Games vs Animation: Character design processes defined and compared

After doing a lot of research through books, interviews with game artists and animators and using my own innate knowledge it's time to define the different character design processes between animation and games.

The primary sources on these different design approaches* are the following books; Video Game Art by Nic Kelman and Thinking Animation: Bridging the gap between 2D and CG by Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff.

*Note; These are general and widely accepted approaches, and may of course differ depending on the artist's personal preference.

A general (3D) game character design process

Concept / Pre-Production Phase

1. Briefing 
A short description of the character. The length of this description can vary, depending on what kind of game it is. The concept artist bases his or her design on this description. An example;

"Our hero is a 30-year-old enigmatic pilot whose nationality and origins are uncertain. He has an athletic build, unkempt hair, and dark-red cybernetic eyes. He has a dry sense of humor and often appears grumpy and clumsey."
(Exoddysey, 2009)


2. Thumbnails
The process of creating small quick drawings which provide blueprints and ideas for the overall feel of the design.


3. Value Thumbnails
This step takes the established thumbnails and fills them in with different greyscale values, in order to find an interesting and pleasing variation of shapes within the silhouette.


4. Color
One particular thumbnail is taken and color variations are made to look for a combination which is appealing and reflects the character's nature.


5. Modelsheet
The final character design is drawn from the front, the back and side (profile). After this stage, it's given to the 3D modeler, which takes it over from here.  

Technical / Production Phase
These next steps are very specific of the game medium. Since I'm not a 3D artist and because of the design focus of my project, I won't specify these steps further. Also, this is the phase where the visual design is basically done; these steps are merely execution until completion and implementation in the game.

6. Wrapping 
7. Texturing
8. Rigging
9. Animation 
10. Game implementation 

General (2D) traditional animation character design process

1. Story / Briefing

 Just as with games, this can vary quite a lot, depending on the kind of animation and its duration. But because the narrative is so important with animation, animators cannot start without it. Game artists don't always need to have a narrative to start designing. 

2. Sketching
The rough sketch phase. This is where the description of the character and its shape are explored through rough sketches.


3. Design phase
The best elements of the rough sketches are taken and refined. Also the character is drawing in different poses, gestures, etc.


4. Emotive drawing
Most of the time this is done during the previous design phase but I made it a separate phase, for clarity's sake. Here's where the characters expressions and gestures are explored and defined, which really brings the character to life.

5. Structural drawing phase 
The character is redrawn and broken up in simple, primary shapes to help the animators animate it from different angles. This is called 'solid drawing', which means drawing through the form and the use of simple round, square or pointy shape language to make the drawing of the character easier throughout the process.


6. 5 Points configuration / 360 turnaround 
In this phase, somewhat comparable to games, the character is drawn from at least 5 (front, side, back, 3/4 front and 3/4 back) different angles. This high number of angles is because animation characters have to be drawn a lot and the more angles specified, the better.


7. Implementation

Conclusion
These two approaches have a lot of similarities, especially in the first phases. Along the line though animation tends to lay much more emphasis on the character and its personality, seeing the emotive drawing phase. This phase is all about appeal; one of the 12 basic animation principles. This forces the animator to really get into the character and visualize it as much as possible, from as much angles possible. Also, because they have to redraw the character so many times, they use solid drawing to break up and simplify the character's shape, to ease up the animation process. A byproduct of this approach is a much simpler and leaner design.

The game character process however revolves more about form. And during the design process it more or less stays there. There is no emphasis on character expression. I believe this is due to the interactive nature of games, the main character has to be recognizable and readable throughout the game. Also, depending on the game's perspective (sidescrolling, third person etc.) the face of the character is mostly visible in cutscenes or in conversations with other characters. In short, game character design is primarily about function instead of visual appeal because the character is mainly a player's avatar to navigate through the digital environment. 

Weekly #5

Games with animated trailers style analysis

A couple of posts back, I discussed the Assassin's Creed franchise as being an inspiration for this project. Next to Ubisoft's franchise I've also found other games who use other forms of media to get hold of the audience's attention.

Here are some other examples of recent games using traditional 2D animated trailers for promotion. By analyzing them I hope to discover a way to approach the design for my own fictional animated trailer. How did they make the style jump? And how do they complement the game?

The Witcher 2: Enhanced edition (2012)

The game:
Very realistically rendered, with realistic day and night settings and beautiful landscape vistas. Also the figures look realistic, even though it is a fantasy game.

The trailer: 
A beautifully stylized, comic book / graphic novel style which is gritty, bloody and perfectly reflects the adult oriented atmosphere of the game. It strays far from the in-game visuals. Only drawback, at least for me, is that quality of the animation is quite low, due to the detailed artwork. It's very basic cut out animation, with figures moving sparingly.

