Design character Thumbnails

I did these a good while ago now, i only just realized i never posted them on here. I posted them around a while ago to get peer feedback on which ones people liked the most, i guess i must of thought i posted them here too. 

Anyway after getting feedback from people it became pretty clear that there was no clear choices, nobody seemed to agree on the best thumbnails to take forward so i decided to just make the decision myself. 

I have chosen numbers 3, 4, 5, and 7 along with my previously chosen and not included character shown below.

Lore characters

So i've been moving along with my lore characters and decided to put all my lore pages into the format i previously showed, i got kind of tired of opening the word doc all the time to read through my lore profiles. I also thought it would be nicer to post them up here in a format easier to post so that they could be read along with my thumbnails.

My Targe lore was posted up last time but i'm putting it up again to go with the thumbnails, i had most of these done for a while but couldn't get a decent last one out so i've been putting off posting if, i cracked on with it though and did some other silhouettes for lore characters once i got back into it.

These are my 5 silhouette thumbnails for my character Targe, he's a kind of scrap yard warrior so i tried to incorporate that into the silhouette shapes. Once i have all my other lore character silhouettes done and posted i will be choosing my favorite 3 silhouettes from each character to fully work up and take forward. I'm not going to do all 5 because i'm behind in my work and if they don't look good in silhouettes they're likely not going to look good when finished so there is no point me wasting my time on them. At the moment i'm liking 1,3 and 5 from Targe's silhouettes. He also kind of reminds me of one of my design characters, the short one, i may end up combining them in Targe's lore doesn't get taken forward as my chosen character.

This is a moodboard i made of various things that inspired some of the shapes i used in the silhouettes, i actively tried to get these kids of items and feelings into the characters, some more sucessful than others.

Here is Norah's lore page, it's the largest one i did and had a hard time fitting it on the format, i may need to condense it if i take it forward. I do quite like Norah but i'm worried it may be a little to close to X-men.

These are my silhouettes based on Norah's lore page, she was a little more difficult to work with since there is more story in her lore and less descriptive text on how she looks so i had to go with some sci-fi like assassin looks, i also threw some super powers in to show what else she could do. Being able to steal other peoples powers after death is a hard aspect to draw in a silhouette.

Here is the moodboard that inspired my Norah silhouettes.

Lore page graphic

So now that i created a method of displaying my text based design elements, i figured i'd try it with my lore pages too, with some little changes. I changed some things just to see some variation, i also added a binary texture to the back  ground which i think helps make it look more interesting  I also found some settings to help me do some glow effects, it didn't work so great on the text but the alternative is just way too time consuming. My ability ones has some variation in them so as i was putting them together so they're not final, presentation is one of my weak points and it tends to be an after thought so i figured i'd at least get some ideas down along the way. I like how this one turned out, i'll probably do some research into how things like this look in movies.

Aliens research

When coming up with a character type for ability sets i really wanted to do some kind of alien, i initially went with a lizard type of alien based on my animals research  I decided against this and did some research on types of aliens in other media first. I looked at movies like Alien and Predator, probably the two most well known aliens outside of the typical little grey man, one is a biological killing machine and the other is a technologically equipped hunter. I looked at the Asari from Mass effect, thinking that some kind of physic ability would be good for a mage archetype. A comic i read at the moment is Invincible, the character in image number 4, he is an alien with pretty typical super powers, as much as i would like to create a super hero i don't think it would fit into this games theme that well. The type that stood out to me the most was the symbiote, the ones from the SpiderMan comic and from the Dragon Ball Z cartoon. Both take on hosts or absorb people to gain strength.

1st Draft Ability Sets

These are the 1st drafts for my character ability sets, the third method of design i'm using to create characters. I did these over the Christmas period but I've held up on posting them here because they were done in a format in word that does not translate well to blogger. To avoid this i mocked up this kind of sci fi ish display for profiles. 

When creating these i found it hard to create the abilities out of nothing so i tried to create a rough theme or archetype for each set in order to create them, this worked much better. I also did some extra research to help me come up with some ideas that weren't in my previous research, mainly types of aliens from various media.

To help me decide which of these to refine and take forward i will be getting some peer feedback.

