Character designs: THE SUBJECTIVITY THREAD :'D

[psychospacecow]

I never realized just how many belts Lulu has. Its like she cleared out a strip mall for all its worth minus the pants.

I don't mind basic styles either depending on the context. There's a time and place for every face.


Its really nice when you have a setting that lets you play around with various styles. Take the Fallout Vault Boy for example. He's based off of Monopoly's Rich Uncle Pennybags, and he's used in cartoon antics to give a strong image with which to associate perks and items.
Just look at that personality.

images

(original concept)

I won't link them here because they're incredibly gruesome, but there's a series that was released to promote Fallout 4, that is also featured while the game loads, that explains every stat in the game, and all end with the Vault Boy being grotesquely murdered in some fashion or another.
Its great.

[Virt]

I really like the visuals in Wario Land: Shake It!


Also I don't have any specific examples, but I also like the visual aesthetic of Sonic Runners for iOS. It's largely inspired by Sonic Lost World but I feel like Runners does the style better

[miyabi95_]

I can't say I've been a Pokemon fan all of my life (there was a stretch from about 2007 to 2009 where I could not stop playing Emerald, Pearl, and Mystery Dungeon), but I have recently taken a liking to the more humanoid-like designs like these ones. I appreciate their simplicities. It makes me wish I could go back and make a team of them .

[Jermungandr]

You wish? What's stopping you?

[Kosheh]

You wish? What's stopping you?

Maybe the same reason 70% of young adults stopped playing.

I can't say I've been a Pokemon fan all of my life (there was a stretch from about 2007 to 2009 where I could not stop playing Emerald, Pearl, and Mystery Dungeon)

She used to play Pokemon a ton, but it's gotten to the point that probably

- there's too many dang pokies now
- it's a massive timesink to raise a good competitive team now
- also, the game is different when you get older. back then it's favorites; now it's a game of numbers that not everyone is committed to learning
- Jazz just plain has other interests now


i mean in her defense cross-up combos in KOF look a lot cooler (and are definitely faster) than a special-attack based Lucario sweeping your enemies' team

[miyabi95_]

Got the nail on the head, Kosh   . Nothing against people who still love PKMN, or the people who design for it. It's mostly just a thing of the past for me.

Speaking of KOF...


I prefer Athena's early designs. I think they bring out more of her background - a Japanese schoolgirl who trains in the mountains of China for the KOF tournament and to protect the world. Safe to say, I thought it was great that they brought it back for her in Capcom vs. SNK 2.

(It states in her Wiki article that she practices wushu, a traditional Chinese martial art. That explains her Chinese-esque outfit.) I like the simplicity of the stylized martial arts gi that she used to wear. Of course, the fact that it's heavily-stylish explains that she's also a Japanese idol.

I'm not a huge fan of her schoolgirl motif that the recent KOF games have stuck with, but I can understand the reasoning behind it (it's a throwback to the game that Athena Asamiya originated from, along with Sie Kensou: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_Soldier).

[Benny The Miraj]

I don't know if there's really a such thing as a good OR bad design (debatable) but I can speak from personal taste.

Personally, I tend to prefer characters that are simple and too-the-point over characters that are creative, but over designed. Take Charizard for example: He's not a very imaginative design. He's just a dragon. But I actually don't mind that he's not that creative: I like him anyway. All I care about is if a character looks cool.

I've never played Bravely Default, but I watched a video with all of it's summons. Frankly, I didn't think any of them were cool because of what I mentioned. Two of them are just giant humans, and the other four are these huge collections of metal and junk that are supposed to resemble animals, but hardly do. One is like a big giant, walking city, which the idea is cool, but again, I thought they were over-designed and ended up looking more complicated than they needed to be. I would have liked to have seen at least one organic beast summon, but out of the six summons, four were overly complicated robots and the other two are giant humans. I can't say I'm a huge robot fan, to be honest. They're not BAD designs, I just found them over-designed, and wished there was something more straightforward to summon that isn't humanoid.

[miyabi95_]

I don't know if there's really a such thing as a good OR bad design (debatable) but I can speak from personal taste.

Personally, I tend to prefer characters that are simple and too-the-point over characters that are creative, but over designed. Take Charizard for example: He's not a very imaginative design. He's just a dragon. But I actually don't mind that he's not that creative: I like him anyway. All I care about is if a character looks cool.

I've never played Bravely Default, but I watched a video with all of it's summons. Frankly, I didn't think any of them were cool because of what I mentioned. Two of them are just giant humans, and the other four are these huge collections of metal and junk that are supposed to resemble animals, but hardly do. One is like a big giant, walking city, which the idea is cool, but again, I thought they were over-designed and ended up looking more complicated than they needed to be. I would have liked to have seen at least one organic beast summon, but out of the six summons, four were overly complicated robots and the other two are giant humans. I can't say I'm a huge robot fan, to be honest. They're not BAD designs, I just found them over-designed, and wished there was something more straightforward to summon that isn't humanoid.

Same with me - simplicity is a must for me to just enjoy playing as a character.

To be honest though, if I were bigger into JRPGs, Bravely Default would be my game - the characters look super adorable!!

[Koopaul]

Simplicity helps a character become more iconic in my opinion. Some of the most iconic characters like Mario or Sonic use bright primary colors and a basic wardrobe.

[Koh]

As an advocate and drawer of toons, I'd have to say all they really need is some basic clothes that define their personality, and an accessory. Toons themselves don't even need a full attire really, just some gloves or something, and then the rest falls on their personality.

