Hyperrealism combined with "average looking characters" can also cause these characters to look uglier than they should as a result of the tech being unable to do what it needs to - lighting and shadows on faces make them look flat or deformed, facial animations twist faces in weird ways, skin and hair shaders make them look pasty and unnatural, and so on. The raw working models probably look pretty good before exported to the game. If they were to take a step back from hyperrealism and apply some stylization to the characters that works within the technical constraints, like what was done with the idealized doll-like Eastern designs shown, they would likely work better.
I'm also an advocate for 'the art style needs to match the game'. It makes sense to have realistic looking characters in a game like the last of us, since it's a realistic 'what if' scenario. While I won't consider Concord a realistic game until the day I see robots, felines, reptile dudes and normal humans jumping meters high through the streets shooting each other... if you combine that with hyperrealism makes it look uncanny.
japan doesnt seem to have a problem with making realistic-looking characters out of real people even on last gen consoles(yakuza 0 on ps3 for example). its not technical limitations that forces western artists to make female characters ugly, its a political statement
Yep. Art Is subjective but it also follows rules, and we should stop just spreading toxic positivity every time just to cheer on everything, cause that's not healthy.
there are 2 issues that im seeing 1. some amateurs say that anything can be creative and then they do weird shiet. At that point, rules, basics, foundations are all torn apart and creativity is a perfect excuse for lack of effort, research and improvement 2. people compliment each other all the times, now that is indeed good but i think some people just say nice things and avoid criticizing simply cause they wanna avoid troubles and responsibility. In that case, it's basically selfish
ngl the "soup kitchen bouncer" redesign looks so good!! I love the idea that a medic/healer character does so by providing yummy food to their team mates
@@TylerEdlin84 ya know, that would actually be an interesting plot. have all the characters be practically nobodies. while an ACTUAL team of badass, scrappy space heroes go on their ventures. maybe have the ending be bittersweet and more character focus, as these characters don't defeat the big bad. but the insatiability of inadequacy within themselves.
Concord was so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes to the point of forgetting that under realistic design there should be form follows function principle applied first. If it's moves via jet propulsion, there should be obvious jet propulsion unit, if it's a tank then the obvious thickness and coverage of the armor should be emphasized, etc. It was like someone was trying to design a scifi heavy tank, but it ended looking like a light recon car because they did not want to stereotype.
Concord was woke, period. Go woke go broke. I know it sounds really dumb and right wing, but that phrase summarizes the last 5 years of entertainment, where studios are making content for an imaginary audience.
It's like that one Family Guy skit of Peter in the jungle in a clown outfit, except it's being played unironically and it's expecting you to take it entirely seriously.
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 For worse or even worse, this is the the root of the problem. The scale of failure Concord achieved is too big for it to attributable to just any one team or department. A failure of this magnitude can only be achieved when the entire whole is sick and nonfunctioning, and nothing infects as virulently as ideology. Besides, the devs social media activity, along with the leaks we've been getting pretty much confirm this: ideology was being put before quality pretty much the entire way.
concord really failed to make characters memorable, i mean if you make a sci fi game, it has to be a sci fi game, if its cyber punk it has to be it... If you are inbetween lean more toward one, but here the game is really unreconizable, no one can relate to it, such a waste of money
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 famous failed woke slop Baldur's Gate 3, Hades1 & 2, Disco Elysium and Elden Ring. But you're right in one thing, it does sound really dumb and right wing.
I like how you kept Daws thickness in every iteration while still making his design far more appealing, I've seen too many AI redesigns that just turn him into a generic skinny guy and call it a day. (Plague Doctor one goes hard) The soup kitchen bouncer design made me smile, that is such a cool idea for a space western hero shooter medic
Very much agree. The space-western plague doc is an awesome design, I would totally pick that character when I first loaded up a game with him in it. I feel thickness on a medic can be cool if the art-style works. I imagine the new design buffed up so he can carry wounded soldiers to safety more easily, and sometimes stress-eats while waiting to hear if a comrade survived.
One thing the Concord disaster has done has taught people a lot about art design, art styles, and using visuals to communicate a character's personality or their play style. It's not just a character being "sexy" but color schemes, implementing shapes, silhouettes, line flow, contrasting sizes, etc. that make a character look interesting and appealing, that make people look at that character and think, "I want to play that" or "I want to fight that." It's not just Concord's designs are "ugly" but they also look bland and weak. Roka looks incomplete, like a generic NPC and not a major character. Daw looks like he's geared up to clean his grandmother's garage. Teo looks like he's messing around with airsoft guns. Concord characters do not look empowering. They look like a bunch of random people wearing costumes for Halloween, a bunch of losers. It's the opposite of Main Character Energy. And to make these characters turn out like this would have required such an overwhelming denial of Marketing 101, required so many people in charge to have their heads in the sand, that it is almost beyond belief.
I think because they have gone far away from what people are used to seeing. I mean they really created something new but people's eyes are just not adapted to new different stuff hard to accept something not usually seen in real life nor games. I think it is just like a habit of holding on familiar styles that connect more to reality.
@@Hidden-1-3 I mean, you can still do that. The Zeno Clash series, Kenshi, and Cruelty Squad are all games with incredibly ugly styles, Cruelty Squad is especially designed to attack your senses including the music. But in those games, it works to fit the setting and the worldbuilding and the mood and vibes. The choices of making the characters and world as far away and as as grotesque in those games from what anyones used to seeing was a carefully made choice that they put effort to make it pull their weights in other ways. I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested.
@@Hidden-1-3 The Concord designs ARE different from what people are used to seeing, true. But there are several important reasons WHY you see certain design choices repeatedly used. Just because something is different does not mean it is something that can work. Things like having proper color contrasts or distinguished silhouettes for videogame characters help players quickly identify those characters - something very important in a hero shooter. Concord's artist were so proud of thinking outside of the box that they forgot why the box exists in the first place. Take the movie Alien. The design of the xenomorph was unlike what people expected for a movie monster design. But it worked because its design still looks dangerous, it invokes sexual violence without being literal. However, if they had gone with a design like Elmo from Sesame Street it would have completely changed the tone of the movie and become absurd rather than scary. To be different you still need to make it work, and Concord failed that. Being something new does not automatically guarantee, or even deserve, success.
@@billbillson6779 I like your view 👍🏼 it's like what's happening now with black ops 6 zombies. The OG fans are so upset with the new map (liberty falls) the aura of the map doesn't feel like you are playing a zombie game it's bright in a daytime which they tried to make different map from all other maps which used to be dark, foggy, gloomy. But most of the fans like playing zombies for its dark scary mood the game failed at this point of making something different because people just like what they like, they don't want something different just always ask for the same refusing anything that is not like what they expect and familiar with zombies/ dark. Any change in the world is hard to be accepted It takes years and years to change people's view , interest , and culture. Because any new things don't exist in your memory so you wouldn't really communicate with them. I don't know, Maybe I'm wrong, but this is my view of this subject ( to make something different accepted you have to repeat it so many times so it will be familiar in people's eyes to communicate with it, should it be appealing? Indeed, but in which aspects? you have to put appeal strongly in one aspect either clothes, environment, or characters. Sorry for the long talk thank you.
I think “ugly” or average looking characters can work depending on what you’re going for, there are times when having a more average looking protagonist can fit into the setting and theme of a game. I mean even looking at the UK or Europe, they usually depict very average looking people in their media and it is still very popular there. Another good example is Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie in Sex And The City, people swore up and down that she was ugly and unappealing, yet she was extraordinarily popular in the 90s, her appearance didn’t effect that. I think generally that variety is the spice of life and that It would be equally boring if every character was super attractive or if they were all average looking or ugly. I also think that even though some characters are made unappealing for political reasons, politics isn’t always the reason, there could be many reasons for that decision
I think ugly character can work if comedy is mixed in, ("just like in real life?")otherwise it become very difficult to choose the ugly over the pretty, everyone like pretty things even tho pretty and ugly is very broad
@@Romelus3d personality is a big matter here too. if someone is pretty but has a bad personality or you don't like it it won't really matter you may choose the ugly over the pretty one it all returns and refers to reality how you like people in real life it also applies in games.
Noone is saying every character in your game has to be beautiful. But to have 90 percent of your heros looking like someone from Walmart doesn't really make you want to play as any
I don't think it's strictly making characters "uglier". It's making characters mediocre. Games are less so an idealized reality than they are an exaggerated reality. An ugly character who is exaggerated and has the ugliness cranked up is still interesting. A character that looks like some guy you'd see at Walmart...isn't. Overwatch has its fair share of ugly characters, for example. And they're nothing like people you would see in real life. And that makes them interesting. That makes them appealing.
