Final Project: Platformer Character #5- Helio

A living puppet with the power to control the elements

Unique Character Identifiers: 

Head Spikes (H), Long Nose (H)

Colour(s): 

Varies depending on element, Yellow in Neutral

Design Notes: 

Interestingly, Helio is based on an old design I created when I was younger; in fact, his long nose and clothing are relics of the original design. After creating the prototype that would become him for this project, I felt he looked ‘neutral’ enough to work with the element-swapping game mechanic, and also added a sun motif, hence the name ‘Helio’

Design and Development sketches for Helio

Helio Final Concept

Final Project: Platformer Character #4- Kage

A masked kunoichi (female ninja) who strikes from the shadows

 Unique Character Identifiers: 

Oni Mask (H), Hood (H), Red Scarf 

Colour(s): 

Black, Red, White

Design Notes: 

Kage’s design kind of speaks for itself, but there are a few things of note. For one thing, her outfit is designed to resemble an authentic ninja outfit, while her mask is based on the Oni masks often seen in Japanese mythology. Meanwhile, her name is taken from the Japanese word for ‘shadow’

Design and Development sketches for Kage

Kage Final Concept

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