Part 1: Research
and Influences
To begin the
project, I looked at various point + click games and how they present the
images they show as well as their own visual styles.
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| Featured Games - Wolf among us, Tales from the Borderlands, I have no mouth and I must scream, Day of the tentacle, Tormentium, Grim Fandango, The book of unwritten tales and Monkey Island |
Since our game
also deals with hallucinations and manifestations of a persons innermost
thoughts, looking at hallucination scenes from both games and movies was the
next step.
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Lighting is also
important and I looked for inspiration in a short animated film I'd found.
Part 2: Breaking
the results down
When designing
the character, I looked at how addiction to various substances effects a
person's physical appearance and some examples of this in media. Most drug
addicted characters seem very obviously emancipated or even skeletal due to the
negative side effects of the drugs their take. A lot of the characters I looked
were also very wide eyed and crazed looking. While I didn't want this kind of
expression to be permanent, I made a note the eyes would be something to
emphasize. Unkempt hair was another common feature but I felt that could easily
become too distracting in the design, and could be difficult to pull off given
the limits to the poly count.
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I decided to use
the design the incorporated a hood as it would put more emphasis on the
characters eyes and make the player pay more attention to their overall body
language. This is an important aspect of these type of characters as seen with
Ewan McGregor's character in Trainspotting. People associate that pose with
that movie and it's subject matter because it's very clear and very striking.
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| Types of Jacket |
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Character Poses and Expressions
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For colour,
making the character more saturated will make any colour of light show up quite
well on him and further contrast him with any brightly coloured crazy imagery,
also his skin is coloured to more resemble a decaying body or a zombie, taking
a more literal image of drug addicts. As for his eyes, I originally went for
something sharper but dialled it back to make them look more natural, allow
they are still coloured to resemble a nocturnal animal. His hat was also an
interesting feature since we decided it could be used as an extension of his
expression by making it bend and stretch with the characters eyebrows.
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| Prototype designs A + B and Expression/Alternate Eye shapes |
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| Measured Character Guide |
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