Yeah I agree pretty much with that all. I just don’t like when a designer is forced to create less appealing characters because having high beauty standards offends others. This is actually a thing that’s been rampant in games for several years now.
@TylerEdlin84 Yeah I agree with that. Especially when you have traits that are conventionally attractive. It doesn't feel good to be told something is unrealistic and unhealthy and harmful and you look at it and it looks like you. Feels like insecure women thinking they have to put others down to elevate themselves.
I think the biggest problem is that the character designs in Concord are not just bland, but outright counter-intuitive. Daw (Soup Kitchen Bouncer) being a dedicated healer, or a tank/healer hybrid (I've heard both) is not indicated at all by his design; he's got nothing that suggests he's got any healing capacity, and his tankiness is indicated only by him being fat, except he's "realistic" fat, which doesn't convey tankiness the way someone more exaggerated like Roadhog does. It's so bad, I feel like I can compare it to Street Fighter: imagine that your next opponent is E. Honda, the sumo wrestler, and when the fight begins, he starts throwing out Chun-Li's moveset, entirely based around kicking. Or Karin, a tiny young woman, using Zangief's moves, when the latter is a professional wrestler the size of a bear.
Daw's design as a tanky healer could have been fixed with simply giving him a white coat with a red heart on it, a mechanical backpack to house his devices, some armor plating on his arms and chest, and probably change his weapon from a generic rifle to an arm mounted device or from the backpack a shoulder mounted device. With that you convey his playstyle, he is a tech based healer that can take some damage before he goes down through the universal color and symbol, the presence of devices, and the presence of armor plating.
Honestly, even those Street Fighter examples sound like they could be good thanks to the comedic contrast. The huge character having a swift and agile moveset, while the smaller, more frail-looking character brawls like a gorilla. Though the difference is that those characters you named already have striking designs unlike Concord. So we loop back into their bland appearances being a huge issue.
Sometimes you have to hit the bottom before going up again. Many developers are right at the bottom right now due to a focus on revenue, relying on technology, and ignoring the fan base. Good writers, artists, creative people make good art, as evident as that may be, it seems the industry has forgotten that.
Yeah, i think so, we are about to hit a big boom in good gsmes again, thanks to both devs and gamers being fed up with leftist agenda nonsense plus clueless producers.
Elements: texture Design: unity Animation: appeal Gestalt: continuity Art: composition All has some indication thdt the audience isn't annoyed at least and infatuated at most. And other words could have been used as well.
you know what i noticed is that the entire roster has no "evil" characters. like, for multiplayer genres like this usually there's a good faction and an evil faction but in this game, everyone seems to be the good guy. like they can't even make their characters evil for some reason.
One of the most bittersweet parts about Concord is following artists like Adrian Bush on Twitter and seeing the absolutely AWESOME classic sci-fi designs for environments and spaceships. The suits at the top of Sony completely mismanaged this project from top to bottom, and the rumoured cost of the development is classic scope creep, inability to iterate, refusal to look at feedback because the bossman says things are great. Anthem was exactly like this, too - cool promise, good start in terms of designs, then dropping the ball in every part of the design because they were forbidden to even mention their main competitor - Destiny. It's completely unprofessional - yet that's how the corporate world works. Money talks, but sometimes the wrong kind of money is doing the talking...
Agree, except with the anthem part. Anthen just tried to get in a market that was already exploited, too late. It also did not help that gameplay was extremely boring, but the art was quite amazing imo.
I agree with a lot of the analysis in the video except at 10:00 I think regular looking characters can be fun & interesting to play if design & appeal where actually applied skillfully It’s a games job to be interesting or engaging in some way, the industry is definitely dropping the ball on that. That being said I think we’re witnessing the growing pains of an industry trying to explore & figure out what that means without relying heavily on cultural beauty expectations. it’s an artist job to show us what we don’t know we want yet & from personal experience I’ve been surprised - character designs from disco elysium, hades 2 all characters are hot & varied in proportion. I’m sure others can mention other examples I’ve missed I’m worried that we are letting the status quo limit our imagination for what can be beautiful
Completely agree with you, and I don't want character design discussions between artists to be co-opted by this gender-war fueled argument between "beautiful sexualized eastern female character designs" vs "unattractive and thus worthless western character designs". And I think your worry is right on point. It's not everyone's job to critique beauty standards, but it doesn't mean designs who critique them have no space in our industry. Striving for excellence can also mean striving to understand more than we currently do. Disco Elysium is an amazing example of that. And the designs work so well because shape language and narrative/personality was taken into account for all characters.
@@onigirls exactly Eastern design are primarily conventionally beautiful but doing that constantly can become a crutch. Like you mentioned - actually employing design techniques like shape design, color and how it contributes to the personality of the characters is a more valuable critique to me than culture war bs Art has evolved through the centuries by exploring what was conventionally ignored from paintings of royalty & noblemen to paintings capturing the lives of common people neither is better than the other to me I like the full breadth of life to be explored I think it’s perfectly fine to dislike a work based on its failings and there are many!!lol, but to say those failings primarily comes from the trend of adding diverse characters!? I can’t help but read that as shallow & simplistic There are many pieces of media that I like that don’t match up with my worldview or with messages that I completely disagree with. It wasn’t the creator’s addition of their beliefs that could’ve been a failing but the lack of skill in communicating their beliefs in an interesting & competent way. After all, media with messaging has always existed throughout history
Listen, you can complain about beauty/ charm standards if you want, but at the end of the day, if the client wants an appealing design for players to purchase skins, as designers we usually need to incorporate charm or outright power/ masculinity for a male character & sensuality/ appeal for a female character. They can also have cutesy charm (think about Nintendo games- they follow the rule of cute). Sure, you can make something super unique & you may love it - I’m not saying it’s not good or artistically valuable to be creative. But ultimately when we’re asked to draw a design that’s going to be sold, we have to take into account what the majority wants.
@@scarletsletter4466 you’re right full stop Also in addition is it okay to ask if your argument is shortsighted, I don’t mean that in a patronizing way, I’m saying doesn’t it depend on your ultimate goal? I want more diverse representations of beauty that is my ultimate goal & I know that many people want that too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it shouldn’t be earned. I want the regular everyday people to be shown as they are in an interesting way & I also want the best version of everyday people to be displayed as well, it is human nature to strive to be better and for our ideal image of ourselves. One of the many problems I find when interacting with opposing views on this is that they don’t seem to believe that there is beauty in the average diverse range of the everyday person, I believe that’s the first question to ask If you don’t like it it’s ok to say so, my ideal reaction is “you haven’t convinced me yet” not “it’s trash don’t bother” If I’m trying to do my job & a client asks for the usual of course I’m going to do that, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t ultimately look for other avenues to push the envelope and expand my imagination and hopefully that of others as well
Even plain and "ugly" characters can work when you lean into them. Soldier 76 is just "old white guy with a gun an leather jacket." But it makes him stand out next to the tiny korean teenager in a plugsuit piloting an anime mech. Junkrat and Roadhog arent exactly designs that scream "I wanna f#%k that" but they fit big fat bruiser and manic tweaker archetypes to a T. Ana is well past her prime but they went for "wisened old woman" look instead of subverting it for "sexy granny" thing.
Love it or hate it, eastern companies like hoyoverse and others of the gatcha genre are making infinite money on the strength of their character design alone. These games are held up entirely by the appeal of their attractive characters with entertaining personalities. Some of these games, infamously, basically play themselves. I think any aspiring character designer should spend time looking at the community discussion around these games to get a sense of just how much appealing character design effects people.
Sex sells, and nothing will ever change that. And that is fine and good because we are freaking animals with an evolutionary drive. No, you cant brainwash us to like women with stubble, penis and dressed like a trash bag.
If you want a good example of a game with attractive characters and entertaining personalities that have lively community discussion around them, look at which IP took the top spot in terms of the number of booths dedicated to it at Comiket C103 and C104.
Speaking of Eastern games, if you want a good example of a game with attractive characters and entertaining personalities that have lively community discussion around them, take a look at which IP took the top spot in terms of the number of booths dedicated to it at Comiket C103 and C104. I think you'll find it ticks all those boxes the best out of any IP in its market.
Some designers are trying to bring that back, a good example is Virgin Punk which will be out next year, and the creator of Cowboy Bebop’s new series. I agree it’s missing, but hopefully these steps put creative characters designs in the right step for anime at least.
I really dont mind the game like Final Fantasy that has realistic graphic but at the same time keep the OG design of em, attractive, and really good looking fantasy character a like.
When I was younger, when I played games that you could customize your character, I never once made them look like me. I always made them look like a made up character. A great physique, Awsome clothing (mostly like ninja designs) and glowing weapons. I always made them idealistic, not realistic. I dunno why the AAA industry is so hell bent on representation. Like I couldn't care less. I miss the days where things where more idealistic then trying to be realistic all the time.
