Need critique for my player character.
I am making an "action rpg" for my first game and I've come to the point in development where I need to design my player character.
This is a concept for my game's player character, K1:
He is a Raptor(Dino), human hybrid. In his idle animation he'll probably bob his head a little and put his hands up like a raptor.
He has a tail, although I'm thinking of letting it go.
I am quite a huge fan of the Megaman/Rockman series and their art style has inspired me for creating K1.
It's still early in the design process and any input would be most welcome.
This is a concept for my game's player character, K1:
He is a Raptor(Dino), human hybrid. In his idle animation he'll probably bob his head a little and put his hands up like a raptor.
He has a tail, although I'm thinking of letting it go.
I am quite a huge fan of the Megaman/Rockman series and their art style has inspired me for creating K1.
It's still early in the design process and any input would be most welcome.
k1.jpg
354 x 560 - 77K
Comments
Here is the latest concept. Moving away from the Megaman influence I opted for a more "realistic" approach to the design.
Not that the current design is bad, but i sure miss those toe claws.
I could probably change the hybrid idea to something like "he has undergone a fair amount of gene therapy" instead.
Or later in the game, because of some event, his genes go a bit super and he evolves into more of an actual raptor.
He may need that to overcome a certain obstacle.
For example, does this character mean it will do something with its tail? Does it attack with it? Climb trees? Balance with it? Does anything above have to do with the gameplay or is it purely superficial sprite animation? Make the game first instead of making up stories and narrative based on a drawing - because you're not making a drawing :)
(I also understand that for some people making pretty art is a lot more motivational. But making something move the way you want it to move and do things you want it to do and seeing it being played by people is, I think, WAY MORE rewarding if you're looking to make games instead of make art! )
Good luck :)
Many of these are problems that you can only really address when you've got a game that you can play:
- What is the camera angle?
- How large do things appear, as a proportion of the screen?
- How large do things appear in terms of scale with each other?
If you're only intending to do concept art as another avenue with which to explore writing (which is something I believe you're primarily interested in), then I think you'd get a lot more value out of trying to "write" characteristics into the character. Why do things look the way they do? Is there a reason why he uses a particular helmet? Is there a certain symbol, or family of symbols, that is repeated in his design? Perhaps the symbols relate to a class of weaponry, or a manufacturer, or a school of magic? Also take a look at a whole lot of different reference material, and make sure that the observations you're making are drawn from a lot of different sources. This serves partly as a way to be more knowledgeable about the subject matter (it's research!), while also decreasing the chance of your being over-reliant on one source/look/style that can make it start to look copied.
In terms of concept art, I highly, highly recommend reading the Autodestruct concept art hacking guide. There's a wealth of information there, and although a lot of it is just skimming the surface, I think it'd be a great lens through which to look at the work you do.
tl,dr: Using loose sketches to convey information and generate ideas is really great, even when you're making prototypes and writing. Making "polished" art, or stuff that's actually going to get into the game, before you've actually got a prototype that's fun to play isn't very useful.
One thing that I find interesting is that the character is very long and close to human proportions. This works in some games but I googled action rpg and I didn't see any examples where your character would fit in. They are mostly short with a massive head relative to the body.
So I think it would be useful (if you are not ready to post your prototype) to give use some sort of example game then.
Here is the link to my dropbox for the RPG that I am working on as an .exe:
https://dropbox.com/s/kdaii3fzdonf0ov/Jurgen%27sRPG.exe?dl=0
Controls:
Arrow keys to move. Z to jump, press A whilst moving to speed up for a short period of time ( sprite changes red, will become dodging later on), W for spell.
@Tuism,Thanks:). I do have gameplay, just very basic. I'm still figuring out what is possible for me to do. I do realize that making a game isn't as simple as writing or drawing something, it's so layered. I admire you all for your knowledge.
@Elyaradine, I see your point on how the sprite looks, this sprite would be more suited to something else.Thanks:)
I didn't mind doing the pixel art, it's a fun exercise anyways. I use either Photoshop CS3 or Pyxel Edit by the way.
