armour he wears is given to him by a goddess that he is soon in service to.

This design choice is all because I wanted his appearance to stand out more in his overall presence, so that it would be easier to identify the character and his emotions through his appearance. Part of this was helped by the change in his hairstyle, which was changed to reflect his character more, swept to one side behind his ears so they wouldnt get in the way whilst he focused.

As the Major Arcana of tarot cards was a major theme in the story he was the lead of, I had to reflect that idea by giving Tarant the cards themselves as magical weapons, and his crest on his tabard was card-shaped, to help evoke the purpose of his outfit and quest throughout his world, reflected by the compass points that encompasses the card shape.

The butterfly wings are a nod to the magical nature of the Tarot Cards in the story, and giving Tarant more fey-like qualities and details was very important, while also serving functional purpose for the fights he must battle in. This also plays into the themes of the Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory, which are powers that Tarant is granted with these cards, so I took this to a literal example with the wings.

The outfit on the left was an imagining of the character in a modern day world, with contemporary clothing, whilst also reflecting his own magical properties through his outfit, though as a normal human in this context, he exhibits none of them practically.

Around this time, I had taught myself how to draw more realistic proportions without going completely realistic and normal in order to keep a stylistic presence, I had taught myself how to shade the body and hair differently to help highlight each of their details, whilst helping to create more depth in each design, and I learnt how to draw eyes in a more stylized way that allowed for much more expression, the way I drew hair and hands was done with more realism as opposed to drawing them too round (which would have clashed badly with my new methods), and the further practice with using a drawing tablet caused the sketches and line art to take on much more detail and originality.

The next character who was from the same project as Tarant is his younger sister, Emma Mortarson.
When creating a character who is a sibling to an existing one, it was important for me to have similarities to Tarant, whilst also having distinct differences so that she will be seen as her own character.

Her outfit is designed in the same way as Tarant's was, however the colours are different, which is to symbolize her different upbringing from another household at a young age, as well as her duty in the story being that of the same as Tarant's. She has less protection on her armour as Tarant does, which is because she is a healer-like character who is not meant for the front lines of battle, which is what her weapon is meant to symbolize, taking into account the same motifs of design with Tarant.

The shape of Emma's eyes is designed to be similar to Tarant's, but rounded around the top, in order to reflect the roundness of their late mother's eyes, to differenciate from Tarant's, and to bring out her more passive personality.

One of the characters I have designed is Parsley Crispum, mainly used in personal projects, as well as appearing as a playable character in my Honours Project, Knights Of Tarot.

With her design, Parsley was a character I wanted to fill the role of a dancer/performer class in a party, similar to classes in games such as Bard and Dancer. Primarily, her skills revolve around ribbon dancing, whcih is what her background is. Her colour palette was also to reflect her namesake, whilst also being very natural, full of many greens, the palette can be considered very pure and healthy, whilst also having a touch of envy, which she does display to others time to time. Her hairstyle was also originally modelled after parsley sprigs, bit it also makes her hair comprise of many smaller ribbons, whilst having function as a tidier hairstyle so she won't get any ribbons tangled up.
The curled boots and leafy skirt also bring out a more fey look, as peers had described her looking like a 'fairy princess', which ended up sticking as the idea of her being a fairy worked very well.

From another project that I worked on, Lucin Vallery is the main character from the concept of a puzzle game/visual novel hybrid, Sigil.

Lucin's outfit and equipment are meant to reflect historically accurate uniforms seen in victorian schools, and are meant to reflect the timeframe that Sigil's story takes place in. that being the late 1800's. Despite the more supernatural aspects of the story that take place, everything else is still grounded in reality and operates on real-world logic.

Unlike the other characters I have designed for, the colour palette is more grounded and downplayed, owing to the tone and genre of the game Sigil.

MONSTER DESIGN:
While designing humanoid characters is important, it's greatly important to be able to design non-human characters, such as animals and monsters. Populating a world with many kinds of creatures is a great way to flesh out a world and its inhabitants. An important part about these kinds of creatures is that making them a part of the world organically can take many designs to do so, and different habitats have to be considered.