It's not even good representation most of the time either. Like, make it fun and a good story that's cohesive and nobody would give a damn. Media in general is about having fun ffs, let's prioritize that first.
I agree sexuality should play a bigger role in "fanservicey" female characters' actual personalities instead of being an autopilot thing, but if we're gonna say "Lara's old design is impractical & would get in the way" that opens a gigantic can of worms if we're actually gonna be consistent. Link starts out in basically his pajamas in A Link to the Past & immediately faces off against highly armored guards, yet no one cares (remember, he was gonna go to sleep in that tunic). In Wind Waker & its spinoffs, not to mention the first half of Ocarina of Time, he's a small child pulling off things a small child absolutely couldn't. Also gauging how "ok" a sexualized design is based on character assertiveness honestly feels like a red herring & ends up artistically limiting in the long run. The real answers are "make sure a sexual design makes sense given the tone & context" & "sexualize male characters too", but Japan's been doing the latter for eons (some Tales male protagonists wear less than the women!) so the recent trend of Japanese creators "being careful about representation" based on western anglophone standards is a step back.
Absolutely agree on the last paragraph. It's why I call bull on the "sexist Japan" crap. Yeah, you have characters live Ivy or Judith, but have you *seen* Maxi and Yuri?!
When you brought up eastern vs western games, I agree that eastern games all look good but also they almost always look similar and have very bad same face syndrome and there outfits don’t have too much variety. But that’s just what I think but I would understand if someone thought differently
Exactly what I mean, relying too much on beauty expectations can be limiting & eventually overplayed I’ve mentioned before that artists from whatever industry can work to show us what we didn’t know we wanted
That's half true. It's true most of the resident evil female characters look like these, but they also have lady Alcina Dimitrescu, she is attractive in her own way, a very iconic character design.
I hard disagree with Asian character designs being similar looking and lacking outfit variety. So many of the games he showed are actually Japanese, Korean games . Bayonettas face and outfit looks nothing like Ashley from re4 and stellar blades eves face looks nothing like Zelda. Does princess peach and 2b from nier look anything like?
@@AliHamza-sv4ni Eve from Stellar Blade looks like a woman who's had one two many plastic surgeries. Especially when you compare her (and all the other female characters) to the male ones. I personally think Stellar Blade has awful character design because it's just not consistent.
Thanks so much for this video. I've been studying character design for the last year and this eloquently summarized so much of what I have been learning in a very clear and succint manner that helped me clarify a lot of core ideas. You are a great teacher.
When i play rpg's or any game that lets you choose a character (be it fighting games) i always pick the monster looking class. Because they are honestly just the coolest looking one most of the time, and i want to look cool in a video game. Yes, i like the ugly characters but concord has a different kind of "ugly" in it.
The problem is not that they're ugly, ugly or weird looking characters can have a place, especially depending on the character's intent or background. The problem is that they're ugly AND boring.
@@obsiangravel I think the problem is they are boring. They aren't even ugly, they look normal. They lack distinctive features, and that's what they desperately need.
@@obsiangravel it's not the ugg response Concord elicit from overall visual design, it's really eww. When played against the ochre, beige and virulent yellow/green/purple environment, I can't help but feel nauseated. Then add immersion breaking with everyone running like boys in female caricature bodies. The game is simply revolting in the inception level.
Tyler's design critiques are usually spot-on but I disagree with that point about characters lacking beauty in Western games. A girl not being dolled up or hot enough isn't rly a critique unless it's a part of the character's identity, like a succubus archetype similar to Evelynn, Ahri or Mileena (in some games). If it's a warrior/fighter woman, I don't see why she needs to be pretty. I like looking at pretty people, but I also love seeing that unconventional variety that makes me feel more connected to the characters and world. No hate btw, I just don't like this being posed as even in the same realm as something as vital as shape language, exaggeration etc 🙂
Yeah, I also don't mind characters not looking sexualized and if I would make a game myself, I would try to feature all types of people (if it makes sense for the game). But what I think went wrong in that regard with Concord is not only that they tried making all characters unappealing but they are all literally so much covered up as to not even show a bit of skin. Haymar for example is probably the one character that most people would agree that she looks appealing, but then they have her wearing something that covers everything below her head, even adding a collar so that nobody could get attracted to her for seeing to much skin and she stays below a certain value on a scale that is aplied to all female characters in the game (or general modern games). While the shroom head is allowed to show his blank 'shoulders' and the muscle guy even walks around topless. And as I said I don't mind characters not looking appealing in video games if it's not only to adhere to a certain agenda. What people seem to forget is that the design of characters isn't what they would look like or would wear on an everyday basis, but is a costume. And costumes should bring out the best in a person (or other humanoid characters) even if he naturally doesn't look that good. Or why do characters in every video game wear the same clothes even if it they go on an adventure that takes several years (unless it's a feature like customizing characters in gta or a necessity to provide contend in live service games)? On the one hand it's readability, as to not get confused, but first of all it's a design. That's why I think there's nothing wrong with characters not looking sexy as long as they are well designed (purpose of the design?, does it still look appealing / interesting), as long as it's not for the sole reason of not making them beautiful. If Concord would really try to be representative they should also include characters that are supposed to look good, because beautiful people do exist to. No hate btw., more of a general critic about concord characters' appeal design decisions 🙂
I'm a female player & I hate a majority of female characters in games. Please for the love of hell give us bloody variety 😅! Not long ago there was a leak with offical female merc for Team Fortress 2 and OMG I'D LOVE IF THOSE WERE IMPLEMENTED. They Genuinely LOOK GOOD. Even if they're a skin overlay they're a design WE ACTUALLY LIKE.
I'd agree to most of this but personally don't think Aloy is a good inclusion. Aloy is a hella pretty character, she is just not dolled up like videogame characters usually are. And according to her story and the world she lives in, it makes a lot of sense. That girl has to save the world, she does not have a lot of time to be "conventionally pretty" + Characterwise, she isn't a "typical" female too. She was really refreshing in a world full of oversexualized characters. (and yes, she can later wear make up , but it resembles warpaint. Also a very clever touch imo, compared to what culture they're leaning on in the entire game!). As much as I love Loish's design (as a big Loish fan, she was the main reason why I touched that game in the first place) I was glad that they made her the way she is. Her look is incredibly iconic and unique imo. If you say Aloy, I directly have a associaton to her and her reddish hair, her braids, the type of layered clothing she is wearing. How machinery parts are implemented in her clothing, the fur, the type of Material her dress might be made of etc. etc. I'm actually annoyed that a lot of Male gamers are like "Oh yeah well...she could have been prettier" and totally miss the mark on her. Horizon Zero Dawn DOES have other pretty characters too. One that comes to mind is Petra. Or Talahna (who is this pretty architype with heavy make up and everything). Aloy does look like an average woman. And this is actually a representation that we need in vidoegames too. I think if you aim for realism in your games, this is an aspect that designers need to understand too. Not everything can be hot. Not everything should be hot. What makes Games good is not the sexyness of the characters (regardless if it 's male or female) but the gameplay and the story. Ellie might be a weird example here because I think i the first games she is a minor, but as she grow older, she looks like an average woman too. In a setting like the last of us, it's something that makes sense. They have to survive. Dolling her up wouldn't make a lot of sense. It might make male gamers happy if she were dolled up, but as a girlgamer I would just be annoyed at "Wow , yeah, and there goes another character down in the male appeal gutter!" Or at least handle it like Baldurs Gate. Karlach is hot (no pun intended) but if you look closely, she hits a similar note like Aloy. Strong, muscular. Not convential pretty but pretty in her own way. Maybe this is just my female view on this subject matter, but I'm really tired of dolled up characters.
As another loish/aloy fan I agree to some extent and see where you are coming from. I think my main issue is that they made her face a bit too square in comparison to her real life model. I love Aloy and all her flaws, and I enjoy she is not really all that feminine. But I can also see where she might have been whacked with the ugly stick just a bit.
I agree. And it’s so wild hearing people argue that a female character sexualizing herself is somehow empowering. Having to lean into the male gaze will never be empowering. Some women choose to do it to improve their life bit that’s as far as it goes. If sexism didn’t exist they wouldn’t even have to do that. Men can get what they want without sexualizing themselves
@@sonder2874 The ironic thing about this discussion, especially with Aloy is that I only hear guys complaining that she is ugly as heck. But I rarely hear similar takes from women. She is actually very popular among female Gamers because of her looks. "Oh a character not appealing to the male gaze, which is why she is badly designed." The only sexualized character I'm not complaining about is Bayonetta, because she was designed by a Woman and acts as a parody to the Male gaze!