I think I've got a planning problem with regards to making games.
I'll check out the "Autodestruct concept art hacking guide", great:)
@Kobusvdwalt9, Yeah, the mouth needs to be darker. Thankyou for your suggestion, the link is above.
I made the background music with Sunvox and the sound effects with Bfxr.
* Your combat system is way to easy at present. Those ice pillars and the pentagram is cool when you cast spells, but one hit kills makes it a bit too easy to get rid of enemies.
* Do you have a player health system yet? Didn't see how I could die.
* That green gem altar is cool, but what does it do?
* How do I go to other areas?
* RPG's always have awesome conversation options with NPCs. Know you are good at writing, so I'm sure this is going to be a big part of how to convey the story/lore.
* Jumping diagonally is a bitch.
* Is there a goal for that scene? I killed the red cubes with a few button presses and then jumped around the platforms for a while, but didn't seem to do anything. No idea what to do or where to go?
* The dash/sprint felt good.
It's cool that you are creating something and that you are posting early, but you need to work on the "feel" of the game more before moving on to art. I've fallen into the same trap soooooo many times. I can appreciate the amount of work you have put into this already, but maybe step back for a moment and evaluate how everything feels right now i.e. is the jumping spot on? Do the spells FEEL right. You may have to rework some of it until it does. In the end you want the game to be fun and cool, regardless of the process of creating it. Gamers don't think about the process of making your game, they just want to play it and FEEL cool doing it.
Good luck
I realize I need to think about what makes a RPG, a RPG. Only when I have a good and solid base to work from, mechanics wise, then the art side of it should be implemented.(Art should supplement mechanics.) A reason for everything is important. I have randomly been creating objects as I get inspired. That also hinders me from completing anything.
What I have thus far created, was purely the result of learning Game Maker Studio with a vague RPG idea in mind. No wonder there isn't much to show.
I shall take what you say into account.
Back to the drawing board:)
So my Idea here was to just to follow the wise words of my youtube master Feng Zu: "just try make things cool". Without thinking about what kind of game or what camera angle or anything, the design goal was simply make it cool. I believe this to be an industry standard instruction one hears from clients.
I scribbled some notes before I began. Just notes on what I thought could be improved and some notes on what I really liked about it. You'll see my note in blue about the triangle, man I love triangle. Megaman is also a favorite of mine, I preferred your first drawing because of this. The re-design leaned maybe too much in that direction in the end and it's not a great/new design but it was a fun exercise and I think I learned something so thanks for posting.
As for the notes posted above about game making process's there is no correct path, and I can honestly say that making art before you know what your game is, can be a great thing! your art process can quite easily cultivate some gameplay ideas that you might not otherwise have thought of. I'm talking mostly about game agnostic art, concept pictures that transcend any one game genre. The other thing about making art is that you get better the more you do it just like any other discipline, so whilst some might think it's a waste to render out character portraits, it's time you've put in practicing, like most things worth anything, art is hard and requires lots of consistent practice. The chances of my or your game being successful are quite low and so the more areas in game development you can level up on I believe the better chance you have of getting product to market if you by yourself. On top of this, I also think that making "pretty" pictures is an easier sell to consumers than "new pure awesome mechanics". @Elyaradine Leveling up is useful. Making polished art means you practiced and leveling up cause it's polished = useful.
Fun to play is very subjective and so making polished art I think is quite "useful" even when you have a "boring/common/cloned/simple" prototype, because just as you remember and get better from the failings and learnings in your prototype so too the learnings and failings of your polish skills will be with you for your next game. There probably is a point of diminishing returns on your polish/art skills but I'd argue that it's worth getting good at just the same as your design skill, specifically if you a lone wolf dev. Also there's maybe something to be said about learning art principles and how they can effect your design sensibilities for a games. The principles of design are more useful than any one picture or prototype.
tl;dr : time finding out what makes images/movement/arty things appealing is a great investment so keep on arting!
