Author: Daniel Burnworth

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Developing a Character, Part 6

Final_Turnaround_sheet

Well everyone, here she is!  This is the final concept of the Oriana you will come to know and love through this journey of design and production till the game releases.

We wanted her to be perfect for this moment which is why we have so many steps involved in her process.  But we are all really excited with how well she turned out and we can’t wait to start the spriting system!

This stage was primarily to fine tune the way her body is shaped and to double check all proportions and range of motion.  It was also the kick off of the 3D modeling team.  Their team received the side and front views of Ori so that they could shape the mesh exactly the way I have it laid out in the image.  The five way turn around, however, is for the 2D animation team.  It gives them the whole picture to figure out what goes where at any given time.  I guess you could say it’s for tracking purposes.

I really hope you love the way this has turned out.  It’s been a joy to work on!  Keep up with our weapon and color designs throughout the next few weeks!

Into the Forge, Part 1

weaponconcept1

Weapon concept; one of my favorite things to design.  We have decided that our character will be wielding three separate weapons throughout the game; great sword, shield, and long bow.  It was also decided that since she is just a little girl that the weapons would be the same size as they would be if wielded by a grown man.  So this will add a little bit of comedy into this more serious game.  But at the same time, it will add a greater sense of achievement by the time she reaches the end of the game.  Why?  Because she will struggle to wield these tools at the beginning, but by the end of the game they will be a dangerous extension of her body.

For a lot of my first designs I made wider bases and silhouettes because it gave a more massive feel.  But as things progressed, I started introducing less and less mass, and more detail.  By the end I realized what I was doing; making things really really difficult on us later when we start animating everything.  So I told myself that the next batch of designs would be more feasible.  And lets be honest… more practical as well.

See you next week!

 

Developing a Character, Part 5

Collapsed Layers Version

Every cute little girl needs a cute little dress!  So I went into this with a basic idea to keep our dress design simple and flowy.  As a team we knew we liked ribbons, we knew we liked long, and we knew we liked trim.  On the flip side, we knew we hated ruffles (NIGHTMARE TO ANIMATE!!), we knew we hated extra amounts of cuts in the clothing, and we knew we hated pants (a burden on society if you ask me).

My very first design was the simplest I could make the dress; everything it had in the design was minimal.  From that point onward I was making new designs that added a little more complexity to the dress each iteration, and then waiting for Blake to slap my hand and rein in my more complex and crazy designs.  As you can see, in the beginning of my designs, I was still clinging to the poncho idea I had from the very beginning.  It can be hard sometimes to let go of a design you had once you fell in love with it.  But the reality is that you need to learn to let go as a designer and concept artist.  It does get easier the more often you do it though, so no worries!

As I progressed through the designs, I started relying heavily on high-low skirts and dresses.  They were suggested by Abi and the team really liked the direction that it could take our character.  That landmark was what got me moving faster in the designs because it threw me into a new direction I hadn’t gone before; ergo, more material to pull from.  Don’t get caught up in a narrow area.  And if it feels like you’ve exhausted everything you can do, talk to a buddy, or a mentor and pull some ideas from them, it does wonders for injecting a new line of creative thought into your mind.

By the end of my fashion exploration for Oriana, we had decided on *drum roll*………………… Eggplant costume Ori!  Just kidding!  We picked a dress that had a square base and a tied ribbon in the middle of her chest.  We all felt it had the right balance of flow and simplicity to get us to where we needed to be.

Dat Derpy Dino Though 🙂

 

project oriana clothing concept 2

Developing a Character, Part 3

Oriana Character and Weapon Concept

 

After further discussion about Oriana’s main look, we decided that the poncho wouldn’t give her a very strong silhouette when we start posing and animating her.  So we scrapped that completely and I started doing more exploration.  I did a number of new silhouettes for her design and came up with four key character types that I loved.  Each of them had their own very unique personality and charm.  At the end of it all we decided to keep long and flowy hair, and we wanted a simple design on a sleeveless dress for her.  But for the most part, this entire process was just me messing around and scribbling to find some charm in her character.  I didn’t want to focus completely on the practical things like I have been.  So I threw weapons and random objects on her to see what she might look and act like.

