Final Project: Platformer Character #3- Gunslinger

A nameless gunfighter who wanders the West with an assortment of weapons

Unique Character Identifiers: 

Cowboy Hat (H), Poncho, Dual Wacky Firearms

Colour(s): 

Brown, Orange

Design Notes: 

The Gunslinger is obviously based on the stereotypical cowboys of the Spaghetti Western genre, particularly Clint Eastwood’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. His guns, on the other hand, were designed to be wacky and somewhat kid-friendly, with many of them designed to overcome specific obstacles. The ones he wields in this concept, for example, are his standard weapons and act like a boxing glove on an extending arm

Design and Development sketches for the Gunslinger

Gunslinger Final Concept

Final Project: Platformer Character #2- Cosmo the Alien

An alien explorer with formidable psychic powers

Unique Character Identifiers: 

Third Eye (H), Antennae (H),  Glass Dome Helmet (H)

Colour(s): 

Green, Gold

Design Notes: 

The initial inspiration for Cosmo came from the telekinetic powers of Silver the Hedgehog from Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (though the game itself is terrible) and the planetoid level design from Super Mario Galaxy. When it came to designing a character who could meet these two criteria, an alien seemed an obvious choice.

Design and Development sketches for Cosmo

Cosmo Final Concept

Final Project: Platformer Character #1- Princess

A rebellious princess who clobbers any foul creature foolish enough to try and kidnap her

Unique Character Identifiers: 

Crown(H), Dress, Mace Weapon

Colour(s): 

Pink, Yellow

Design Notes: 

Princess was originally conceived as a ‘reverse-Mario’; basically, instead of getting kidnapped, the princess clobbers the bad guys and saves the world herself. From this basic concept, the character’s gameplay style, personality and general appearance seemed to flow naturally.

Design and Development sketches for Princess

Princess Final Concept

Final Project Brief and Prototype Characters

So, onto the final project. As I said in my last post, it's all pretty much done, so this is just dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

As I've also said a couple of times, my final project focused on designing new original gaming icons based on what I'd learned from all the redesigns I'd done. I wasn't originally sure about how I'd go about doing this, but after talking with Jim (one of my tutors) it was decided I'd design a group of characters based around a couple of game genres. 

3 Genres, 6 Characters each. 18 Characters in all

The characters I chose for this were all ones I felt had grown stale and could use a new, original 'icon' or two to reinvigorate them. The genres I chose were Platformer, Horror and First-Person Shooter.

I started by creating several pages of prototype characters for each genre and then picking a slect few to develop further. You can see these prototypes below:-

Platformer Prototypes

These characters were each designed with their own specific game mechanic in mind

FPS Prototypes

These characters were each designed around variants of having a projectile weapon of some kind

Horror Prototypes

These characters were designed as enemies and are intended to be scary as hell

The next 18 posts will be about each of the 18 characters I chose and designed. First up is the Platformers. I'm going to try and keep them relatively short, so don't worry about having to read several walls of text.

Final Project: First Draft

Well would you look at that! I've been so focussed on getting the work done, that I've left all the blogging until the very last minute (about five days, to be precise)! Who'd of thought?

Ok, sarcasm aside, all the work for my MA is 100% done at this point. I just haven't got around to updating the blog until now. So strap yourselves in, kids, 'cause I've got a motherload of blog posts to drop on you.

This first one is the first draft of my final project. It was originally supposed to be a load of characters based on a post-apocalyptic fantasy world, the end result being like a journal or diary describing these fantastical individuals. However, beyond some ideas and prototype designs for various races, monsters and people (none of which were particularly cohesive) I never got very far with it, and after deciding that the project was focussing more on the world than the characters, I quickly scrapped it.

The sketches below show the summation of this version of the project

Classic Monsters Conclusion

Ok, so I've spent the last couple of months taking various monsters from fiction and reinventing them. Now that that's done with, let's take a moment to talk about what I've learnt from this project.

If nothing else, I feel this project has more or less validated my Iconic Character Design Theory (Iconic Character = Number of Unique Characteristics, 1 around head + Limited Colour Palette) as the majority of the redesigns are still recognisable as the original 'monsters'. The exception, of course, was the Jabberwock, whose design is not totally defined in it's original source to begin with. In my defence, it's inclusion was suggested by Josh, whereas the others were chosen because their original designs fit the criteria. But, no use crying over spilt milk; the fact is I did a Jabberwock redesign and despite my grumblings it does have some traits from the original.

So, to summarise, the character traits of these monsters are as follows:-

Jabberwocky

Characteristics: 'Fiery' eyes (Head), large claws, whiskers/ hair tendrils (Head), wings/ wing-like sails

Colour: Variable (Jabberwocky colour isn't mentioned in source)

Cthulhu

Characteristics: Octopus/ Squid face (Head), wings, humanoid body

Colour: Green

Medusa

Characteristics: Snake hair (Head), snake lower body

Colour: Variable (Medusa doesn't really have a defined colour scheme)

Devil

Characteristics: Horns (Head), wings, pointed tail, trident, goat legs (optional)

Colour: Red

So... yeah, this project basically went as expected and proved I wasn't talking out of my arse.

The next project will be the final one and will focus on me using this Iconic Design Theory to design some original characters. Beyond that though.... I'm still working on the details. Watch this space.

Devil Redesign mk II

Ok, my final project not going particularly smoothly at the moment, so I found some time to go back and redo my Devil redesign in the meantime. Behold the fruits of my labour:-

As you can see, I kept the legs, tail, arms and the pose, but altered the chest, head and the wings.  The head and horns are based on some of my earlier sketches (you can see those on the previous post), while the wings are inspired by the Angel of Death from Hellboy II. The end results a lot less artsy-fartsy than the previous one and personally I think it turned out a lot better as a result.

That about covers it really. Hopefully I'll have some newer work to show with my next post.