Mirror's Edge (2008)

The game:
The game's color use is stylized, with a very stark white and some primary color hues. The figures however are realistically proportioned, as with the rest of the environment, as you are surrounded by skyscrapers and the such.

The trailer: 
Telling a bit about the profession of the main character, the trailer sports lots of dynamic animation with figures jumping off buildings and other acrobatics. The style is simpler than of the game. Even more saturated colors are used and the characters have way less detail than in the game to accompany the fast paced action on display. Even though the trailer strays quite a bit off, it manages to have the same atmosphere as the game.

Gotham City Impostors (2012)

The game:
The in-game visuals of this shooter are stylized. It uses bright colors to clarify the differences between players and figures have exaggerated proportions, but its still recognizable and rooted in our familiar reality.

The trailer: 
The trailer's visuals are very stylized, with a very distinct gritty and edgy comic book flavor, probably to link it to its inspiration ( the Batman comics). The animation is very fluent and frantic, perfectly reflecting the gameplay of the game. But, compared to this trailer the game looks rather stiff and the characters have more charm in this trailer than in the actual game.

Prince of Persia (2008)

The game:
The game's visuals can be described as very atmospheric and Arabian fairytale like, with lots of bright and warm colors reflecting its desert roots. The game uses a kind of realistic cel shading, which makes it hard to categorize. The figures are realistically proportioned but the way there are rendered is not. Still, definitely a very beautiful game indeed.

The trailer: 
This is not a conventional trailer, as it is more a static, audiovisual storybook. I believe they adopted this approach to have that "1001 Arabian nights" feel to this content. Nothing really moves, except for the camera hovering above the "pages". This trailer however strays very far from the ingame visuals as it almost approaches a cartoon appearance, thanks to the skills of the Penny Arcade illustrators. Still, it captures the same fairytale mood and atmosphere of the game, and is a nice way to elaborate on the game's backstory.

Heavenly Sword (2008)

The game:

The game's visuals are are realistically rendered, with heavy emphasis on textures and realistic lighting in an Asian setting. But, main character Nariko's hair is clearly over the top, with long waving strands of red hair to set her apart from the crowd of enemies, ready to be brutalized.

The trailer: 
Before the game was released, a series of 5 animated trailers were made to introduce the characters and set up the premise of the game story. The visual style can be described as an edgy, harsh, geometrical comic book style with lots of blacks. Comparable to the Witcher 2 trailers, but way less detailed, less explicit violence and better animated. One of the interesting moments is when Nariko enters the frame, as it is her red hair which is the first splash of color in this animated series. Together with the prince of persia trailer, I believe that these trailers show the biggest visual jump compared to the tie in game.

Conclusion
A lot of developers are realizing the the potential of using other media forms to reach their target audience and pull them in. This happens mainly in the form of animated trailers who tell something about the game's backstory. They make gamers acquainted with the game universe before they actually buy the game.

These animated trailers are very interesting, because they present a different visual take on the game characters and their world. In most cases, they depart quite a bit from the established, more realistic style of the promoted games, creating more recognizable silhouettes of the same characters in process.

Weekly #4

Animator meeting #1

     Today, I had the first official meeting with my panel of traditional animators*. I showed them my design which I finished last week. They liked it, but they said it was “obviously” designed for a game. It lacks personality and the typical “thumbnail” approach was something they considered really typical a games approach.

*These are the same animators which I interviewed a while ago. They are 4^th year HKU animation students Ben Vinkenburg, Jessy Suharyanto and Tom Mourik.

Here are the comments of the panel;

First off, it looks nice! (Why, thank you)

- But… There is a lot of problems with this design in its current state if you want to adapt it for a traditional animation

- Way too much detail. Unless you got a very big team, this is undoable to animate properly

- She is very realistically proportioned. This means that the quality of the animation has to be realistic as well, or else it will look just plain weird

- She also has a lot of loose, flowing elements, like the shawl, her hair, the quiver, her belt etc. This means you have to animate all these different elements by adding secondary motion.  A lot of work, to say the least

- Try to use more shapes than lines. Use contrast in colors. This really helps if your character’s arms are going to overlap her body, it keeps it all readable

- Her facial features are not very visible. This is a big problem if you want to emote with her. Lay more emphasis on this, as this is vital for every animation character.