I took a few character design classes with Kevin Chen years back and I remember him mentioning that each element of the design is an opportunity to re-enforce the: backstory, personality, or world. The Concord characters don't look like they belong in the same world and I have no information at all about who they are through their designs. I'm really surprised that they got approved and made it into the finished product.
I don't think there's a decline in character design, there's more games and characters than ever before so you're naturally going to see more wins and duds, and ideas can saturate much more quickly. Dwelling on the duds is kinda pointless. I'm sure the creators of Concord realize they missed the mark so they'll either do better or get left behind. What's more worrying to me is when something badly designed or annoying is part of a successful game so it proliferates. Like how "Ubisoft" towers and empty open worlds have flooded the industry. The worst part about Horizon wasn't Aloy's face... it's climbing Ubisoft towers and running around in empty spaces. It's the same problem with Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, FF7 Rebirth, and Eldin Ring... among many other problematic similarities those four have. I think Aloy looked great in the first game, her hair is really cool. But the second game looks... idk if its the graphic improvements or what, but her face looks like dirty and puffy there's a weird uncanniness to it that reminds me of those creepy Japanese robots. And it's not like they can't design, Horizon's costumes, creatures, and key locations are pretty cool. When it comes to videogames and animation, I don't think the characters should use the likeness of their voice-actors especially if its a celebrity... something about it just feels uncreative.
8:56 I LITETALLY saw someone in a comment section say that Terry Bogard in sf6 is inspiring them to want to work out. People don't want ugly characters that nobody wants to be. People want to aspire to something, even if they never reach the goal.
Great video! You articulate a lot of the problems I have been seeing crop up in character design, not just in games, but in movies, tv, and fictional media in general extremely well. I'm not a creator myself but I greatly appreciate the perspective of someone who's willing to talk about these things from a creators perspective.
one of my favorite "Stereotype inversion" is in Berserk's two mains. Griffith with the typical traits of the naive yet destined for greatness hero of light and Guts sporting the typical traits of the evil tyrant with brutish muscular figure and dark brooding persona. both are basicly the stereotype of the Hero and Villain swapped
I don't know, the Concord characters had their flaws, but I don't think that specific example took himself too seriously. I mean he looks jovial and happy. The "beating with an ugly stick" example LOL...Yeah they uh...they kinda messed Mary Jane Watson up just a bit.
The worst thing about Yasuke is they are a real and interesting story, but because Ubisoft is using them to be a tolken character they've enraged a whole lot of people. I'd totally be fine with someone making a game with them as protagonist, but they have 0 place as a player character in ASSASSIN's creed. They were an exceptionally tall black man in isolationist japan, they have 0 reason to be every in any stealth. Put them in a samurai game about Nobunaga's conquest and he'd be fine, he has no place as an AC protagonist. I'm baffled by these studios not realizing they're just doing the same tolken characters as always.
The thing with video games is that majority of gamers approach them for the escape from realism and real life, often after working in a dead end job, just wanting to have escape from reality. Hyper Realistic games have their audiences, but the gamers trying to relax and escape reality, do not want to have real life forced into their own face, which puts stress on their mental health, same stress that the dead end job has inflicted on them already. Instead of playing that hyper realistic game that tells them that they're EVIL for liking video games that are unrealistic, they might as well open the front door and go outside and experience the realism in real life, and suffer the further stress on their mental health and possibly collapse and then have to go get psychiatric help, most likely never heal and recover, as success rates are not great for 100% recovery. And to listen to the woke cultists, is like to go to a church/mosque/etc. and listen to a sermon how the religion is great and etc. hinting how you have no agency as person, and is pretty much a slave to a deity with child like mind that swings on calm to absolute rage and hatred, killing and saving random people and so on. Sure some may find it enjoyable, afaik usually the types who don't want to think about future, and let the deity decide the future for them. "It is not my fault that god decided that my friends die today. God works in mysterious ways".
Both this and your last character design videos are great, honestly. You made an excellent point how trope subversion can make character designs more interesting, but also how subversion for the sake of it or for trying to "make a Serious Point" can result in a design that just misses the mark. Its definitely way more interesting than all of the dumb videos that just go "game bad Cuz Woke" without articulating what made the designs in games like Concord fall flat compared to their more successful contemporaries, that's for sure! Also, really love the Battleborn shout-out in this one lol. I enjoyed that game a lot when it was still online.
Honestly this and the video dissecting Concord's visual design (or lack thereof) are genuinelu invaluable, professional takes on why the character designs of that game just left NO impact on people at large. It was honestly kind of baffling how the characters did such a poor job of being *charismatic* in a genre that's all about the characters' appeal! That being said, i do somewhat disagree that the 'pandering' part of Concord, dustborn, and other games is necessarily why they weren't as successful as they could have been (or at all, in Concord's case). Representation isn't inherently a bad thing; the problem really comes where representation overrides all other basic aspects of a character design. It's just another tool to be used to generate appeal in characters, because audience members WILL appreciate a character if they 'represent' a non-normative group and but are first and foremost overall appealing.
Look at Guilty Gear Strive lately, for example - Bridget was one of the game's most popular character releases, and she's a trans character, which is something that's HEAVILY politicized today. But her design succeeds because she's an overall fun and appealingly designed character, not just [Mandatory Representation with No Thought Past That]. the same could be said for Bloodhound from Apex Legends; a nonbinary character sure, but also a stylish and well designed character first and foremost, who appealed to MULTIPLE audiences because of that.
Hey, really nice overview of the topic, very helpful. One thing I can’t fully agree with is the idea that artists are deliberately making their characters less appealing, at least in some of the examples you mentioned. To me, it seems more like technical or artistic issues, rather than a conscious effort to 'uglify' characters. I get that the perspective you're presenting taps into current conspiracies and drives engagement, but can you honestly imagine going through a review and having your art director say, 'This woman is too pretty, can you make her ugly?' Most of the time, stiff facial animations and poor lighting are the real culprits which is often due to corporate greed and poor planning. A lot of cutscenes are outsourced to the lowest bidder, and these teams often lack proper knowledge (and their work comes back at the very last moment leaving no time for fixes). Also, taking a screenshot at just the right moment while the character is in motion, and then presenting it as a representative example feels a bit disingenuous. It's a bit disappointing to see this narrative being supported by an actual artist. Sorry if that came off a bit harsh.
I have friends that work on designs for some of these large properties and they have told me horror stories when committees get involve and destroy a lot of the intent on design. It happens things are complicated the larger the project.
@@TylerEdlin84 That’s absolutely true. I just don’t see the intent when there is plenty of incompetence involved. They don’t want to make the characters ugly. They just suck at their job.
Respectfully, you can be disappointed with reality, but that doesn’t change it & you shouldn’t be expressing disappointment at Tyler for telling it like it is. Saying he’s spreading “conspiracies” is unfair & inappropriate. I’m a professional concept artist too & Tyler is spot on. If a client wants me to draw a design to sell skins for example, we’ve got to appeal to the majority & usually that means masculinity/ power & charm/ sensuality. Family-friendly designs can also follow the “rule of cute” (Nintendo is the gold standard example for this). Unfortunately sometimes to meet non-aesthetic goals, execs or ADs may force changes that make the design less appealing. Listen, you don’t have to take his or my word for it. Go look at the original Concord concept art. You can see it’s far more appealing than the way the characters ended up. Anyone can see that these designs were changed in ways that made them less appealing to the majority. You’re the 1 who’s calling that “uglifying,” not Tyler.
As someone learning art and also wanting to illustrate characters they write about, this was eye opening and same time, kind of discouraging - but not in a bad way. Just got a lot to learn before I even design a character.
You probably heard this already but there were affirmations from a developer that worked for Concord explaining how the enviroment was a "Toxic Positivity" enviroment. They litterally didnt (could not have) someone say "No this doesnt work" It was always "yes yes keep going" so designs became a hodge podge of whatever with the orginal intention probably lost to time
Interesting that the topic of beauty only had female examples. Video games also set cultural standards of beauty and influence them. If a female character doesn't have a reason why she is supposed to be attractive, they should be allowed to look plain or even unattractive. There's way more elements to character design than a character's face. That one edit at 10:13 literally makes the character look empty in favor of a sultry sexy look. And there's not even an expression on her face because smiling causes lines in the face or, god forbid, makes her look unappealing.
