Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
In modern video games, almost all the characters have a visible manifestation in
the game. The exceptions are nonspecific avatars who view the world only in the
first-person perspective (like Gordon Freeman) and disembodied characters who
sometimes speak to the character (via headphones, telepathy, or other means) but
are never seen. In all other cases, you will need to display your characters, and the
way those characters look will have an enormous impact on the way players feel
about them.
Many designers, especially those who are visually inclined, start to create a charac-
ter by thinking about her visual appearance first. If the character doesn't exhibit a
complex personality and she doesn't change much during the course of the game—
either behaviorally or visually—then this is often the best way to do it. Such an
approach is called
art-driven character design
. It works well for games with fairly sim-
ple, cartoonlike characters. Art-driven design also makes a lot of sense if you hope
to exploit the character in a number of other media besides video games: comic
books and toys, for example.
Story-driven character design
, an alternative to art-driven, is defined in the section
that follows this. You will use both visual and behavioral design techniques when
creating your character, but every designer works well with one design develop-
ment pattern as a primary approach.
Character Physical Types
We'll begin with the basic body types of game characters, and some of the ways
that they may be depicted.
HUMANOIDS, NONHUMANOIDS, AND HYBRIDS
Characters in video games fall into three general categories: human or humanoid;
nonhumanoid; and hybrids. (A small number of characters appear as disembodied
voices or animate objects, but they aren't included here because this section is spe-
cifically about visual design.) Humanoid characters have two arms, two legs, and
one head, and their bodies and faces are organized like a human's. The more you
deviate from this arrangement, the less human a character seems. Truly human
characters can have either realistic human proportions or exaggerated ones in a
cartoon style, but if you use cartoon proportions, you should use a cartoon drawing
style as well. A photorealistic human with exaggerated proportions will read as dis-
turbingly deformed.
Nonhumanoid characters include those shaped like vehicles or machines (often
indicated by the presence of metal and wheels), animals, or monsters. In the
Star
Wars
universe, R2-D2 is clearly a machine, albeit one with endearing qualities. R2
has three legs with wheels on the bottom, a variety of mechanical appendages, and
