Thanks for this video, Tim. As a comic artist it's easy to get (negatively) influenced by the overwhelming representation that concept art ideas have on the art world, as a whole. I mean - of course we can learn a lot from the works of the great names like Nico Marlet, it's a gold mine of inspiration and good ideas. But sometimes it feels as if you cannot attempt character design before having attended all the Schoolism classes on the topic and strictly stick to those classical rules. This and the over-celebration of the "Artstation frontpage" style bring a general feel of "same-y", where a lot of characters feel churned out of the same repeated game patterns also in comics and animation. Learning to rely a bit more on intuition, case-by-case study and nuance can go a long way in making a personal project shine through the crowd. You gave me a lot more conviction in that. I am really looking forward to future videos about creating personal projects. Cheers! P.S. is there a Discord server tied to the channel? It would be a great way to bring artists committed to line and color together.
I think this is why most of my favorite characters are from books..not movies or shows. You get that internal dialogue. You have time to see their development and really understand their motives. One of my favorites is Professor Snape. It took thousands of pages for us to learn that he wasn’t quite the villain that he portrayed, and it changes the way you see every interaction he had with Harry. Another example is Scout and her father’s relationship in Go Set A Watchman….it forces you to see more complexity in To Kill a Mockingbird. I mostly enjoy backgrounds, especially interiors like bedrooms and retail spaces. I would love to hear how character complexity can be better represented in those.
Snape is such a great example to pull. I enjoy making backgrounds as well and honestly a lot of what Tim said can be applied to backgrounds. Think of them like a character, or an extension of them. There should be the facade of who they present themselves as with little details that contrast or deepen that first read. Is it messy or clean? What objects are in the space and why? What is the color palette and what does that represent about the character? Is it well lit or dim, or maybe hit with a strong colored light source? What materials are present? Backgrounds are a great way to pull out that internal character, especially in places like a bedroom where they can be a more authentic version of themselves since it's a space that's truly theirs. What do they prioritize in that space? If its a background that doesn't "belong" to a character like somewhere out in nature, think of how that background can help or oppose the character in the narrative moment they are in. Hope that helps!
@@DanielWillardson thank you! That last line was what I was wondering about the most since the character isn’t likely to personalize an environment that isn’t their own, but the considerations you mentioned are very helpful.
I think as visual character designers it's worth introducing another instance of the 1,2,3 read into your designs. Read 1; would be the big shapes (silhouettes colours etc) Read 2; the clothing and trappings of their trade or status etc and read 4; the added extra elements that add complexity to them, that ask some questions of the viewer about the deeper narrative of the character. To take the fisherman character you mentioned, Read one would likely be the big forearms, wide stance, broad back eg, Read 2; the tattoos, fish hooks, nets etc, but then what if read 3 was a small teddy bear on his belt, a broach or neckless thats out of character for the rest of the set up and design some deeper ideas into them. Maybe he takes a keep-sake of a daughter he has to leave behind on his trips and the teddy is a reminder, maybe he collects things that get dragged up in the nets, maybe with the broach or neckless he used to be a person of great wealth but lost it and had to join a trade and keeps the neckless as a reminder. I think there are lots of fun ways to be able to use all these elements and give different people different levels of information. I mainly do stand alone illustrations and so its both important to me to make the image interesting enough to look at either multiple times or for longer durations and so these things help people discover more.