When they first showed Yooka Laylee for example, THAT felt too basic because he didn't even have gloves or some kind of accessory, like an ascot or backpack. Just as long as they have SOMETHING on top of their birthday suit, that's good enough.

[miyabi95_]

As an advocate and drawer of toons, I'd have to say all they really need is some basic clothes that define their personality, and an accessory.  Toons themselves don't even need a full attire really, just some gloves or something, and then the rest falls on their personality.

When they first showed Yooka Laylee for example, THAT felt too basic because he didn't even have gloves or some kind of accessory, like an ascot or backpack.  Just as long as they have SOMETHING on top of their birthday suit, that's good enough.

Same reason why I was so fond of Shiftylook's design for Klonoa.

It brought back the simplicity of Klonoa's original design from the PSX game:

and kinda merged it with the more recent designs

[Benny The Miraj]

As an advocate and drawer of toons, I'd have to say all they really need is some basic clothes that define their personality, and an accessory.  Toons themselves don't even need a full attire really, just some gloves or something, and then the rest falls on their personality.

When they first showed Yooka Laylee for example, THAT felt too basic because he didn't even have gloves or some kind of accessory, like an ascot or backpack.  Just as long as they have SOMETHING on top of their birthday suit, that's good enough.

I'm personally not the least bit picky when it comes to Anthro characters. Plus, I kind of have a soft spot for Laylee because she's a bat, and I really like bats. I tend to like most anthro characters unless they are seriously stupid looking.

Anyone remember Croc? You know, he was that incredibly infantile looking reptile with the googly eyes and the high-pitched voice? There's cute characters, and then there's bogus, and Croc's design is so sugary and childish that he's a hard character to like, let alone want to play as.

[Kosheh]

I'm sorry, but before I continue

As an advocate and drawer of toons

This is probably the silliest start to a sentence I've ever seen on VGR. I mean the rest of the sentence makes perfect sense, but I had no idea how to respond to this post for at least ten minutes

As an advocate and drawer of toons, I'd have to say all they really need is some basic clothes that define their personality, and an accessory.  Toons themselves don't even need a full attire really, just some gloves or something, and then the rest falls on their personality.

When they first showed Yooka Laylee for example, THAT felt too basic because he didn't even have gloves or some kind of accessory, like an ascot or backpack.  Just as long as they have SOMETHING on top of their birthday suit, that's good enough.

This...is debatable. Expecting your character's popularity to fully rest on their personality isn't enough. Maybe on Deviantart, but when it comes to character design - and it's ESPECIALLY crucial when it comes to "toon characters" (which I'm just gonna assume are zany, anthropomorphic characters with three-head-high proportions) the big defining aspect of those characters is their silhouette. [I had a feeling you were trying to state this, so we're probably on the same page here]


Like odds are a lot of you probably recognize these characters.

Of course you did. Like, instantly. That's because their silhouettes are so extremely unique that it's impossible not to (and one of these is in their birthday suit!) The point is to have a universally recognizable character when you're playing a videogame or watching a movie or TV show. Yooka-Laylee works because of their silhouette being so unique. Some pants would be nice for decency, but the character design is admittedly alright (though he DOES resemble a Sega character as-is)

It's kinda one of the things that I didn't really like about Digimon's character designs - but I think that's why they gave them bike helmets and cowboy hats, to add an extra little trademark to that character. However, the Digimon designs are OK and fine by this design philosophy (and of course, the focus is on the monsters, not the kids)

Too little variation and too "flat" of character silhouettes and you'll end up with something like this. :/

However, it DOES work inversely, too. You can "smother" your character design by putting too many accessories on them. It's actually one of the reasons I really, REALLY dislike Klonoa's design: I feel like they took the silhouette design philosophy way too seriously and ended up just over-cluttering the character with accessories as to not be one of gaming's most unoriginal characters and Totally Not Namco's Most Desperate Attempt To Make A Mascot Platformer In The History of the World. The result is a silhouette that can only be read as an absolute clusterfuck and that's probably why he's such a niche character.

To be 100% honest, I really liked the proposed NA redesign for Klonoa (it's the one on the right side of the last image Jazz used) because it actually classed him apart from other anthro characters like Sonic or Crash Bandicoot, and gave him those hilariously huge ears that stood out.




Also, is it just me or do a lot of video games and children's programming just plain try to avoid using anthro characters at this point for some odd reason (maybe some odd stigma? Did Conker's Bad Fur Day literally kill off any and all chances of anthro characters or something, for the same reason you don't see mascot characters on cigarette packs?)

[Gors]

The problem with Klonoa, In my opinion, is that they exaggerated on the silhouette thing. Like, the ears are cool and maybe the hat is too - but why is there such a Large belt/necklace/collar thing around him?

You know, for me there ought to be a balance of accessory details. Of all characters, western characters tend to pull it well. Unique silhouettes like that take advantage of two main shapes: Rounds and Straights (like the ones you see in mickey's Ears and bugs' Long-ass legs)

Frankly, I'd have western designs over any default japanese design all day - there are exceptions of course, but yeah

[Koh]

@Kosheh, I agree with the majority of that post, but there's one thing you were off about...all those characters did at least have something on. Bugs there has gloves~ The only one I can think of off the top of my head that's well known, that doesn't even have gloves, would be Daffy Duck. But like 90% of the other famous toons at least have gloves, or something else.