Excerpt from
Game Developer "A Question of Character" Casting Call Of course, character animation must start with a character, and that character starts with a design. The animator who has the luxury of designing his or her own character deserves the envy of every Hollywood casting director, for therein lies the opportunity to literally create the perfect"actor" for the role. Less enviable is the animator who must bring to life a character designed by a nonartist. The difficulty in this not uncommon situation comes in matching the demands of the concept with the demands of the medium. The first consideration in character design should be the game style and target audience. As Robert Terrell points out, "Terms like 'cute' or 'scary' can mean vastly different things to different audiences." A more adult audience may be scandalized by the violent death scenes in a fighting game the kids think is cool. What's deliciously creepy to a mature game player, might cause nightmares in young children, while what kids find enjoyably spooky might seem simply corny to an older sibling. Keep in mind that much of the game's personality will reside in the depiction of its characters. The players view of the scene and of the characters in it is another design consideration. How much of the character is seen and from what angles can help the animator determine what level of detail needs to go into various aspects of the design. As I'll discuss later, a character designed for a side-scrolling gameplay can have very different needs than one featured in a highly detailed cinematic sequence. The key point is that the character must work from every angle that will be seen. Conversely, the animator can save precious time by not putting design effort into angles that won't even be seen. Before even turning to their sketchbook though, many animators will first sketch out ideas for the character's personal history. This isn't strictly the artist's job and may be unnecessary if a complete script has already taken care of these details or if the character is a straightforward monster or hero who'll never be seen out of battle armor. Then again, such insight into the character can be helpful even in the latter cases: think of how much more interesting Tolkein's Gollum was because of his history. Creating animation for Cyclone Studios/3DO title Captain Quazar, Robert Terrell found himself stopping production to flesh out the muscle-bound hero's background. "We did a full history for Quazar, including a lot stuff that really doesn't enter into the game. It was unorthodox to stop in middle of the project to do it, and it did take up valuable time, but we felt it was necessary to get a good feeling for the character we were animating." Next stop on the road to a good character design is the model sheet. By this time, the animator should have a very clear idea of the characters personality and of what sort of action will be called for. It's time to determine what the character looks like in detail. One common misstep is drawing the character standing rigidly at attention from square front and side views-unless that's appropriate behavior for the character. Rather, the model sheet should depict the range of attitudes, expressions, and general positions that will be called for in the animation. Moving on from the model sheet is what is known as inspirational reference or atmosphere sketches. These are more fully realized drawing,paintings, renderings, or even sculptures depicting the character, often in a setting. Terrell, whose background is in Claymation (at Will Vinton Studios he worked on the California Raisins and the Domino's Pizza Noid), now does all his animation on the computer, but he still creates characters in clay for inspirational reference. "It helps for the artist to be surrounded with actual, physical things relating to the character," he notes. |