I think this is the discussion I've needed in character design spaces for a long time, but I didn't know how to describe what was bugging me. A lot of online character design instruction is very externally focused because when you work in the industry it isn't your job to be a writer, so none of the creators focus on that side. It's all about landing that job. Even when instructors focus on building your own projects, its for the purposes of eventually landing a job in an industry space. Calling it "5th grade reading level" design might be a bit harsh, but it isn't inaccurate either. I don't think this is a bad thing on its own, but we have enough of that side of the conversation right now and I appreciate you leaning the other way. We all need to make a living, but we shouldn't lose the search for deeper stories along the way. Don't get me wrong though, I love a good solid external design that looks cool and sings that clear note. I think some of the strongest examples are the original Overwatch lineup from Arnold Tsang, who learned his principles from Capcom and the Street Fighter lineup which is also very externally strong. Those games know the interaction is simple so they aim for an incredibly high bar on external design and meet it. Any internal nuance is fleshed out in writings that are separate from the game itself, for better or worse. I personally really enjoy games that push for that contrast of external design and character action. I think the Dishonored series is incredibly solid, particularly in how the costuming integrates with the larger world of Dunwall and the narrative around it. Sergey Kolesov, Piotr Jablonski, and Cedric Peyravernay did some incredible work on that series. Hades is also a property that balances and contrasts its external design and character actions extremely well, rewarding the player more and more the longer they play and the more interactions they have with the NPCs. Not to beat a dead horse at this point, but I think this is where Concord failed to capture people with its designs. I wanted them to succeed in their more nuanced, Moebius inspired style but the external designs were too weak to give time for the nuance to show itself. I do think something was lost in the transfer from the 2D concept art to the 3D models. The concept art feels much stronger. The traditions of the genre clashed with the designs they were trying to hit, and it unfortunately just lead to confusion among the player base about what each character did. A lot of TH-cam art instructors tried to fix this by going hard on the external read, but in the process they dumbed down or eliminated the nuance/internal read the developers wanted, leaning into that fisherman design sensibility you mentioned. It isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but Its easy to "fix" a design when you ignore the original parameters the developers were shooting for. It feels like the takeaway everyone got from the failure of that game wasn't to do nuance in simple games better, but to stick to simple external design for more simple games. It's a tried and true method for that genre so I won't say its wrong, I just wish people were more enthusiastic to endeavor for something more nuanced in that space. Maybe it's simply an issue of always making sure to use the right application of internal/external for the genre you are working on, but I worry that would lead to stagnation in thinking in design spaces. Everyone would just stick to their genre lane and not try to push the bounds of what's possible. I think there's room to push nuance and internal design in every genre as long as it's done thoughtfully and with skill.
I think creating nuanced characters is a lost art, especially in video games. Since a lot of characters are built to be either jack of all trades or to be customized upon by players. Lot of manga/anime forgoes nuance altogether and starts of with the every-man/girl trope, but reacting to the world/situation from the get go.
One thing that always throws me off immediately is the appearance of wealth and luxury in adventure games, especially in clothes... like Dragon Age for example, the original doesn't have much of a problem. But the last two games looks like every party member spent a million gold to dress for the ball. Or another funny one is... Tales of Arise I think? The main cast are constantly whining about being "slaves" when they're dressed more wealthy than anyone else in the game. :^)
Thanks for this video, Tim. As a comic artist it's easy to get (negatively) influenced by the overwhelming representation that concept art ideas have on the art world, as a whole.
I mean - of course we can learn a lot from the works of the great names like Nico Marlet, it's a gold mine of inspiration and good ideas. But sometimes it feels as if you cannot attempt character design before having attended all the Schoolism classes on the topic and strictly stick to those classical rules. This and the over-celebration of the "Artstation frontpage" style bring a general feel of "same-y", where a lot of characters feel churned out of the same repeated game patterns also in comics and animation.
Learning to rely a bit more on intuition, case-by-case study and nuance can go a long way in making a personal project shine through the crowd. You gave me a lot more conviction in that.
I am really looking forward to future videos about creating personal projects. Cheers!
P.S. is there a Discord server tied to the channel? It would be a great way to bring artists committed to line and color together.
I think this is why most of my favorite characters are from books..not movies or shows. You get that internal dialogue. You have time to see their development and really understand their motives. One of my favorites is Professor Snape. It took thousands of pages for us to learn that he wasn’t quite the villain that he portrayed, and it changes the way you see every interaction he had with Harry. Another example is Scout and her father’s relationship in Go Set A Watchman….it forces you to see more complexity in To Kill a Mockingbird.
I mostly enjoy backgrounds, especially interiors like bedrooms and retail spaces. I would love to hear how character complexity can be better represented in those.
Snape is such a great example to pull. I enjoy making backgrounds as well and honestly a lot of what Tim said can be applied to backgrounds. Think of them like a character, or an extension of them. There should be the facade of who they present themselves as with little details that contrast or deepen that first read. Is it messy or clean? What objects are in the space and why? What is the color palette and what does that represent about the character? Is it well lit or dim, or maybe hit with a strong colored light source? What materials are present? Backgrounds are a great way to pull out that internal character, especially in places like a bedroom where they can be a more authentic version of themselves since it's a space that's truly theirs. What do they prioritize in that space? If its a background that doesn't "belong" to a character like somewhere out in nature, think of how that background can help or oppose the character in the narrative moment they are in. Hope that helps!
Wow, I was also thinking of Snape while I watched the video. He really is a great example.
@@DanielWillardson thank you! That last line was what I was wondering about the most since the character isn’t likely to personalize an environment that isn’t their own, but the considerations you mentioned are very helpful.