9:33 I think and yea it's also clearly AI generated as well. Just soulless sexual slop. I'm not a purist by any kind, but when it comes to female characters with sex appeal, I'd like for them to make sense and also have some sort of flavor to them, rather than a completely generic machine approximation of a person that is just meant to be attractive to the largest common denominator on twitter etc. While art is allowed to be extraordinary, alien or robotic in its appeal, it should also be allowed to be human. And it is the artist's job to abstract and recontextualize human experiences into artistic form. It's not the presence of political ideology that distorts art, since all art IS political. It's just seen as a distortion when those politics misalign with our personal preferences of what art should be, what female characters should look like. IMO some of the examples were completely fine, and some missed the mark on execution, which I'm sure has plenty to do with overhead at studios, crunch and other business-related reasons. Just because some of them failed it doesn't mean we should all simply design carbon copy pretty-women now and nothing else haha. There's room for that in the industry, and there's room for more too.
While I disagree with some of the commentary on eastern vs western designs, I do appreciate the structure you're teaching with these redesigns! It is important that we iterate or infuse a template, rather than attempting to disengage from all visual language/shorthands overall :')
Outstanding video by the way. 22:42 the issue with tomb raider is classic tr and reboot tr are literally 2 completely different characters with only superficial similarities. One is a female power fantasy that is hyper confident, knows she's a bomb shell therefore she uses her sexuality to her advantage, does a lot of gymnastics and the setting is not realistic while the reboot is a grounded story about an inexperienced young woman that fights for survival to find the secrets her father died for, she barely has any personality of her own honestly she's just a girl doing the right thing. Both of these designs work great for both characters in my opinion.
I'm not a visual artist, but as a writer I still have to play with visual design to try and get an image to my audience. I especially like to play with colors. Having a strong meaningful color associated to a character can be such an amazing boon. Oh that guy who is always wearing this drab practical clothing has a distinct red scarf? Why? Oh its the color of their homeland's flag and they can't go home. Suddenly it gives more to the character.
Roka's design is literally so bad that you, along with everyone else in the universe, failed to catch that the rocket launcher is held by a robot arm attached to her back. BTW literally every video I see talks about "silhouette" and it's something that I've heard many times before as far as character design going back years. How exactly did the Concord designers miss this lesson?
As someone who makes costumes and props, you hit the nail on the head. Lately numerous properties and artist have been making totally bland characters to the point of me not being able to sell merch on them. It doesn't matter what innovative thing you did, how hard you tried, or cool technique you implemented. If the character is overall bland people don't attach to them. Which I can directly see, since then people don't buy costumes or props of the design. There is not a single weapon, mask, helmet, or anything from Concord I could see selling or even being potentially requested to sell and that's an issue. I think this video can apply to lots of recently made stuff, but that's a story for another day.
It might’ve not been your intention, but with the examples chosen for male and female characters for this video, it felt like the message is to move back to a time where female characters’ appeal is almost always tied to their physical attractiveness, and male characters’ appeal to action and personality despite how they look. We can have both, and both ways, but that’s not the message I’m getting with this video in regards to good character design. The examples used in the video paints a picture that conventionally non-attractive male characters can still be super cool, and have far more exaggerated proportions, but that it doesn’t apply for female characters.
@@winterflow_machinima yeah maybe the message didn’t land as clear as I intended, that’s totally fair. Context is everything and that’s something I could address in part 3! Let me know what else you would want to hear about.
@@TylerEdlin84Cheers for the response! A bit of my background: female, been an avid gamer for +25 years, working in games as an artist for 12 years, including outsourcing. Despite the supposed ”wokeness” of the current era, I feel there’s still a strong bias for male characters to get the free pass to be cool despite how they look (young, old, big, small, thin, chubby, serious, goofy etc) while for female characters it is still much more restricted to beauty appeal (young, conventionally beautiful). While you make some good points in the video too, and I agree that game visuals should cater to the intended target audience, I don’t wish for a push for female characters not receiving the same freedom that male character design enjoys when it comes to creativity! Hope that clarifies my thoughts a bit more!
@@winterflow_machinima yes you are absolutely right and I definitely think I made the wrong call in the editing process where I did trim upwards of 20 minutes worth of additional examples and I had the entire female cast of red dead. You know which were regular woman and they were all amazing. But I feel your point and that’s definitely something I will echo in an eventual follow up.
Another important thing is the way in which games define our expectations and attitudes towards designs. We associate designs and design choices with certain games and thus our expectations of that game will be informed by design choices. Take Fair Game reveal for example. People have immediately taken issue with the character designs because they remind them of other titles that have garnered a lot of bad attention (Dustborn, Concord, Borderlands 3 etc).
I'm designing some characters of my own since I'm trying to make a manga of sorts. I always thought design was definitely easy and then i realized how wrong i was. There is so much to take into consideration like shape language, region, species, personality, role, silhouette, and status. I have been having lots of fun experimenting though. Thanks for the great video, it gave me so many ideas.
Im not the best artist, definitely not a professional (freelance at best), but I knew at glance that Concords characters were off to say the least. As i ran through my favorite character test. If I completely black out the characters and put them side by side can i still easily tell them apart? Y/N. Are they telegraphing any sort of personality with body language? Y/N. My rule of thumb is stereotypes and tropes exist for a reason, because they work ppl like these type of characters or in case of stereotypes hold some inkling of truth and can be fun as long as its not malicious. Honestly the only good thing concords characters have done is make good redesign and character design practice as a lot of the characters are outside my comfort zone, (robots, armor, and guns). Oddly has been fun practice.
I mean appeal in a way does depend on the person some people enjoy playing hot or sexy characters while others may gravitate more to silly characters, or scary/edgy characters, or even just cute characters. But very few people like bland characters, so I think its fine to rely on the tropes a little bit, particularly if they sell your games, or other media.
The problem is this is a pointless conversation without politics. Bad designs will be pushed to the forefront by bad actors and all of your skill will be wasted. All your, in my opinion, correct points of view will be ignored or actively suppressed, replaced by someone misguided sense of morality that denies physical reality. Reality like: people want to look at attractive people.
@@SpentAmbitionDrain 100%. The likes of inexperience or ignorance that leads to mistakes are things that can be addressed. Knowledge and skill are not the issue at all. What has to be set apart from ignorance are motivations of spite and narcissism. It is pitiable, but these are personality deficiencies that cannot be remedied by way of teaching. Disassociation and allowing bad faith actors to self-reflect is how this gets addressed. Otherwise, this situation isn’t something that any working professional can reason their way through in the hopes of finding some mutual outcome. A game that had 8 years of time worth of opportunity to head in that direction didn’t; that is clearly negatively motivated.
@@CTomCooperSpot on. I will add that you cannot logic someone out of a position they did not logic themselves into. These are ideological choices and the only way to reverse the course is to let all of these games fail and gatekeep projects from the "ugly pushing" artists as they will never change their cemented world view.
The discussion surrounding how we should design characters, and where trying to be different goes to far, is the only good thing to come out of Concord.
Quiet breathes through her skin! lol come on Tyler, makes sense to me! haha anyway great some points made. we really do have to be careful when making more realistic games, but at the same time, characters like Aloy,Kratos,Joel etc work for those worlds because the realism in unorthodox situations is part of the appeal. a bit confused on why Alloy is part of the subverting beauty standards and calling assassins creed token is a confusing take that makes me think we've changed the definition of token characters
Hey man, love the video you did here and found it very insightful with character design in general. I wanted to request you do video on the principal of *"immersion vs substance"*. To give an example. I play a game that you definitely know named battlefield. Ive been a battlefield player since battlefield field 2 on the PC. I have played every entry up until battlefield 5. I feel part of the appeal of battlefield is that you are (especially in multiplayer) supposed to feel like a grunt against an enemy team in a combined arms effort. My immersion broke when i saw the trailer and gameplay of battlefield five, showing a woman with a prosthetic, fighting in some battle in france, with a soldier carrying katana on his back. It made me dissuaded to play the game period because you were playing a grunt in WWII, just someone special. Even in 2042 this happens as every "soldier" is a cookie cutter of a special operator instead of a near future soldier that yoh would come to expect. I wanted your take to see if immersion matters as much as gameplay to make a good game.
This is the first time I have seen a fellow artist state my exact posture towards style. I have had so many arguments with other artists and non artists about the importance of style in the development of both the art and the artist. I believe that style is so overvalued at the moment that, to me, it feels like a potential pitfall for artist. I have seen time and time again artist justifying poor construction, somewhat shacky line art, or even color theory with the excuse of saying it's "their artstyle". Now I am not saying that art should be done in a particular way or that you as an artist should behave in a particular way either. But to me, style is just another tool in favor of the intention of the project. Basically the artist should be in control of the style, not vice versa. I don't believe that you need to enjoy drawing everything, in fact there are styles and even sometimes scenes that I won't draw just for lack of interest. But whenever your style limits you to something, then you should probably consider studying a little more that subject in which you are shaky just so your style can be improved and encompass an even wider range. Many times people ask me what my style is and I will tell them that I change it in accordance to the project. Of course there are some things and habits that will point you as the artist, but I feel like many times artist confuse style with visual motif. Having a way of drawing noses, or eyelashes, is not really a style imo. It's merely a comfort zone. Now none of this comes with any hate or criticism towards any artist nor its habits.