- Think about the visual style you want to use. What kind of lines will be used? How will the character interact with the background? Will the character haves lines or the background? This will avoid your character melting together with the background. You never want that to happen, because your audience will never know what is going on 

- We animators don’t have a lot of time tell the big backstory of a character. So we have to give all the information about the character through its visual design

- I think that we as animators start to think way earlier about implementing a certain visual style in the design process. I think that is a big difference with games. Your character’s personality comes more from its backstory than the actual, realistic design

- We also use more basic shapes in our designs. This helps to boost the readability of the character 

- As animators we ask ourselves these questions as quickly as possible during the design process of a character;

“ What is possible with this character?” 

“ What does this character have to do?”

Additional comments, tips  and feedback;

- Look at How To Train Your Dragon characters. The armour that they wear is designed around their personality

- Look at the design of the main character of Brave. She shares the same setting and is also an archer

- Dexter’s Labaratoy. The shape language between the characters are very distinct and really pushes the readability

- Samurai Jack. The character design of Jack is very serene, very pristine while the backgrounds are very rich in detail. It’s mostly the other way around, but they decided to it this way

- Look at the concept art of Sleeping Beauty and how they implemented the medieval form language in the characters. This could also be helpful with your character design.

- Journey, the game is a good example of how the visual style influences the game and how it helps 

- Look at the secret of Kells. A strong shape language and again very in the same setting as your project

This meeting was very useful and now I feel I’m able to move towards the second design of Brenna! Basically I’ll have to push her personality more and lay more emphasis on the face, use simpler, basic shapes and try to get rid of some unnecessary detail.

MoScoW list for the rest of the project

Now that Brenna's design is finished and the mock exam is approaching, it is a good time to see what has to be done during the remaining period of this graduation list through a Moscow list.

MUST

• Game character design sheet (completed)
• modelsheet
• texture swatch sheet 
• Animation character design sheet 
• expressions
• turnaround
• A rough greyscale storyboard telling the backstory of Brenna and where the second animation design can be used in
• A second game character design sheet, taking visual cues from the animation design

--------
SHOULD


The shoulds are mainly to create context for the character of Brenna; it would really help to make these assets to sell my project better. 

• 4 Sidecharacters color sketches (Brenna's parents, the mentor and the antagonist of the story)
• Neatly written storydocument of the Raven Maiden
• 2 Environments; 
• Brenna's village of Bres
• Brion's cave at the sea
• Ingame related artwork
• "fake" screenshot to show the ingame perspective of the player
• One quick design example of an NPC
• One quick design example of an Enemy

--------
COULD

• Find modeler(s) to model both characters 
• 2 3D prints of both character designs, so the difference between these two designs can be seen in real life. 

Brenna's other designs

Above you can see the the other designs of the different assets of which Brenna is made up. When I was working on these other designs, after the thumbnail stage, I felt like I was working on a costume rather than an actual character. I was looking for shapes and in the back of my head I was keeping her bodily characteristics in mind. Not very personal sounding, indeed.

Roughly put, this visual game design process was mainly about form and looking for interesting shapes. In my opinion this principle rings true for game character design in general and especially since the technology is advancing so rapidly. Because the polycount is rising, more detail becomes available. I'm just not sure if this graphical increase improves the memorability of a character. Less is more.  

The World of Lir

Here is the world map of the world Brenna is living in, the world of Lir. I decided to make this to ground the story and the world where she lives in. I read in a creative manual that if you want to create a believable world it helps to visualize its topography. The watercolour base layer was done by my girlfriend, Else ;-)  

Introducing... Brenna, the Raven Maiden!

After a long and arduous journey I've finally found my Raven Maiden. I'm very pleased with this design. I tried a lot of new things with this one and I was finally able to really go in depth with this one. Which, as you can see resulted in a highly detailed, well thought out design.

More importantly, I can finally put an end to one of the most important phases of this graduation project. In hindsight this design process took way too long but I felt it was necessary because this is the milestone where all the other products will flow from. Still, I've got a lot of things to work on. I'll have to develop more context around this character to make sure that my story comes across. Side characters, a world map and environments will help me sell this character better.

On a side note, I've got an appointment with the animators on monday, so we can discuss how to visually and narratively transform this character to a more traditional 2D animated environment. I've been waiting for this quite some time and I can't wait to implement their critique and feedback into the new character design! 

Color concepts

Here are the color concepts of Brenna. After designing her through and through, I thought I could rush through the color stage. I couldn't have been more wrong. It still took me 2 days to finish this stage. I used a lot of warm earthy tones, reminiscent of birds, earth and nature.

Weekly #3

Brenna update; almost finished!

Weekly #2

New project title: The Raven Maiden!

Here's the new logo and name for the fictional game, it was time to do so :)

Values part II