affinity designer Character Design for a Computer Game (AD)

[Pixel Mush]

Character I am designing for a game I am working on. It's not quite finished yet. But I figured I would share it. He's a bomber enemy hence the dirt from explosions and gun powder. The little guy grabs the bombs out of the bag and hands them to the big guy throw at the player. I'll probably adjust coloring/texture along with some other touch ups before animating him tomorrow.

 

Edited August 23, 2017 by Pixel Mush
added a newer picture

[GarryP]

Nice work. Nice dirt effect. I really like the bag for some reason. The colour and shading just stand out for me. Looks like velvet.

[Pixel Mush]

Thanks, I appreciate that. Here is a picture of it a little further along with some of the assets for animation. Hands on both characters got finished. I actually have multiple hand gestures done for this character. In this image it is the open hand for carrying the bomb. On the left are the different flames that will play over top of the glowing torch.

[GarryP]

You're welcome.

One thing that I would suggest - and you probably already know about this but others reading it might not - is to keep checking your characters at the resolution/size they will actually be seen on-screen. For example, the extra work you did on the hands is important but would the extra detail actually be visible if the character was - for example - 64 pixels high?

I've just done a quick test scaling your image down to 128 pixels - still quite large for some games - and a lot of the detail is missing. The scars are almost entirely gone and the little guy's hand is almost indistinguishable from the first version. Similarly, the shading/detail on the bomb looks really nice but after it's been scaled down it's pretty much gone. I guess what I'm saying is that it's great to add the extra detail but you might be doing more work than you need to.

Also, you might need to think about how the image will be scaled down. Different scaling methods produce different results and you might find that one method over-emphasises an unnecessary detail while another doesn't. It's probably worth doing some experimentation first to see what will happen rather than just expecting things to work out okay.

Obviously this all depends on screen size, and resolution, and whether you have any zoom in the game, and many other things, but it's worth keeping in mind throughout the process.

I'm not an expert in this area so maybe one of the experienced game designers on the forum could give you some better advice (which I would also be interested in reading).

P.S. For all I know you are one of those experienced game designers. If so then, of course, feel free to ignore anything I've just said and accept my apologies for trying to tell you stuff you already know way more about than I do.

[Pixel Mush]

Couple things. 1) Totally understand what your saying, and thanks for taking the time to type that entire post. 2) In game there is something called the library, and the character images are basically full screen with a description about the enemy. That's where the detail is mostly used. 3) The bomb is something actually already in the game I made weeks ago and still looks pretty good when sized down (in game). I personally have nothing to do with the resizing that's someone else's job. My contract entails only creating art assets and not the actual implementation. Thanks again for the post  And one other thing. The animation program I use is mesh based so a larger image is much easier for me to work with and gives better results and the final product is simply sized down as they need. -Pixel

[GarryP]

Ah, I see; well that's all fine then.
I just wanted to make sure you weren't going down a road where you would be making more work for yourself than was necessary.

[Pixel Mush]

On 8/29/2017 at 9:47 AM, GarryP said:

Ah, I see; well that's all fine then.
I just wanted to make sure you weren't going down a road where you would be making more work for yourself than was necessary.

It's all good  Here's a couple of the animations I'm working on for him. Low quality gifs so there are some weird colors not really there. If you click the thumbnail it looks a little nice but you'll get the idea. 

 

 

[GarryP]

The thumbnails don't do the animations justice. So many great little touches in there. I like the way the big guy's beard sways when he walks and the way his belly wobbles when he throws the bomb is unexpected and very funny. Great stuff.