Nah I'm pretty sure design shown in east vs west is due to a lack of technical know how on the west side, looks junior's first pass at sculpting 3d capture mandated by manager as a crutch to replace talent, hence uncanny Valley effects. That's not challenging beauty standard when it's plain bad, and the east has non traditional beauty well done, like aside from alloy, these are crummy direct photogrammetry with lens distortion still baked in and bad texture shader 😢 on the east side the way they pushed ashley and the re3 girl is not the typical oval head smooth jaws beady eyes, nor is the traditional bimbo aside from tifa, but technical execution is absolutly flawless. It's sad that something nobidy is commenting on, which tells me we no longer havemthe expertise despite being in photo realism era, that's scary for the future of the art.
Nah i dont buy it. The artists of "the west" combined cant be worse than japanese artists. Just due to the numbers alone its statistically improbable. In some cases, sure, there is a lot of DEI hiring going on. But a lot of it is deliberate.
@@MrDezokokotar not combined, after indiscriminate lay off that chase talents. Eastern artist are more likely to have long career or attract western talents, and they oscillate between stylise almost doll like idealised figure, or extrem realism, and very few are in extreme realism like capcom, which actually use the years of idealised shape to enhance realism, for example the re3 girl is excellent in knowing what to push to have effect. That's nuanced stuff, you need to develop an eye to get the subtleties. Meanwhile kay vess look doubly cursed, because the shape looks like the potatoes you get from straight scanning, but also it seems there was a sculpting phase to over emphasizes some curve, I know they didn't used AI, because it would have pushed towards averages, and the texture has baked a curvature pass that further overemphasised curve, leading to chin lady effects, side by side shows that cheeks bone are a tad too big and lighting get easily caught up in cavity, these elements hints at lack of technical knowledge in the nuances of how to handles faces. It's not helped when it start moving in real time cinematic, a decent face can have up to 200 bones, if you use a blendshape workflow you have 200 blendshapes x number of vertices on the face, that's a shit load of data, especially on an open world, leading to obvious compromise. Other character has numerous defect typical of lack of skills or experiences, when you know where to look, knowing how to handle limitations artistically is also part of the skillset. I already mentioned overshading of cavity, there is also how shape are pushed to clean the scan, but also the eyelid area or the mouth (nasolabial) area, how character do oh and ah shape are typically dead give away. Most open world game avoid ultra expressive facial shape during small talk dialogue for issues of data density and limitations it impose, they supply emotion with emote and body reactions or camera shot, mass effect original is a master of doing a lot with a small set of expressions. Outlaws break that. Same issues for the fable girl.
It might be because of the aggressive focus for certain Western titles to be excessively realistic in their styles. Even some Eastern characters try to follow a type that tries to make them still fit conventional norms of what is attractive. When it comes to Western ones it seems more inconsistent with some characters looking fine and others not being as good because their design might translate well on paper, but with all of the added details and animations, it looks worse. I don't figure it's also the issue with diversity, as there are plenty of games that have good characters that are diverse and inclusive even, but still flow well with in their implementation. Examples are more like Overwatch or Apex Legends. Hopefully game companies pull away more from heavy realistic styles, otherwise the spectacle they bring with detail is going to be very boring in every newer title. This is what made Concord even less appealing in my eyes.
It's one thing to design a character the best you can and just missing. Happens to the best of us. Sometimes you just think something is awesome and the target audience doesn't agree. The problem is that in the case of Concord and spiritual peers, the designers decided to intentionally discard what they knew the audience wanted. This wasn't an accident. They didn't design these characters and think "these will do gangbusters". They intentionally designed them to avoid the Male Gaze and toxic masculine appeal, which ended up making characters that nobody liked or wanted to be like. Hilariously not even the alphabet soup community liked them because they're as vain as the rest of us and also don't want to identify as a pear-shaped blob of humanity, regardless of what its pronouns are. People from the likes of Sweet Baby inc claiming that they're not telling artists what to make rings awfully hollow when you can see every design decision adhering so closely to the values of the consultants while managing to miss every last bullet point for how to please the customer. Maybe you can get away with something like that for a small indie project. It's your time and your money, you can make whatever character you like for whatever target audience you like and you get to tell people that don't like it to not buy your product and that's fine because it's your product and your lost revenue. But we're talking a 400 million dollar project and thousands of jobs involved. At that point making decisions like this borders on criminal negligence and neglect of your professional responsibilities.
My hardest disagree is on Lara Croft's re-design. It took something iconic and instantly recognisable (and also beloved) and made it bland and forgettable. Comparing that to the various designs of Links across his many different games, from the overly cartoony to the more realistic, his overall design retains the core features and appeal of his character. If I wasn't familiar with Tomb Raider, I wouldn't have been able to tell with certainty the original and the redesign were meant to be the same character. Ask me the same about the various Links (assuming I'm not familiar with him), and I could've told you at a quick glance they're the same character.
You know the Ian Malcolm line "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should"? I feel like many modern artists are so focused on putting their own twist and subverting genres that they don't stop to think what makes the genre work. I am not saying that all the OG designs and tropes should be treated as holy relics, never to be hampered, but sometimes people just... don't get it. I remember the early 2000s, when superhero comics switched from "iconic" to "utilitarian"... I was never as turned down from buying comic books as I was back then. Same thing right now: "Ugh, why does this character that have already a massive fan following has to be this way? Let's switch it out for something that caters to me specifically or people who never cared! What could go wrong?" Companies are so focused on the "new", on creating something different (all for the sake of selling new and updated merchandise, do not think even for a moment that there is honesty behind those "change of hearts") that they hire people who actively despise the franchises or the genres they are handed. See Mindy Kaling spouting insult after insult at the previous iterations of Scooby Doo before producing that Velma garbage... and see how it ended: lowest ratings in history. Once again, this isn't to say EVERY OG design is perfection and every redesign is garbage... but you can certainly feel if the artists (or those commissioning the artists) are more interested in the content they are being handed or their personal bias. Sorry for the long post and the possible typos, I'm ESL and I am really getting tired of this generation of "what I redesign is great and what you liked is wrong".
Great talk, I always thought of style as a method to tie the story to related inspiration from art history. When they were designing the characters and environments for Mulan, they were referring to Chinese brush paintings, history, and culture. Dexter's laboratory, which was made for tv, has a very UPA feel to it while keeping the lab coat and environment in the early 50s. When I was creating my Anansi Design, I started by researching Jamaican and West African Art and Culture even though I am Jamaican and grew up with the stories. Style isn't an arbitrary thing. It must serve the story and medium. Your character's for a TV show with limited animation budget might need to be simpler because of budget constraints. There are a tonne of art movements that we can also refer to along with things that define a brand. From the perspective of an industrial designer, the lines, stance, and face of a Ford Mustang are going to differ greatly from a Porsche Carrera. So when styling anything you also have to consider your audience as you stated in addition to its history, where is it coming from, where is it going, how has it changed, what does it mean now? I agree that much of the designs we have been seeing lack visual appeal, too often, and ugly for ugly sake. Style is just the start, character's need to function, a character designed for 3d animation will have a different set of constraints than a character designed for 2d animation, a 2d animated rig, or illustration.
Concord wanted to challenge stereotypes in character design, but forgot that those stereotypes serve a purpose. Visual stereotypes allow us to heuristically recognize what something is at a glance, without looking at lore. In real life, stereotypes can be harmful at worst, or misleading at best, but in games they are vital. You need audiences to see an ad for your game, and to be easily able to deduce what you're looking at. In Team Fortress, you don't need to understand the deep lore behind the Medic to understand his role in the game. He wears a white coat with red accents, and looks like an old-timey doctor. In Halo, Master Chief and the other Spartan IIs are massive, imposing figures compared to later Spartans generations, showcasing their superior strength and legendary status. In Resident Evil, a series with realistic aesthetics, the character of Rebecca is a rookie medic on Bravo Team; she has white accents on her outfit, with a medical pouch, and wears her trousers rolled up in a youthful, innocent manner. Now, if you NEVER challenge stereotypes, you become generic -- and that is where you thread the needle. You follow the stereotypes to about 75%, and then get creative with the remaining 25%. Concord, however, pretty much had zero stereotypes, and was just pure 100% challenge -- meaning nothing was recognizable.
