For this phase of the mentorship, I was tasked with “Imagine/Ideate/Explore”, and get clear directions on the project scope and start on some of the work.

We eventually settled on creating a “Character that would be seen in Eastern Media, specifically Mobile Games”.

The workflow that goes into creating a character within this process involves creating a unique character that stands out from the rest, while keeping in touch with the general story themes of the mobile game.

A lot of mobile games in the East often prioritize character aesthetics compared to cohesive story, so some visual choices that are executed may be a bit different compared to the rest. Nonetheless, the characters would fit within the story and have a role to play.

The game scope that we settled on for this brief was the following. Although it was a bit generic, the brief does reflect a lot of games in the market today:

“This game is about a set cast of characters battling against evil while forming bonds with powerful allies in hopes of vanquishing the evil within the world. Joined by various other adventurers, you band together to vanquish the evil ruining the world.“

What I learned

The workflow for this project was quite different compared to ones that I understood in the west. My mentor and I started with creating characters following different themes, and picked one that I was the happiest about. In this phase it was very free and unanchored, as I was able to research freely and design freely without a limitation.

After we decided on a character with their backstory, we would flush out other design possibilities with research, and start to explore differences on how to change up the character design without changing the story too much.

Overall, researching, designing, and creating characters were all fun things that came out of this section.

Challenges

Some challenges I faced were creating character designs that weren’t too surface level. One of the critiques I received was “Don’t babysit your viewers in figuring out what your character does”, a good example would be a witch.

“Not all witches have witch hats, so what are some ways to show that the character is a witch? Do they need a witch hat to make them one?“

Another challenge I faced was silhouette design, and creating visually interesting character shapes. For these, some shapes that I had created had little to no “holes” within the pose, meaning that viewing the pose would yield no real interest due to the weight of the picture being too heavy in terms of visual information.

Colour compositions were also something we touched base on, colour theory was a big part of fundamental character designs and played a big role on the work I made, so my mentor and I studied up on Colour science, theory, and concepts; one of the big concepts being Chroma, and how Chroma applies to colour in life.

Self Evaluation

Within the 2 week timeframe, I’d like to think that I did a good job in outputting sketches as well as researching the characters I would be designing, often taking days drawing new concepts and researching things before I would present them and receive feedback. I’d say for this phase, I deserve a 8/10 for my efforts.