Contextual Studies Entry Ticket 2 - Important and Relevant Elements in Character Design

Important and relevant elements in Character Design 

by Myfanwy Kinder 

When I think of character design my mind is instantaneously drawn to the overall look and feel of a character - the aesthetics - and how it relates to an interesting storyline. For myself as an MMORPG player I prefer to have both. Upon reading Chris Solarski's article on Gamasutra titled 'The aesthetics of Game Design', my mind is drawn to a much deeper meaning behind my subconscious decisions.   

Solarski reviews and evaluates the importance of the fundamentals of fine art and looks at how they may be incorporated within a game. Specifically he looks at shape, animation, composition and perspective linking them all to their digital counterparts. The first point Solarski makes is relating shape theory to games and character design. Solarski states that shapes represent different  emotions and character types; shapes represent comfort, innocence, femininity, kindness whilst squares represent stability and balance leaving the triangle to represent aggression and force. This was the key theme throughout the other ideas he explores throughout his article including animation and perspective. 

Using my favorite games to determine how I feel about these theories I will explore examples to determine which I feel are most important. With the constant development of technology, character model complexity is forever increasing. For myself, this makes it considerably more difficult to distinguish which primitive they belong to.  The overall look and feel of many modern games is reflective of the real world of shapes vary regardless of the alignment of any character. The only real comparison I see within the World of Warcraft is between the armor of each faction leader. The leaders of the Alliance have typically smooth rounded armor whilst the Leaders of the Horde have had more spikey armor.  

The animation of characters in World of Warcraft evolves as you develop your character in game. As you start out your character is limited to running or walking on foot. As you level up you have the option to purchase land mounts and at a much higher level your character may purchase flying mounts. Each different mount poses unique animations which relate to Solarski's theories relating shape psychology to character animation. Wolves in World of Warcraft run at sharp angles compared to the circular motion of a horse's legs, furthermore the twisting motion of a cloud serpent who you have to bring up yourself and develop an emotional connection with differs greatly from the angular movements of a frost dragon's wings.  

The camera transition and perspective within World of Warcraft is extremely controllable and smooth unlike some linear games where suspense is created by the camera angles changing without your command.  

Overall my opinion is that in modern games it is less in the character shapes that we see importance of shape psychology but more in the control and movement of characters. I still think that character development and narrative is essential in any good character design however I now have a further understanding of how I have personally developed these beliefs.