As soon as a game has super realistic character design I have to admit I lose a bit of interest in it, I think it’s why that new 2d hd pixel style or cartoonier styles always appeals to me
4 :10 A long time ago I was watching some fzd . (Concept art stuff) and he said something like, be 80% recognizable and 20% unique. Like making a tank just look loke a regular tank. Then making it unique, but not so unique that people don't know its a tank anymore. Also I don't think there's an over reliance on sex appeal. That's more of a games identity. I never want tk see a dead or alive or a soul calibur get made for "the modern audience". And the men are attractive in those games too, I've heard so from my sister, but you know if these games get "modernized" they are ONLY going to target the females.
The problem with the soup kitchen bouncer approach today is that higher ups might go with the odd, out of left field designs just to chase shock value and you as a designer have shot yourself in the foot. Now you are stuck with designs that you added as a joke or deterrent just to go green with them and a project you despise linked to your resume for the rest of your career. I like to approach every blunder by thinking that a higher up had too much weight and pulled the project down by not taking the negative feedback.
I'm not sure why you guys that keep redesigning these characters just make them into overwatch knockoffs visually instead of looking at the influences they were trying for and doing that more successfully. Like man, they are all clearly meant to be riffs on Moebius.
@@RJPalmer I love möbius but they not have enough mass appeal or work for this type of game. Maybe if it were an rpg or adventure game. I think they could work not saying impossible but would require more time and effort to implement.
@@TylerEdlin84 I just dont agree that Moebius doesnt have mass appeal potential as an inspiration source. Guardians of the Galaxy which was clearly another influence on Concord also burrowed heavy inspiration from Moebius. Ditching the retro euro scifi aesthetic is completely losing the main actually interesting idea they had to expand on.
I like potion c looks like a doctor/butcher and a character that has both jobs sounds interesting. Gameplay wise a medic that can heal you and hurt you in equal measur sound legit too. Imo of course.
its not a stereotype if it works out to feel 'true' to the character for example, i wouldnt design a character set in the ming dynasty as a black person in modern clothing. id design an asian raced character in ming dynasty costume & maybe change the color or styling to reflect their character. guys, its really not that hard. we have to appeal to the audience somehow and get the message across, & our intentions need to be very clear and obvious.
allthough i disagree w using horizon's aloy as an example. i think she has great character design. Particularly her hair is very appearling, and it makes her stand out as the main character. She is fit, athletic and strong which is true to her character, but some people dont like that she has freckles or dont like that she is muscular,...but for the context of the game of when it takes places, that totally fits and makes sense.
Battleborn also suffered from having poor servers. It was hard to play it without it crashing or not being able to play multilayer(might be due to a lack of people, though)
Very insightful video! I’m not an artist myself, but I have commissioned a lot of art on Fiverr and unfortunately I made a lot of bad experiences there. I always try to be very specific with my ideas and provide reference fotos of what I have in mind - at the end I often receive something completely different or art that just blindly follows my ideas without any cohesion… Could you share some ideas of how to commission art the right way? What is the best design process to get at the end a good result? I hope you read my comment and can help me out. Thanks :)
@@janbiela8596 honestly sounds like what you are doing is pretty spot on. Having a solid description that describes what you need and how it should feel is important. I would just focus on the consistency of the work on the art portfolio. A lot of artists end up on fiver because they can’t get work anywhere else.
@@janbiela8596i think twitter x, instagram or cara could be good. There are also discord groups. Maybe ask around first to see if there are artists that other people had good experiences with. Honestly I would never recommend using fiver, there are a lot of people pretending to be artists on there using AI art.
On one hand, I kind of get part of why they're doing some of it. They want people to feel like anyone can be a hero, like "you can be a hero even if you're not beautiful/straight/cis/white/etc." I get that, but at the same time, they need to develop actual characters from that instead of just stopping short. It may even damage your efforts because some people will then link the clear trait with flat, underdeveloped characters and call for way less of them as a result. No one's saying you can't have these characters, just do more with them and try harder.
Doesnt all this end up being a little bit generic? I mean yeah all those other games set a foundation on this but when we talking about players perspective i think that the audience can be trained to explore new things and aesthetics. Personally i see all those remakes you guys did to those characters and i got to say this: Yeah its more clear now but lacks in freshness and authenticity. From artist perspective i wouldnt like to produce based on a formula when there are plenty of new things to explore. The conclusion: Is Concord design so great? Maybe not a 10/10 but does suggest something fresh and new? Absolutely yes. So maybe in the future this new kind of aesthetic or problem solving will set the foundation better ( like the older games set the foundation and now can be compared and studied). Note: i didnt hate your or others remakes but i feel we turn around the same things sometimes :)
No, the audience is dumb and cannot figure anything out for themselves. This has been true since the start of gaming as they have become easier and easier as each year passes. They actually need recognizable patterns from mainstream media to understand what is actually going on, which is why concord failed. In overwatch, you look at reinhardt, and you know exactly what his role is. In concord, you look any of their chsracters and would not have any idea of what they do.
If by fresh and new . You mean, making all of the character look like the heros look like random npcs from Wal-Mart of a comic book convention. No I'm sorry . Noone wants to play that . We have had comic books , movies etc for years .characters playing into femininity and masculinity always sell no matter how much you try to move away from traditional masculinity and femininity m only chronically online people think that people's minds have now been changed etc . They haven't. Everyone still finds an athletic body , wider hips , larger breasts , square jaws on men , soft features on women attractive. No matter what .
in a way yes, its like rebuilding the only burned down house in a nieghbor hood to standard while it may have standed out more burned down and covered in ash compared to standard house but its clearly in a worse state. concord fixes end up feeling generic cause it makes completely terrible designs not terrible.
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 Basically Concord failed not because of Design but of economic management reasons. Also i think is bad to critique other artists this way and ''fix'' thei art. Also my point is not to use mainstream patterns but the way you use them.
@@AliHamza-sv4ni And thats why most of the companies recycle old franchises instead of building more new IP. Also i dont find bad the mainstream patterns but we can create more unique stuff with this instead of milking the same and the same stuff. Otherwise we are not artists or designers we are recycle copycats with no new ideas.
Guys thanks for watching. "The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare" skl.sh/tyleredlin09241
Hyperrealism combined with "average looking characters" can also cause these characters to look uglier than they should as a result of the tech being unable to do what it needs to - lighting and shadows on faces make them look flat or deformed, facial animations twist faces in weird ways, skin and hair shaders make them look pasty and unnatural, and so on. The raw working models probably look pretty good before exported to the game. If they were to take a step back from hyperrealism and apply some stylization to the characters that works within the technical constraints, like what was done with the idealized doll-like Eastern designs shown, they would likely work better.
I'm also an advocate for 'the art style needs to match the game'. It makes sense to have realistic looking characters in a game like the last of us, since it's a realistic 'what if' scenario. While I won't consider Concord a realistic game until the day I see robots, felines, reptile dudes and normal humans jumping meters high through the streets shooting each other... if you combine that with hyperrealism makes it look uncanny.
japan doesnt seem to have a problem with making realistic-looking characters out of real people even on last gen consoles(yakuza 0 on ps3 for example). its not technical limitations that forces western artists to make female characters ugly, its a political statement
Look at what Capcom did to Terry Bogard. His 2d art style looks so good but MY GOD he looks like a cracked man with their ugly 3d rendition.
@@blastermaster5039 doesnt look any worse than KOF 14/15, tbf
@@blastermaster5039 Terry always looks cool
I’ve never seen anything avoid the “rule of cool” so hard before.
Warhammer 40k runs on this, and it works despite some of the gaffes over the years.
Artists actually speaking out against the assassination of creativity in the industry, finally breaking the silence 👍
@@righteousgreek2161 that’s a much better title than I came up with
Yep. Art Is subjective but it also follows rules, and we should stop just spreading toxic positivity every time just to cheer on everything, cause that's not healthy.
@@ok_listen yeah there had to have been some sort closed feedback echo chamber loop on the development of concord
The industry is healing
there are 2 issues that im seeing
1. some amateurs say that anything can be creative and then they do weird shiet. At that point, rules, basics, foundations are all torn apart and creativity is a perfect excuse for lack of effort, research and improvement
2. people compliment each other all the times, now that is indeed good but i think some people just say nice things and avoid criticizing simply cause they wanna avoid troubles and responsibility. In that case, it's basically selfish
ngl the "soup kitchen bouncer" redesign looks so good!!
I love the idea that a medic/healer character does so by providing yummy food to their team mates
Right!? It's awesome!!!
*flashbacks of eating 12 cheese wheels midfight in Skyrim*
A chef class would be great that your skill is making food for your teamates xD
Making a hero shooter and casting all background characters was a bold choice. I’ll give them that.
@@RusPitman they certainly took a risk
@@TylerEdlin84 ya know, that would actually be an interesting plot.
have all the characters be practically nobodies.
while an ACTUAL team of badass, scrappy space heroes go on their ventures.
maybe have the ending be bittersweet and more character focus, as these characters don't defeat the big bad.
but the insatiability of inadequacy within themselves.