These monsters shown here are meant to be found in low-level areas, in the grassy fields, forests and small caves. They normally dont pose a much of a threat, and are meant to be appealing to a newcomer so that they will recognise different types of enemy.
Some of these enemies will have variations that appear later on, whcih will be stronger, such as Saladmander having the relatives Cayennewt and Cressted Gecko, sticking with its theme on vegetables.
My main points of inspiration with creating monsters such as this was the Dragon Quest series with how monsters are created from what would be found in a certain environment, or going for a combination of two animals with a creative 'pun' name, or a unique spin on a certain animal type.
The enemies shown here are made to show up in Knights Of Tarot, the GBStudio project from my Honours project.

A set of enemies I wanted to put in the game was my own version of the 'Metal Slime' trope, born from Dragon Quest, meaning a set of enemies that, while rare to encounter, give great rewards once defeated. In this case, the game Knights Of Tarot needed a set of this type of enemy, and I set out to make a rare card-like enemy with a grotesque appearance to offset the appeal of seeing one. The rewards are still bountiful, as promised of an enemy such as this.
Their appearance is also meant to be chaotic and inherently evil, which does contrast the theme of order of the main enemies of the game, their chaotic nature caused them to be exiled so that they wouldnt be seen again. Some are still found by the player in rare instances.
The versions that give more Experience points are meant to have more cards as part of their evolution of design, similar to what Dragon Quest does with metal Slimes, simply having them as bigger slimes that give more Experience points.

Currently rough sketches, I had ideas to create more humanoid enemies that serve the side of the villains in the story of Knights Of Tarot. These are two types of soldiers called Dire Squires and Hell Sentinels, specialising in medium and heavy combat against the player. I have plans to add more of them in order to flesh out the bestiary and rogue's gallery of the world more.

DE4401 Games Design (MA) Blog: Literary review: Third draft

Currently, the word count on this draft is above the limit as standard, but this will change with the final draft to make it more concise.
 

During the process of making a video game, one of the most significantly important aspects of the development is Character Design. This is where an artist has to consider many aspects about what a character should look like. This process will apply when the player is able to clearly see the character they control, as well as the characters they interact with in the world they inhabit. Characters like these can take many forms, whether they are human, vehicles, buildings or inanimate objects acting much like a human would.   [JRT<oA&M1] 

A character’s purpose in a game they are designed for is communicate visual information to the player in relevance to the story and setting through their appearance, clothing, equipment and whatever things they can do within the restraint of their world, which makes their designs in this context is so important to immerse you into that world and to sell you on the ideas the artist and developers want to convey.   [JRT<oA&M2] 

Designing effectively for charactersis a vital skill for creating games,
In this literary review, I will be taking a focused look into the processes of creating effective character design, which will be done by giving context and reason to the contextual and literary examples given by various artists and researchers who have dedicated considerable time to understanding the intricacies and methods to designing characters effectively.
[JRT<oA&M3] 
LITERARY EXAMPLES:

EMOTIONS:
Conveying emotion in a character’s design is very important aspect in how a character looks, in order to effectively bring out a reaction in an observer, which is something that the artist or designer may desire to intentionally happen.
A published study taken from ‘The Emotion's Effect On a Virtual Characters Design - A Student Perspective’, by the University Of Trente in the Netherlands had a group observe a set of different characters drawn by various artists to see if they could identify the appropriate emotion that was trying to be conveyed.

“The level of accuracy in identifying each emotion was measured by analyzing what emotions were correctly identified by the students (extracted from responses to the multiple- choice question 3). Sadness, anger, and happiness were the emotions best identified by students. (…) Results also showed that it is more difficult to identify sadness in ‘Yuriy’ and fear and surprise in ‘Paul’. Concerning anger, happiness, and disgust, these emotions are equally identified in the six characters. Question 3 also allows insights into the global misclassification rate for each emotion (Table 3). Surprise is partly misclassified with disgust (18.8%) and fear (17.4%) as well as disgust with fear (23.2%) and fear with surprise (37.7%). Responses to question 4 capture the intensity of each emotion perceived by the students, over a three-level scale. Surprise (56.4%), sadness (48.7%), and fear (44.3%) are the most intense perceived emotions.”
Emotions are an important facet of design, so that the artists and developers can bring out a certain emotion that may imprint on the player of a game. If the designer is able to convey that concretely in this exercise, this shows that they have a firm grasp on how to show the player(or viewer) what they want to convey in order to create a certain mood or scene. 


