Main Character Design
This is the final agreed design outcome for the Main Character Design as of Sprint 1. The following details below describe the design process and illustrate iteration cycles taken to create and improve the design of the player character.
Designer: Amelia Rowhani
Final Character Design for Sprint 1
Below is a concise documentation of the entire design process for this character. See below for Sprint 1 details.
Figure 1: Character Design Process Summary
Research was conducted to gain inspiration into potential player designs based upon the theme of Norse mythology as well as to determine an appropriate helmet, clothing and beard style.
Refer to the following document for Inspiration and Research: Character Design Inspiration and Research
See Character Design Initial Inspiration for more preliminary team examples.
Initially I sketched several potential character designs, focussing on the beard and helmet style in order to identify the design theme that best suited the intended game purpose and overall art style. Inspiration derived from research was incorporated into the sketches and preliminary digital designs.
Figure 2: Initial Character Design Sketches
Figure 3: Initial Helmet Design Sketches
An initial set of preliminary 32 x 32 pixel designs were created on Adobe Photoshop to explore potential character aspects that could be incorporated into the final design. This included the design of a Viking helmet and several diverse beard and headgear styles. After initial discussion with designers and users, it was evaluated that the design direction should better suit a more detailed, pixel art theme. Therefore, through further iterations, I progressively enhanced colour and shading and applied a black outline to the character, which was found to create greater depth in the design and better suit the well-known 2D pixel art game theme.
Figure 4: Preliminary Character Designs
Following this, a more improved overall character style was created, with a more proportional and balanced body shape and helmet design. This was done by designing 64 x 64 pixel characters and better integrating the black outline and pixel art theme. I experimented with various helmet colours and shapes, including long/short horns and ivory metal/gold metal colour choices as well as short/long legs. This allowed for a greater range of potential design styles to be further explored and led to a more refined initial character.
Figure 5: Initial Character Designs
From initial designs, I was able to better integrate the theme of Norse mythology and the pixel art style into the design of the character. From discussions with other designers, I decided to further refine and improve on the previous iteration of the character. Therefore, I was able to design a more realistic face that better resembled that of a Norse warrior. A longer and more defined beard style and a better shaped helmet design was produced, with shading and outlining allowing for a more realistic, dimensional look and feel. By adding more detail to the character's clothing and incorporating the clothing style inspirations gathered through research, I was able to design more realistic steel armour, a sash, animal fur clothing and boots. This led to a more defined and completed character style and design.
Figure 6: Improved Character Design
Preliminary user testing was conducted in the early stages of character design in order to identify the most suitable design to proceed with for Sprint 1. This was predominantly done through an online survey, conducted with users that may be in the target audience of players of the game, mainly members of the DECO2800 Studio. This was critical in determining what design best complemented the intended game theme and which design the users most preferred, and thus allowed for a more defined asset art style (See Asset Art Style) and colour scheme (See Colour Scheme) to consequently be created, largely based on the design of the chosen character. This made the way for the creation of more consistent game assets and more fitting designs.
Although short, the online survey provided meaningful feedback for evaluation. It consisted of two main questions that directly asked the users which design they believed best aligned with the 2-dimensional pixel art, Norse mythology-themed game. The first question showcased three main potential designs, each created by a different designer (See Character Design Initial Concepts). This was followed by a question that asked for relevant feedback and comments based on the design the user most preferred. Due to a lack of initial time in Sprint 1, further user testing must be conducted in ongoing sprints to ensure user needs and expectations are correctly met in the design and development of suitable and engaging assets and digital art.
Results from the user testing showed a preference towards Design A (by Amelia Rowhani, see below), which was chosen as the final design for Sprint 1. The design was commented as best aligning with the art style of the game as it was the most consistent, with the more simple, pixelated art theme that many users associated pixel games with. It also captured the overall art style in a better light as compared with the other designs. It was agreed, that while Design B (See Character Design Initial Concepts#Realistic Pixel Art) was a good design and very detailed, it aligned less with the overall game design and was slightly too realistic for the game's theme. Users commented that they liked the bigger head and smaller body size of Design A and found it overall, a good fit. Some suggestions made, including improving the character's helmet design, will be considered in the next iteration.
Upon further user evaluation, a refined design was created to better incorporate feedback from other designers and better suit the game style. It was determined that a shorter character would complement well with the game and therefore I decided to refine the previous iteration to create a shorter body for the character. I also refined the arm and hand positioning to suit the new body shape and further improved on the design of the helmet, making the horns shorter to appear more realistic. I also refined the character's clothing and incorporated long sleeves and more defined boots, that faced forwards, to allow for a more cohesive and balanced design overall.
Figure 7: Refined Character Design
From the final refined character design, I was able to design four-way directional frames, to form the basis for sprite animations. This included the design of the right, left, front and back idle profiles, as follows.
From this, character frames and animations were created. I started by initially designing the left and right sideways walking animation sprites, as illustrated below. This consisted of me designing 4 frames for each sideways-walking direction. See Main Character Animation Frames for more details.
