Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Designing a character for mobile
As we said, the look and feel of your game will influence your potential players before
they even start playing your game. It is thus a general rule to have your graphics
match the game's genre: this rule addresses both the creation of the graphic assets
for your environments and the character design.
The character design process
The process of designing game characters always starts with the definition of its basic
qualities, both visual and character. Use a list of adjectives to create a mental map of
both the character and the visual aspect of your character.
The next step is to search for visual references which can represent the adjectives in
the mental map. Anything can be a visual reference: shapes, materials, landscapes,
and kinetics. Anything that can visually describe a concept related to your game char-
acter is a source for the visual aspect of that character.
Once you have a small library of visual references for your character, it is time to start
drawing it. A general rule is to begin by drawing basic geometric shapes and compose
them to create the outline for your character.
Since the most important thing for small characters that populate mobile games is to
have a strong silhouette, don't focus on the fine details of your design at this step: just
work on getting a well-balanced, nice-looking outline for your character.
Once you are satisfied with the outline, you can then begin working on its fine details
to make it even more distinctive. On the other hand, too many details can add noth-
ing but noise to your design, not to mention the additional time needed to model such
details in the case of 3D characters.
Balance is the key; as we said, for mobile games running on small cell phone screens
every pixel is important. Put in any detail you feel is important to define your game
characters and get rid of everything you don't actually need!