COLOUR:
[JRT<oA&M4] The colour palette for a character is able to tell a lot about a character’s intentions or personality, as well as setting an expectation for the viewer and player, such as red to represent anger and passion, yellow to represent cowardice, or blue to represent a feeling of freedom or speed. Colour is also greatly able to illicit a response from what colours the player will see. An article from ScienceDirect details the ways colour can affect emotion to the observer, through looking at multiple studies.

“The use of colour has long been shown to be able to generate positive arousal of emotion such as excitement and pleasure. In particular, warm colours have been found to elicit greater emotional arousal than cold colours. Higher levels of chroma (saturation) and value (degree of darkness or lightness of colour) have been found to result in feelings such as excitement; The colour green, for example, has been found to evoke hope, growth, and success. In some cultures, along with contexts, the colour red may signal danger, or, in the context of learning, failure and give rise to negative emotions. In romantic contexts, the colour red evokes positive emotion toward females in males.”
With this in mind, a strong use of colour is a valuable tool for a designer to help express certain emotions and parts of a story through their palette, giving the design more purpose within context of its game’s world. Furthermore, this can greatly elevate the use of a character’s design for the purposes of storytelling, making that characters inclusion in a game much more justified with no words needing to be spoke.

SILENT PROTAGANISTS:
A character that the player controls is a very important aspect of a game; Giving them a personality and dialogue to interact in the world they inhabit can be tantamount to player’s experience. However, having a character that does not speak can also be a vital tool to delivering the appropriate experience to the player, which can also aid in immersing themselves in the fictional world as opposed to a character who fills that need. A study taken by Bria N. Mears discusses this in their own literature essay.
“Projective characters are also useful in increasing identification with the Silent Player Character, allowing the player to fill in a role they prefer, rather than providing them with a predefined one. Customizable projective characters used in combat-based games support a very large span of possible characters, adding a sense of personalization to the game experience. [9].Contemporary examples of projective Silent Player Characters are the protagonists in Dark Souls [11] – used to provide embodiment within the dark would (sic), while giving a feeling of solitude and loneliness; and Journey [21] -  used to allow the player to fill in the blanks of the anonymous character’s life journey.”

The former contemporary example helps to immerse the player in their game’s world by letting them decide how they look, their job is to effectively design the weapons and armour of the player to help communicate the character they want to play, whilst the freedom of choice comes from the design options proposed to the player, all of which need to be designed strongly in order for the player to feel satisfied with how their character will look.

PSYCHOLOGY:


AN EXAMPLE OF PROCESS:
The character design process itself is important to learn from many examples of veterans in their respective industry in order to understand what will make another persons design process equally as effective. This process can be seen by Cady-Lee Devon, who published an article discreetly describing the process taken when designing one of their characters for an assignment. This first quote is about setting boundaries.
“This is often the hardest step for me, Without the rest of the game to show anyone, a single character provides a lot of information about the world I’m trying to create, so first impressions are key. Some boundaries from the assignment are that she be(sic) a young, female character with a fantasy-steampunk edge, and she has a pet.”
The next quote is about creating a theme.
“I end up with a dark character with a wide brim hat, and a pet that looks like a bird, I want to design the costume to reflect the animal. A lot of this idea comes from theming around the weapon, which I need to start drawing! ?>(sic)

CONTEXTUAL EXAMPLES:

US ANIMATION:
While western animated movies do not necessarily include characters designed for games, it is still important to consider the works of the pioneers of the industry who set the standards of many different animation trends and methods. A quote from the International Journal of Organization Innovation delves deeper into this process.
“Disney characters begin with a model sheet of the character, and it is a visual overview of the design. In 1928, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks jointly created an anthropromorphic mouse with large ears, red shorts and yellow shoes. The character, Mickey Mouse, became one of the most iconic animated characters of all time and the face/mascot of Disney. Mickey Mouse embodies all the character design principles of the Disney Style, including geometric modelling(sic), silhouette identification, symbolization, and representing color.”
The beginning of this industry succeeded greatly with their design choices when creating an iconic character such as Mickey Mouse because a character like him came from many different creative tactics coming together in order to create something that inherently had mass appeal. Pixar follows on with this intricate process when designing characters to such a strong degree, such as in Toy Story, where every character must go through a long process before becoming final.


SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI
Masayuki Doi is the character designer for Shin Megami Tensei V, who has worked with Atlus to design the newest main characters and Demons for the game. Doi has had an interview conducted on him, explaining his design process about the Nahobino, the main character of this game.
“The white curves on the body represent the environment, often used as a motif in ancient Pre-Christianity religion around the world.” (…)
This may be taken to convey purity whilst being set in a world inhabited by demons.
“The hair, which is the most eye-catching feature, is a manifestation of Nahobino’s life force. This is because hair is considered sacred since ancient times, said to be the source of vitality with transcendent abilities.”
Masayuki has taken careful consideration when creating this character, including the appropriate mythological significance that is important to this game series, whilst also keeping to the modern visual conventions[JRT<oA&M5]  that the rest of the series has established.

DARKEST DUNGEON:
Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike dungeon-crawler created by Red Hook Studios, known most notably for its resource management and its narration throughout the game, but most importantly is the unique artstyle that its characters stem from. An interview from the lead artist for the game, Chris Bourassa, elaborates on how the visuals for the game were considered and implemented.

“I designed the art style to reinforce and enhance the tone and design of the game.(…) Essentially, I wanted the game to look as though it had come from the time period it was set in. Like you were playing a (horrific) story book rather than a videogame. Hard lines and edges reflect the uncompromising gameplay, pooling blacks create the impression of being lost in the dark, and the empty eyes in the characters help convey a sense of hopelessness and weight, That said, I wanted to make sure there was just a dash of cuteness in the style to facilitate a greater sense of iconography, and also to remind players that, despite all of there morbidity, it’s a game.”

The process in design by Bourassa is evident that the characters were made with the intent of bringing the viewer closer into the world this game is set in to deliver a clear theme, and within that, a sense of unease and the idea that nowhere is safe for your characters, selling the idea and mood he wanted to set for this game.

TORIYAMA:
The character designs in works by artist Akira Toriyama are a distinct highlight in design because of how vastly different each of his characters and monsters are, filling in very different categories of monster to make each series he works on varied, full of life and energy to create a believable world. Some of these monsters are so iconic, that asking a person in Japan to draw a ‘slime’ will usually result in the blue gumdrop shaped monster from these games.
In an interview with Akira Toriyama, he has given insight on his design philosophies when he designed each of his characters.
“My process for drawing characters is basically that I start with their personality, and decide on their face next… then once the face is done, I can come up with their clothes. I try not to settle on any specific design concept ahead of time, because that takes all the fun out of it. I guess it comes down to whatever’s influencing me at the time. And when coming up with new characters, I try to go with types I haven’t drawn much before.”

Not settling on one concept means that an artist like Toriyama is open to many possibilities and concepts ahead of time, so that a character can be looked at from many angles before the final design is settled upon, on top of how having a strong influence around him can give a great sense of direction when he is stuck on one aspect of design, which can prove to be a useful tool.
He also outlines some rules when he draws other characters.
“I suppose I do follow a few specific rules,(…)Like when drawing bad guys, I won’t make them so devious and underhanded that it leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth afterwards. Not because I’m particularly concerned for the readers, because rather I personally hate drawing that kind of stuff.”
His philosophies show that he goes through many concepts to make something look the way he intends, not settling on one single concept, which is one great strength to designing a character; Considering many different routes of a final design is very important.




POKEMON:
Currently, there are hundreds of different Pokemon that have been designed by The main Pokemon character designer, Ken Sugimori, who has had to consider many real life animals, objects, concepts, and mythological creatures and figures to draw inspiration from for each Pokemon game’s roster. Each game has a mix of older and newer Pokemon for the player to find, and each Pokemon’s evolution has to be considered in each design, which can help to enhance the idea conveyed for each creature.

