-Introduction
-Character Concept Art
-Model Sheets
-Artist's Commentary
Introduction
Hello again! Over the past week, I've been presenting all the work I've done in order to craft a believable narrative for Stone Age Warriors, as well as authentic environments for the game.
Today, I want to show you how all of the world building that I've done in the previous stages of the development process influenced my character designs.
Without further ado, let's get right into it!
Character Concept Art
Since our game has a cartoon spin to the art style, I referenced some of the character designs from the 2013 animated movie “Croods” to get a better idea on how to stylize the proportions of the characters. Through some research and analysis, I found that characters belonging to a tribe would share the same type of proportions (although some more exaggerated than others), and that characters belonging to a different tribe would have different proportions. However, they would all share a couple of features (same eyes or same type of nose for example) to show that they all belong to the same world.
With that in mind, I started by doing some silhouette work to explore the different body types and proportions that I wanted each tribe member to have.
After the body type was decided, I moved onto the next step and did some face studies, as well as hairstyle and facial hair sketches.
After I decided on the final look for the body and face of the characters, I put together the final version of their bodies.
After I knew what my characters would look like, it was finally time for me to start working on their armor.
So, I started this process by doing a few silhouette studies for each character.
Once I selected a silhouette for each, I proceeded to do some iterations in grayscale value, to explore the possibilities of armor within the silhouette. You’ll notice that I've done a couple of sets in this stage, each set being more detailed than the previous. That is because I worked from big to medium to small, so I could avoid getting lost in the details too early on.
With that said, here are the 3 sets I did for the Cave Tribe and the 2 sets I did for the Riverbay Tribe:
After all the iterations were done, I picked the 2 I felt that were more fitting to the game and did a quick rendered sketch of each one of them.
Once again, you’ll notice that the lore and shape language I defined for each tribe were kept in mind while designing each character’s outfit.
For instance, the Cave Tribesman is physically much more robust and stronger, and his overall silhouette resembles both a square, to indicate a strong stance, as well as an inverted triangle, to indicate power.
Apart from that, I kept in mind the materials he’d have available to him in his environment, which would be most likely bones and pelts that he skins from animals he hunts.
Since the Cave Tribe is still very primitive, I also figured his armor shouldn’t be too complex either, and that it’d probably show a lot of bare skin and muscle.
Besides that, I made sure to include a lot of triangle shapes and sharp edges in his design (to represent his aggression), which can be seen anywhere from the way his armor is designed, all the way to how his beard is shaped.
In contrast to that, the Riverbay Tribe is much more sophisticated and a tad bit more civilized, so when it comes to the design of this character, I made sure that his design was much more elegant and flowy to accentuate that difference.
Previously, I had defined that this tribe is more pacifist than the Cave Tribe, so the way I was able to indicate that about the Riverbay Tribesman was through the use of a lot of curves in the design this character, not only in the design of the armor itself, but also even in his hairstyle.
Similarly to before, I thought of the materials this tribe would have around them, which led me to believe this tribesman's armor would be built out of cloth (since they've built a very primitive looming machine), and maybe even some vines from plants that grow near the river; I figured they’d weave them together to make shoulder pads, for example.
Another thing I tried to do in the design of this character was to find a way to somehow indicate that his tribe is a fishing community, and not so much a hunting tribe.
This led me to come up with the design of the chest piece, which is composed of interwoven vines and small circular flat rocks that could be found by the river of their camp. These rocks are arranged in such a way that they resemble fish scales, and serve not only the purpose of protection, but also embellishment.
Since this tribe is slightly more technologically advanced, I was also comfortable in believing that their armor would be more refined and constructed in a slightly more complex way.
With their detailed sketches complete, I moved onto the color studies, and for that I kept in mind the colors of paint each of their Dyers could make.
In the end, these were the final character designs:
Similarly to how I did with the environment pieces, I also created an illustration to present both characters:
Model Sheets
Last but not least, I put together the model sheets for the characters to wrap up the Pre-Production stage of the development process:
Artist's Commentary:
Coming up with a good character design is always a challenging process, but it was during this stage that I could see that all of the hard work I did in the previous stages was paying off. With the lore defined, it was just a matter of staying consistent with everything I'd defined up until now.
Knowing who these tribes are, what shape language to use, what materials would make sense for them to use, and how refined would their armors be were the 4 main topics I kept in mind during the design process, and that definitely helped me to create solid character designs that remain true to the world they belong in.
As always, thank you for your time!
Filipa Thomaz
