Gallery

LINE COLOR SKETCH COLORIST  

 

Images

In this gallery you'll see my process of developing NPCs, PCs and some examples of creatures in a mock game of my own design. You'll see the importance of silhouettes in character design, even giving an NPC a unique and fairly memorable distinctiveness. As well as conveying personality and occupation from even a simple glance.

First I built a world from a selection of six to twelve thumbnails.

From each thumb I developed a culture. I researched examples from some real cultures and pieced together new cultures.

Then in this example I picked a ten of the more interesting characters that showed their occupations well, I refined the silhouettes, then gave them color and material passes.

After completing the NPCs I can make some stand out characters. I used the same steps for the NPCs when making the PCs however it is important for a playable to playable character to have an aspect of asymmetry. Asymmetry gives a character a less uniformed look, and blends less into the background than an NPC. In this case I illustrated to PCs to show their unique personalities.

In the end I have a cohesive cast line up that look like they belong to the same world, and look like they complement each other, but come from very different cultures.

I've also designed a few "critters". With critters I use the same ideals that I use with my humanoid characters but, non-human (not including robot) characters are difficult to convey with a simple head-on silhouette.

Updated 9/15/2009.

More contemporary characters for a earth like setting.