Research: Character Design in video games Part 1

My first stop in researching Character Design has been the book Level Up! The Guide To Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers. More Specifically chapter 5, which is all about designing characters for video games.

Rogers makes a point that animators have known for decades that the shapes you use for your characters design will help communicate his or her personality.

Circles are generally used to make the character seem more friendly. Squares are often used for strong or dumb characters, depending on how big the square is. Triangles are more complex in that a downward facing triangle is often used to give a heroic character a powerful frame. However, using the same downwards facing triangle for the characters head makes him seen sinister.

This ties in to semiotics, the study of signs and symbols and the meaning of them , and how we interpret them which is something I will further research.

Another point rogers makes is animates use the "silhouette". A strong, clear silhouette of a character is importatn for many reasons;

• Tells you the character's personality at a glance

• Helps distinguish one character from another

• Identifies "friendly" or "enemy" characters

• Helps the character stand out against background and world elements

This is something I will definatly be using when designing my characters as no one wants their characters to look the same, and I want people to be able to tell who they are at a glance.

Rogers states that there are three types of video game characters. Humorous, Heroic and Tough Guy.

Humorous character:

• Says funny things

• Does funny things

• Looks funny or cute

• Funny doesn't always mean jokes

Herioc Character:

• Does heroic things

• Is always good at something

• Can come in all forms

• However.. no-one is perfect

Tough Guy Character:

• Does hardcore things

• Isn't a nice person

• Says cool things but (almost) never shouts

• Looks like a bad guy

This will be helpful to keep in mind when designing my characters. Do I want them to be humorous, heroic or a tough guy? Or a mix of different ones?

Here are some other points that rogers makes which I think are important in character design, which I will do further research on:

• In most video games, we mostly see the character we are playing from the back. Rogers suggests that it is important to have some sort of movement. For example Lara Croft's ponytail or batman's cape.

• Making sure your character's appearance matches their name.

• Make character's health reflect their appearance, the less health they have the more battered they look.

• Think about your characters class/type and how that affects their max health, attack damage, movement speed, attack speed and advantages/disadvantages.

Conclusion:

This has given me lots of things to look into. For one, researching different classes and characters and generally what their attack/health/speed is.

Choosing what kind of character I want to make before I start designing it (humorous, heroic, tough guy) will help me with character traits, and I will have to do some research into classic characters that meet those types to help me.

Research into semiotics is needed, as it was not really mentioned in the book and I think that is a very huge part of character design.

Rogers, S. (n.d.). Level up! The Guide To Great Video Game Design. 2nd ed.