I also was playing around with color on her.  I wanted to add accent colors to the nice greens and blues she already had on her clothes.  So whether it be a scythe pulsing with life, a necklace gleaming in the sun, or a feather in her hair, I needed to put in a complementary color somewhere in every design.  And I think it worked out well.

I will forever miss the fancy orb hair things on the scythe concept.  That’s just one more thing you’ve got to come to terms with when going into character design… you can only have one design, you will fall in love with many, your manager will almost always have a different opinion than you.  Don’t let it get you down.

Hope you liked them!  Keep coming back to see Ori evolve even more!

 

Developing a Character, Part 2

Oriana Turnaround 03

 

In any character design process, it is imperative that there be a turn around of the character.  It gives every artist on the team a solid feel of the anatomy and design of the character which speeds up production time immensely.  What I have above is the first pass of our main character, Oriana.  Through discussion and collaboration with my team, we came to the conclusion that my previous design wasn’t going to be enough for the level of depth we needed for the game.  Something as tiny and simple as my first design wasn’t going to send people the right message (or at least not connect as well with our audience).  So I added a bit more realism to her form.  Her height is now more believable from a real life child reference even though her head is still much larger than her body.  I kept the larger head because if we had disposed of all exaggeration in her design, we would be limiting what we could put into the game for where we want to go.

We were all pretty excited with how the clothing design worked with animation.  While it’s super simple and long, it gives a lot of flow and tell tale of wind when moving around, which is something we want to tap into heavily.  So at this point in time we have three sources of flow.  The main source being her long black hair which is iconic for her.  The second source being the poncho, which doesn’t have a ton of flow, but is still light and airy.  The third source is her skirt which hugs her legs fairly tightly compared to the looseness of her hair and poncho.  It isn’t going to draw nearly as much tell tale signs of wind and motion as the other two sources.  But you’ll notice the gradation of flow from the top to the bottom which is something I kind of fell in love with from the moment I drew the first sketch of it.

Thanks for keeping up with us and hope to see you again soon!

 

Developing a Character, Part 1

Oriana early 01

Hi there! As this is my first exposure to the public from this project, I’d like to start out by saying thank you for following along with everything we’ve done and everything we have yet to do! We are all really excited to get this thing moving and appreciate your support.  Now… about this character development.  We wanted to start out with the idea of a little girl with flowing hair, which meant that not only did the hair have to be long, it also needed to be fairly straight.  You might think “that’s pretty elementary.”  You’re right, the hair should be self explanatory.  But to complement the big flowing mass of hair, I figured we should have a dress with a larger, flowing bottom to it.  So now the character isn’t top heavy anymore (at least not as badly).

So with those two things in mind, I started silhouetting, which if you don’t know what that is, it’s where I take a fairly large brush and just make shapes in solid black and try to find interesting shapes in them.  It’s an exploratory drawing exercise that doesn’t take too much time or effort (if you’re doing it right).  So once I finished a full sheet of silhouettes, I not only found a couple of interesting character concepts for Oriana, but I also found a few object and enemy concepts for the game as well.  It is a really helpful tool that I highly recommend to anyone messing around in concept.

Once I had a couple silhouettes I liked for Oriana’s shape, I started working with hair styles and dress types.  The very first design I came up with is the image above.  I covered half of her face with hair because I didn’t want her figure to be completely symmetrical.  It also helped with accent colors to streak along in her hair such as the magenta I threw in the blue hair.  It’s a very whimsical and naive feel with a bit of mystery.

Her head is bigger than her body to exaggerate the idea that she is a young child.  It also brings the idea of super cute to a lot of people.

So there you have it folks.  My first concept image for this game.  Please continue following our work in the months to follow!  We will be putting out a bunch of exciting stuff to look at!