Research

These are the last two mood boards of my intended research, Mythology, fairy tales and fictional stories. I may do more in the future if i need additional research but this is everything to fuel my initial designs and ideas.

it's hard to look at mythology without looking at various interpretations of it, movies have used mythology to either base or inspire their designs on for ages. I'd like to refrain from doing direct interpretations of mythological characters and rather just use them as influences. Norse gods are always a good one but the Thor movie had the whole gods are actually advanced alien races thing going and i don't want to go with something so obvious and cliche. A lot of Greek gods and monsters have been used in games too, God of War was kind of based around it and the game Smite has the god theme going on.

This is my quite small mood board of a select few fairy tales and fictional novels i know of that i felt could be useful inspiration. Red Riding hood is one of the better known fairy tales and one that is ripe for interpretation, it has been done many times before and will be done many times again. Aladdin was one i didn't  expect to use, it is an unusual one but the genie is what attracted me to it. Pinocchio is also an unusual one considering it's subject matter but i had the idea from this one, this game is somewhat futuristic in style, and i figured what was Pinocchio if not a wooden robot becoming self aware.  

Darren Shan's Demonatta series is one of my favorite stories, it has demons, werewolves, mages, ancient guardians and more, i don't want to rip things off, well i kind of do, the characters are awesome but other people are already doing things from books so i'll just be taking ques and inspiration. Sea of ghosts has many interesting character types in it, psychics, strange kinds of technomancers, human warriors, warriors who see through some kind of magic knife and more that i won't spoil. Lord of the Rings is a well known story, what i want to take from it is the types of races.

Character lore drafts

I haven't posted in a while, i haven't been able to, every time i came onto blogger my anti virus would tell me that something I've posted on here had a virus on it so i wasn't able to get on. To my knowledge it's gone now so here something I've wanted to put up for a while. 

I've done 5 initial character lore drafts, each one has been inspired in someway by the research I've done, there is currently nothing visual as that's not the point, at this sage it is just small profile write up of characters i could potentially flesh out into a character design and ability story board. 

First of i created the game lore, just a quite paragraph to help frame the other lore profiles. The game world and it's theme were established during my old environment artwork and research stage that was eventually change, it did however help me get to this point to i just consider it a part of the process.

Game World Lore: The games setting is that a being who can control time, space and dimensions pulls together the great champions from all planets, all universes and all times and places them on a world this being created. The beings name closely resembles the word Warden from our language, thus has come to be known as “The Warden of Worlds”. The warden brings these champions together on this world and summons them to an arena on the planets moon where they battle on teams of five.

Name: Targe,

Race: Human male

Home: Earth

Time: 2349

Dimension: Alternate

Lore: Born in a world already a wasteland, Targe grew up in a community of hostile scavengers and tinkering psychos. Amongst the wreckage of the old world Targe ran around gathering up odds and ends figuring out how to make them work, fitting them together, reverse engineering and re-engineering. He created gadgets to help make clean water, gather food, give light and even some for self-defence, his world was uncivilized but not without war.

Once fully grown Targe was a well-known mechanic and artisan of the wasteland, he had created unique weapons and armour to defend himself and his family. One day his little community he had brought so much civility and technology too was lay siege upon by a large army of raiders, scavengers and mutants. Targe armed his fellow people with what weapons and defensive tools he could to try and stave off the attack. His people were not fighters, they were torn apart and most would left either with nothing once again or left without their lives, Targe lost his family but found his purpose. He set to work with what he knew, he gathered every useful tech he could find and formed an arsenal that encased him. He lay in wait for the return of the raiders; once they came he stood alone at the entrance of his junkyard village and lay waste to the savages attempting to defile his home once again. Using his tailored tinkerings he crushed the violent outlanders and reformed his village into a fully functional city created from the wreckage of the old towns.

This character lore profile was inspired by the trash city environment i looked at in he environment stage of the project, i thought a character like this may look quite interesting and fit into the kind of mixed sci-fi feeling theme this game will use.

Name: Endrea

Race: Demon

Home: ??????

Time: N/A

Dimension: Demon plane

Lore: Endrea is a demon master in charge of her own realm in the demon plane, a revolting creature of corruption; she has meddled with humans from the background for as long as mankind has been around. Endrea is a mix of nightmarish forms from the minds of humans and the slender sultry forms of a seductive human woman. Endrea instills fear in the hearts of anyone she reveals herself to, luckily her sadistic nature lends itself to taunting and twisting the souls of people from a far.

Endrea was taken from her realm and thrust into a real world she was not accustomed to, like many she was enraged at first, not something you want to do to a demon. However she quickly cemented herself as a powerful being in this new world and used her corruptible abilities to elevate her to an almost royal status in this unusual new world. She is now residing in her own dark city with corrupt warriors guarding it.