An interview taken by Ken Sugimori in a translated article from Nintendo Online Magazine, shows the various ideas and processes that he had to consider when working on the first games. He explains his design process originally when starting out with designing the Pokemon for the first games, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue."
“It started with designs of dinosaurs and monsters. Then we started out designing cute Pokemon. As the games development progressed, we added the ideas of ‘types’ to the game system, and so we added in changes like the flame on Charmander’s tail, or having a plant growing out of Venusaur’s back.[JRT<oA&M6] 
(…)”Initially, we talked about a game where you made kaiju fight each other.(…)I realized I had never drawn monsters like that before. I was honestly pretty lost, but I managed to create 20 or 30 different designs. Rhydon and Nidoking were two of the designs that survived from those first drawings.”
Sugimori continues to elaborate on the purposes of these Pokemon that were considered during development.
“Our original idea was for Pokemon to live alongside humans and assist them in useful ways. So the earliest Pokemon had well-defined functions – like ferrying people across the sea or carrying things. I also created Pokemon like Clefairy who were basically cute pets.”

(more)Sugimori’s thought processes here show the process clearly, as the roles of these creatures through their design were just as important to the design of the rest of the game, assisting greatly with the world building.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, the methods and practices used to create effective character design are substantially varied, where one can

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Cady-Lee Devon. (2018). DESIGN A VIDEOGAME CHARACTER. IMagineFX. 157(157), pp.62, 64-67. [Online]. Available at: https://www.proquest.com/docview/2049663230?pq-origsite=primo [Accessed 4 December 2022].

Chris Bourassa, Kirill Tokarev. (2015). Red Hook Studios Talks About The Creation of Darkest Dungeon. [Online]. 80LV. Last Updated: 9th June 2015. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/red-hook-studios-talks-about-the-creation-of-darkest-dungeon/ [Accessed 18 November 2022].
Kai lin Yu, Yung-Chin Tsao. (2022). A Study Of Character Design Method. International Journal of Organizational Innovation. n/a(n/a), p.76. [Online]. Available at: https://web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=14dda87e-f642-4908-86c1-aa269ceb1d4d [Accessed 30 November 2022].s

n/a. (2016). Dragon Ball 30th Anniversary "Super History Book". Japan: n/a. p.n/a.
Jan L. Plass, Bruce D. Homer, Andrew MacNamara, etc. (2020). Emotional design for digital games for learning: The effect of expression, color, shape, and dimensionality on the affec. Learning And Instruction. 70(70), p.n/a. [Online]. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475217304139 [Accessed 21 November 2022].

Marta del Valle-Canencia. (2022). The Emotions effect on a virtual characters design- A Student perspective.etc. Madrid: Frontiers In Computer Science. pp.8-9.

M. del Valle-Canencia. (2022). The Emotion's Effect On a Virtual Characters Design - A Student Perspective. University Of Twente, Netherlands: Human-Media Interaction. pp.8-9

Mears, Bria N. (2017). Design Patterns for Silent Player Characters in Narrative-Driven Games. Drexel University: Drexel University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. pp.11-12.

Nintendo Online Magazine. (2011). Interview: Sugimori & Masuda on Building Gen 1. [Online]. LavaCutContent. Last Updated: December 26 2020. Available at: http://lavacutcontent.com/sugimori-masuda-developer-interview/ [Accessed 18 November 2022].

'Reggy'. (2021). Shin Megami Tensei V In-Depth Interview About Character Designs, SMT V Was Originally Targeted for 2020 Release. [Online]. PersonaCentral. Last Updated: September 30th 2021. Available at: https://personacentral.com/smt-v-character-designs-interview-originally-2020/ [Accessed 21 November 2022].

 

 

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 [JRT<oA&M1]Rather than trying to cover everything it would be better to express an approach to character design. Some questions I have are does this apply to an FPS where we do not see the main character or a racing game where the main character is a vehicle. My advice is to be tight in your introduction.

 

 [JRT<oA&M2]There are stories without characters. It might be better to phrase this as what a character does in a game? Why is their design so important?

 [JRT<oA&M3]Avoid stating the obvious (art has many approaches) and you are taking a focussed look not an extensive look/inspection

 [JRT<oA&M4]Is this a published study? If so reference it. If it has not been published then it is not a literature reference.

 [JRT<oA&M5]Is this contextual? What is it showing? You should be more focussed on what the study is saying in terms of process.

 [JRT<oA&M6]Finally! We get a little insight into a designers process but we need to know more about this and it is not a literature reference.