I think you're responding to my post out of context. I wasn't saying "Don't do art" or "don't paint" or "don't do any art before you've got a game ready". I was saying "you're spending a lot of time making a pixel art sprite when you don't know what the sprites need to be able to do, how large the sprite should be, what angle, etc., which means there's a 99% chance you're going to have to redo them." That's absolutely not the same thing as saying art is useless for generating ideas, or being fun, or developing art fundamentals.
All of the pros you've listed are things that looser sketches solve, and solve quickly, where in-game art is slow has to be redone if you don't know your camera, game, etc. I made that distinction in my post, though I apologise if you think it wasn't clear or if I was being discouraging.
As much as I loved Megaman as a kid, I find him kind of creepy now. An eternally 7 year old robotic boy fighting insane robots to save the earth. Same problem with Astroboy I guess. His cuteness belies his deadliness. Whereas @Pomb's design avoids that, while still keeping Megaman-like proportions.
Even though I backed the project, I've been pretty unhappy with the direction Mighty Number 9 has gone in: http://www.mightyno9.com/ ... Instead of being a game for fans of Megaman, it feels like a game for children of fans of Megaman. If anything it's regressed into being more childlike than the Megaman series (particularly the high point in Megaman X).
@Pomb's K1 reminds me a bit of Modok (and I love Modok's design, so I mean that as a compliment):
But this is my particular taste! A lot of folks got excited about Mighty Number 9 and seem to love the direction it's going in. I wish that Megaman matured to be a bit more like Miyazaki films, but my wish isn't going to come true any time soon.
Obviously I'm also a huge fan of Megaman. So I'm very interested in where @Jurgen takes this.
One of the things about Megaman, which is maybe more apparent in Megaman X than the early games, is that the character is fairly compact. His legs are really chunky, and this makes it easy to know what he can stand on. His torso is sort of pinched in, but it makes him fill out his rectangular bounding box pretty well.
Some of these distortions might be even more important in your game. It seems like you're aiming for jumping in an isometric game. It's fairly easy to tell where you're standing as a cube (which your game currently has), but the character designs you've been drawing have small feet and are tall, and so the bounding box is going to be much harder to predict than the cube. @Pomb's character is more squat, but if you intend to have a lot of jumping in an isometric game you may want it squatter still (in the actual game anyway).
I'd suggest getting your character into your game ASAP so you can test your proportions. They make a big difference in terms of reading the gameplay.
@Elyaradine, thankyou for your feedback.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky, I want to get more experience in finishing projects, I guess its a confidence thing, before I move on with K1, hence...
I have decided, for now, that for my first game I should concentrate on something simpler than an isometric platformer.
K1 will be put on ice for the time being.
I have learned a great amount from everyone here, thankyou.
I shall keep this discussion for K1.
It might be worthwhile however trying to stick the character into the game. It's a worthwhile piece of experience, trying to get a character into an isometric game, even if it doesn't work out perfectly. You'll start from a position of having that experience when you come back to this.
Just a thought though!! Obviously you should do what you feel passionate about right now (passion is such a precious resource), and if you're hitting a wall with K1 you should do something where you can be more constructive.
Consider this screenshot. There are tons to consider. Tons and tons, the ability to read depth in the position of platforms is important, and I don't think anyone has really solved it - they just avoid it (like Bastion) by removing the need to make accurate jumps.
In any case, it's been an interesting exercise, and it's always GOOD to make art and practice art, as long as THAT is your goal. If your goal is to make a game, making and practicing art would be secondary :)
A very useful thing to do in this position is ask yourself which bits are the bits you were really chasing,which bits are the bits that are introducing problems and whether there is a way to have one without the other (maybe minimize the amount of jumping and limit it to areas with very little combat). Or adding something to minimise the problems ( maybe a squat character with a solid baseline and a super reactive shadow, jump prediction or autojumps, or level design that doesn't punish a missed jump) Deconstructing it into it's components so that you can reassemble it and other projects in the future is the core of game design, that process gives you your future lego.
looking at other people's progress can help build your lego also, these guys aren't building a platform, so no solution there, but this may offer other "steps between what it is now and what I want it to be"