I think as visual character designers it's worth introducing another instance of the 1,2,3 read into your designs. Read 1; would be the big shapes (silhouettes colours etc) Read 2; the clothing and trappings of their trade or status etc and read 4; the added extra elements that add complexity to them, that ask some questions of the viewer about the deeper narrative of the character. To take the fisherman character you mentioned, Read one would likely be the big forearms, wide stance, broad back eg, Read 2; the tattoos, fish hooks, nets etc, but then what if read 3 was a small teddy bear on his belt, a broach or neckless thats out of character for the rest of the set up and design some deeper ideas into them. Maybe he takes a keep-sake of a daughter he has to leave behind on his trips and the teddy is a reminder, maybe he collects things that get dragged up in the nets, maybe with the broach or neckless he used to be a person of great wealth but lost it and had to join a trade and keeps the neckless as a reminder.
I think there are lots of fun ways to be able to use all these elements and give different people different levels of information. I mainly do stand alone illustrations and so its both important to me to make the image interesting enough to look at either multiple times or for longer durations and so these things help people discover more.
i always enjoy your videos
I think this is the discussion I've needed in character design spaces for a long time, but I didn't know how to describe what was bugging me. A lot of online character design instruction is very externally focused because when you work in the industry it isn't your job to be a writer, so none of the creators focus on that side. It's all about landing that job. Even when instructors focus on building your own projects, its for the purposes of eventually landing a job in an industry space. Calling it "5th grade reading level" design might be a bit harsh, but it isn't inaccurate either. I don't think this is a bad thing on its own, but we have enough of that side of the conversation right now and I appreciate you leaning the other way. We all need to make a living, but we shouldn't lose the search for deeper stories along the way.
Don't get me wrong though, I love a good solid external design that looks cool and sings that clear note. I think some of the strongest examples are the original Overwatch lineup from Arnold Tsang, who learned his principles from Capcom and the Street Fighter lineup which is also very externally strong. Those games know the interaction is simple so they aim for an incredibly high bar on external design and meet it. Any internal nuance is fleshed out in writings that are separate from the game itself, for better or worse.
I personally really enjoy games that push for that contrast of external design and character action. I think the Dishonored series is incredibly solid, particularly in how the costuming integrates with the larger world of Dunwall and the narrative around it. Sergey Kolesov, Piotr Jablonski, and Cedric Peyravernay did some incredible work on that series. Hades is also a property that balances and contrasts its external design and character actions extremely well, rewarding the player more and more the longer they play and the more interactions they have with the NPCs.
Not to beat a dead horse at this point, but I think this is where Concord failed to capture people with its designs. I wanted them to succeed in their more nuanced, Moebius inspired style but the external designs were too weak to give time for the nuance to show itself. I do think something was lost in the transfer from the 2D concept art to the 3D models. The concept art feels much stronger. The traditions of the genre clashed with the designs they were trying to hit, and it unfortunately just lead to confusion among the player base about what each character did.
A lot of TH-cam art instructors tried to fix this by going hard on the external read, but in the process they dumbed down or eliminated the nuance/internal read the developers wanted, leaning into that fisherman design sensibility you mentioned. It isn't necessarily the wrong approach, but Its easy to "fix" a design when you ignore the original parameters the developers were shooting for. It feels like the takeaway everyone got from the failure of that game wasn't to do nuance in simple games better, but to stick to simple external design for more simple games. It's a tried and true method for that genre so I won't say its wrong, I just wish people were more enthusiastic to endeavor for something more nuanced in that space.
Maybe it's simply an issue of always making sure to use the right application of internal/external for the genre you are working on, but I worry that would lead to stagnation in thinking in design spaces. Everyone would just stick to their genre lane and not try to push the bounds of what's possible. I think there's room to push nuance and internal design in every genre as long as it's done thoughtfully and with skill.
I believe there is room indeed, and that is what can make a project pop and differentiate itself from the mass.
Can't wait to give this one a watch!
I think creating nuanced characters is a lost art, especially in video games. Since a lot of characters are built to be either jack of all trades or to be customized upon by players. Lot of manga/anime forgoes nuance altogether and starts of with the every-man/girl trope, but reacting to the world/situation from the get go.
One thing that always throws me off immediately is the appearance of wealth and luxury in adventure games, especially in clothes... like Dragon Age for example, the original doesn't have much of a problem. But the last two games looks like every party member spent a million gold to dress for the ball.
Or another funny one is... Tales of Arise I think? The main cast are constantly whining about being "slaves" when they're dressed more wealthy than anyone else in the game. :^)