industry practice - character concepts & development

Character Concepts and Development

This blogpost will contain all work on my character concepts, sprites and development work! As the 2D lead for our group, I was in charge of creating the sprites for our in-game characters. This meant that when everyone had completed their concepts from the feedback we had each been giving each other, I would draw up the finalised versions! 

In our group, each of us where assigned a different character to design in order to spread the work our evenly. I was given the MC's best friend character.

Inspiration and Ideas

For this character, i wanted to create a character who was sweet and supportive the help direct and support alongside the MC, as well as being a symbol of comfort and understanding which would play into the MC's story and development of our game. To demonstrate this idea, I wanted her to have soft features and a warm and inviting colour palette to show through colour language that she would be a kind character.

I created a few mood boards on Pinterest of ideas of different clothing, hairstyles and other artworks i could use as inspiration when generating ideas for her design.

Initial Designs and Feedback

I originally created a few very simple headshot concepts of different styles of character that could possibly work for the best friend. I asked for a bit of feedback on which designs people like the most of my initial concepts and the top left and right ones where the most popular.

From this, i created two simple concepts of a full body design for each of them and once again asked which people preferred and what they liked about either design. The feedback i received was mixed on both designs so we decided I should create a few more concepts of different hairstyles and outfits. 

I created a concept sheet with ideas for 6 different hairstyles and outfits, and compared it to the previous sketches I had done, asking which ones people liked and which they thought would fit with either of the two main concepts I had.

After receiving feedback from my group, the most popular outfit designs where 4th, 5th and 6th designs, while for outfits most people liked the style in design 2. I agreed with this, and began to create some more finalised designs combining different features of these outfits that people liked along with my original concepts.

Further Designs and Feedback

I combined the feedback i had previously received, and made a concept sheet containing 3 different outfits based upon peoples feedback and opinions on the design sheet I sent. As well as this, i created two variants of this character reusing the same outfits - version 1 and 2 and asked everyone which one they liked best for the final design. Outfits 1 and 2 where the most liked, and I decided to go with outfit 2 as i thought it fit the characters vibe and symbolism best. 

The feedback i received in terms of version one or two was once again mixed, but we ultimately decided on version 2. We also agreed to use version 1 as a possible different character if we needed a filler character anywhere, so we could reuse the sprite and design.

Final Game Sprites

After completing my assigned character, I could begin to make sprites for the other characters within our game that the other members of my group had designed. I took the designs the members of my group had created and began to redraw them in the style we would be using in the game. We wanted all our final sprites to be drawn by the same person to avoid them looking different or in different art styles for consistency. 

The two designs above where created by members of my group Jacob and Ed, and below is my designed version of them to fit the same style. I slightly adjusted a few things such as colours in certain places to make everything look a bit more coherent, as well as to tie the colours into one another.

As well as this, I started to begin texturing and rendering our sprites. I started with the character I made to use as an example. After finishing and rendering all the sprites, I will begin making expression sheets which should be a quick process once the base sprites are all completed!