This one was inspired by a series of novels called the Demonatta that i researched, I've yet to put threat research up actually but it should be up soon now that i can access my blog again. This character is probably the one i like the least out of the five I've done, i just don't think that she fits that well thematically, into the game. I could be wrong, i'd like to get some feedback on these but i doubt i will develop this one.

Name: Deva Rudra

Race: Elemental

Home: Gaia

Time: Unkown

Dimension: Alternate

Lore: There is a world where life is more than mortal, where the rules of the world are carried out by elemental powers. Beings that embody the powers of nature carry out penance, retribution and the will of the world. One elemental more powerful than the rest, Deva Rudra bend many elements to its will, this constantly shifting being has cared for its world for longer than time is known. Those who have come to plunder beautiful riches of the world have been met with devastating forces of nature, if nature can really be to blame.

Deva Rudra was pulled from Gaia by the warden with great outrage, thrown onto this new dark planet cured with technology and manipulative intent Deva Rudra harnessed the elements of this new planet and vented its rage upon it. Once Deva Rudra’s rage had calmed it was now a different being, darker, vengeful and much more fearsome.

This character was created after researching some mythology and fictional books. I quite like this one as i would like to make sure that i have a range of characters from a range of places as that is the theme, i just worry that they may look out of place on this new sci-fi world setting. Last Man Standing by Dan Luvisi is a great point of reference for this.

Name: Lodus

Race: Unknown

Home: Three Horn Valley

Time: 14506

Dimension: Alternate

Lore: Lodus is the last of his kind, a brutal warrior of a race gone before anyone had discovered it, and he will not speak of them or how he came to be the last one alive. Lodus is a large being, quite clearly not human but still humanoid, he towers over the average man. Lodus is adorned in armour unlike any other, armour that seems to almost be a part of him. Ridges, shells and horns give him beetle like aesthetic that only makes the mystery that is Lodus all the more perplexing.

Lodus is well known in his own universe, his legend precedes him and even when torn from his previous world and placed into this new one he is still known and still feared. Lodus brandishes a weapon as dark as the armour that covers him, too large for a human to wield yet he swings it with one hand. If anyone has heard a story about Lodus, it is how if he chooses to use both hands, you won’t be coming out of the fight alive.

Lodus now resides on this new planet, remaining in solitude when not being called to the arena by the Warden.

This is one of my favorite lore characters, the inspiration is quite obviously insects, beetles in particular. I really like the visuals of having armour that looks like animals, wolf helms and such. I also think it's gives a bunch of descriptive visual ques to work from.

Name: Norah

Race: Meta Human

Home: New Earth

Time: 4132

Dimension: Standard

Lore:

Norah is one of many new breeds of human that discovered they had new abilities after the entire human race was inoculated to counteract a destructive plague. This plague was threatening to wipe out the human population on Earth and thus the world had to act, they injected everyone they could with the “cure” but it was never an instant cure, it would only be taken on by their offspring. Leaving the hazardous ruined planet behind, those who had been inoculated and were moved to the New Earth to start fresh. New Earth was a plan by the world to make a new colony to help the over populated planet, it is widely believed now that the plague was in fact manufactured by the world governments to facilitate this change of planets. What they could not foresee is that the newly birthed children of the inoculated would become more than human.

As the children grew they were found to have outstanding abilities, some hidden, and some plain to see. Levitation, high speed running and telepathy were some of the more common and excepted abilities, these people became known as the Meta Humans. Though they were not the only ones, the less accepted were the ones that were physically changed, overly muscular hulks, multiple limbs, armoured skin and many others who were no less powerful or important than the Meta Humans, but like with all societies there are outcasts. These were called the Sub-meta Humans.

Norah is a Meta Human unlike any other; she has abilities of her own but can also steal the abilities of the last person she killed. She found this out when she accidentally killed her father, ask her now and she’ll say he deserved it but either way it led her into a new life. Word spread fast once people found her using her father’s stolen ability, a group of assassins for hire called Meta Mortis took Norah in and trained her as one of them. Norah is now a powerful and renowned Meta Human assassin, the most feared woman on New Earth.

This is my final character lore that i did, it is also one of my favorites and one i had the most fun with. Whilst making it though i did worry that it was a little too close to an X-Men character story, it is a first draft and can be changed and developed but it is a concern. The character and her abilities came from thinking about the Greek myth research i did, the best visual examples i could get were from movies most of the time, she came from the woman that share an eye.