Character Art Design

This week I have been assigned the job of creating a look for the lead character and to find a way of incorporating either a face or some kind of emotion into it’s design. So, first I did some research and then draw a few pictures of various shapes and styles, the sizes and widths etc.. can be discussed in the meeting and on the fly I will edit together a version that the team likes and see if that’s the direction that they wish to take the character in.

Rayman
During the last meeting, the few attending members that came, all commented on how Rayman’s looks is simple and gets rid of the need for arms and legs. Ben brought in an example of an egg ninja animation, all those characters had no arms or legs either but the animation still remained exiting, fast paced and interesting.

Rayman

So I took a look at Rayman to see what about him I could use to incorporate into the main character in Project Blend.
Even without a full body his clothes and stance give him a cool appearance, the way his body flows when just standing there shows that he’s breathing just like a human being, just without arms, I feel that this subtle little thing like movement together gave the animation what it needed with the hands to not make it to unrealistic.

Flash Movie - Madness

Madness - Animation

This movie is fast paced and the animation is simple, the characters have basic outlines with little stubby legs and it all words well. So the character doesn’t have to be mega detailed for a mass platform spree of violence to take place.

http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/madness_avenger
- Flash Animation Madness Combat 3: Avenger

Dragon Ball Z
Even looking at Rayman and Madness I was still lacking ideas about how to install some emotion into this character without giving him a face as all the drawings I tried with eyes didn’t seem to work, so I started looking for another way to try and portray emotion within the character without having to pull facial expressions.

Dragon Ball Z - Two Characters 3 Designs

Like the illustration shows each character has three unique forms that they can take on, should they chose to. Each one is, clearly, the same albeit totally different. Even just a simple change like a hair style makes all the difference towards the characters outward appearance.

Willow Tree
As well as try and make a face work, their’s also the option to make it not work. So I started looking into things that could portray emotion without a face, for the person looking at the object to be able to always tell what the object is thinking/feeling.

Eventually I found the Willow Tree collection (AKA faceless Freaks) these are wonderful statues that still have a face but no facial features. Each one has a very powerful emotional theme running through it and maybe if the project was to chose no face there could be a way we could portray emotion.

Splinter Cell Double Agent
So running with the theme of no face I decided that swinging a sword with just hands is not going to be the best way to portray emotions in the game especially the character stance from Hack N’ Slash to stealth each mode and stance needs to be unique and stand out so that the player will know which stance their in and which attack set they can chose from.

So I looked at various games with a lot of character movement like Gears of War, Halo and Splinter Cell. In Splinter Cell, when he moves from walking to sneaking theirs a change only in his shoulders and knees but the change is so severe that it changes his outward appearance.
So I decided that adding knees would be silly so just run with shoulders as these could be used for the above mentioned appearance / stance change and to show breathing in the character.

Drawings
I made a few basic drawings, instead of drawing loads of different variations of the same character I drew a few basic outlines and in the presentation I will show the team and ask them to decide which ones they like the best and I will draw one on the fly and show them how it looks.