Concord was so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes to the point of forgetting that under realistic design there should be form follows function principle applied first. If it's moves via jet propulsion, there should be obvious jet propulsion unit, if it's a tank then the obvious thickness and coverage of the armor should be emphasized, etc. It was like someone was trying to design a scifi heavy tank, but it ended looking like a light recon car because they did not want to stereotype.
Concord was woke, period. Go woke go broke. I know it sounds really dumb and right wing, but that phrase summarizes the last 5 years of entertainment, where studios are making content for an imaginary audience.
It's like that one Family Guy skit of Peter in the jungle in a clown outfit, except it's being played unironically and it's expecting you to take it entirely seriously.
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 For worse or even worse, this is the the root of the problem. The scale of failure Concord achieved is too big for it to attributable to just any one team or department. A failure of this magnitude can only be achieved when the entire whole is sick and nonfunctioning, and nothing infects as virulently as ideology.
Besides, the devs social media activity, along with the leaks we've been getting pretty much confirm this: ideology was being put before quality pretty much the entire way.
concord really failed to make characters memorable, i mean if you make a sci fi game, it has to be a sci fi game, if its cyber punk it has to be it... If you are inbetween lean more toward one, but here the game is really unreconizable, no one can relate to it, such a waste of money
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 famous failed woke slop Baldur's Gate 3, Hades1 & 2, Disco Elysium and Elden Ring. But you're right in one thing, it does sound really dumb and right wing.
I like how you kept Daws thickness in every iteration while still making his design far more appealing, I've seen too many AI redesigns that just turn him into a generic skinny guy and call it a day. (Plague Doctor one goes hard) The soup kitchen bouncer design made me smile, that is such a cool idea for a space western hero shooter medic
Very much agree. The space-western plague doc is an awesome design, I would totally pick that character when I first loaded up a game with him in it.
I feel thickness on a medic can be cool if the art-style works. I imagine the new design buffed up so he can carry wounded soldiers to safety more easily, and sometimes stress-eats while waiting to hear if a comrade survived.
One thing the Concord disaster has done has taught people a lot about art design, art styles, and using visuals to communicate a character's personality or their play style. It's not just a character being "sexy" but color schemes, implementing shapes, silhouettes, line flow, contrasting sizes, etc. that make a character look interesting and appealing, that make people look at that character and think, "I want to play that" or "I want to fight that."
It's not just Concord's designs are "ugly" but they also look bland and weak. Roka looks incomplete, like a generic NPC and not a major character. Daw looks like he's geared up to clean his grandmother's garage. Teo looks like he's messing around with airsoft guns. Concord characters do not look empowering. They look like a bunch of random people wearing costumes for Halloween, a bunch of losers. It's the opposite of Main Character Energy. And to make these characters turn out like this would have required such an overwhelming denial of Marketing 101, required so many people in charge to have their heads in the sand, that it is almost beyond belief.
I heard Daw described as a soup kitchen bouncer from someone else. Another was "Discord moderator. Another was "Silverware Surfer"
I think because they have gone far away from what people are used to seeing. I mean they really created something new but people's eyes are just not adapted to new different stuff hard to accept something not usually seen in real life nor games. I think it is just like a habit of holding on familiar styles that connect more to reality.
@@Hidden-1-3 I mean, you can still do that. The Zeno Clash series, Kenshi, and Cruelty Squad are all games with incredibly ugly styles, Cruelty Squad is especially designed to attack your senses including the music. But in those games, it works to fit the setting and the worldbuilding and the mood and vibes. The choices of making the characters and world as far away and as as grotesque in those games from what anyones used to seeing was a carefully made choice that they put effort to make it pull their weights in other ways. I highly recommend checking those out if you're interested.
@@Hidden-1-3 The Concord designs ARE different from what people are used to seeing, true. But there are several important reasons WHY you see certain design choices repeatedly used. Just because something is different does not mean it is something that can work. Things like having proper color contrasts or distinguished silhouettes for videogame characters help players quickly identify those characters - something very important in a hero shooter. Concord's artist were so proud of thinking outside of the box that they forgot why the box exists in the first place.
Take the movie Alien. The design of the xenomorph was unlike what people expected for a movie monster design. But it worked because its design still looks dangerous, it invokes sexual violence without being literal. However, if they had gone with a design like Elmo from Sesame Street it would have completely changed the tone of the movie and become absurd rather than scary.
To be different you still need to make it work, and Concord failed that. Being something new does not automatically guarantee, or even deserve, success.
@@billbillson6779 I like your view 👍🏼 it's like what's happening now with black ops 6 zombies. The OG fans are so upset with the new map (liberty falls) the aura of the map doesn't feel like you are playing a zombie game it's bright in a daytime which they tried to make different map from all other maps which used to be dark, foggy, gloomy. But most of the fans like playing zombies for its dark scary mood the game failed at this point of making something different because people just like what they like, they don't want something different just always ask for the same refusing anything that is not like what they expect and familiar with zombies/ dark. Any change in the world is hard to be accepted It takes years and years to change people's view , interest , and culture. Because any new things don't exist in your memory so you wouldn't really communicate with them. I don't know, Maybe I'm wrong, but this is my view of this subject ( to make something different accepted you have to repeat it so many times so it will be familiar in people's eyes to communicate with it, should it be appealing? Indeed, but in which aspects? you have to put appeal strongly in one aspect either clothes, environment, or characters. Sorry for the long talk thank you.
Concord has achieved all its goals. It subverted the expectations of both studio and publisher.
@@headlesschickenfarm they are now saying $400m
@@TylerEdlin84 And that's the game. I'm hearing they had shows in production based on this IP. Wonder how much that consumed before it was cancelled.
So task failed successfully?
I think “ugly” or average looking characters can work depending on what you’re going for, there are times when having a more average looking protagonist can fit into the setting and theme of a game. I mean even looking at the UK or Europe, they usually depict very average looking people in their media and it is still very popular there. Another good example is Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie in Sex And The City, people swore up and down that she was ugly and unappealing, yet she was extraordinarily popular in the 90s, her appearance didn’t effect that.
I think generally that variety is the spice of life and that It would be equally boring if every character was super attractive or if they were all average looking or ugly. I also think that even though some characters are made unappealing for political reasons, politics isn’t always the reason, there could be many reasons for that decision
I think ugly character can work if comedy is mixed in, ("just like in real life?")otherwise it become very difficult to choose the ugly over the pretty, everyone like pretty things even tho pretty and ugly is very broad
@@Romelus3d personality is a big matter here too. if someone is pretty but has a bad personality or you don't like it it won't really matter you may choose the ugly over the pretty one it all returns and refers to reality how you like people in real life it also applies in games.
Noone is saying every character in your game has to be beautiful. But to have 90 percent of your heros looking like someone from Walmart doesn't really make you want to play as any
@@AliHamza-sv4ni i'd rather look like an argonian than look like fupa concord man wearing a blue coat with colonoscopy tube
@@paigecameron629 great points
I don't think it's strictly making characters "uglier". It's making characters mediocre. Games are less so an idealized reality than they are an exaggerated reality. An ugly character who is exaggerated and has the ugliness cranked up is still interesting. A character that looks like some guy you'd see at Walmart...isn't. Overwatch has its fair share of ugly characters, for example. And they're nothing like people you would see in real life. And that makes them interesting. That makes them appealing.
Yeah I agree pretty much with that all. I just don’t like when a designer is forced to create less appealing characters because having high beauty standards offends others. This is actually a thing that’s been rampant in games for several years now.
@TylerEdlin84 Yeah I agree with that. Especially when you have traits that are conventionally attractive. It doesn't feel good to be told something is unrealistic and unhealthy and harmful and you look at it and it looks like you. Feels like insecure women thinking they have to put others down to elevate themselves.
@@TylerEdlin84the industry is plagued with paper thin skinned crybabies who think their own worldviews matter and when challenged they cry bullying.
Does Overwatch have ugly characters? Even Junkrat looks somewhat charming even with the grease and soot on him.
@@finnheisenheim8274 Technically Roadhog but even then he looked cool despite that
I think the biggest problem is that the character designs in Concord are not just bland, but outright counter-intuitive. Daw (Soup Kitchen Bouncer) being a dedicated healer, or a tank/healer hybrid (I've heard both) is not indicated at all by his design; he's got nothing that suggests he's got any healing capacity, and his tankiness is indicated only by him being fat, except he's "realistic" fat, which doesn't convey tankiness the way someone more exaggerated like Roadhog does.
It's so bad, I feel like I can compare it to Street Fighter: imagine that your next opponent is E. Honda, the sumo wrestler, and when the fight begins, he starts throwing out Chun-Li's moveset, entirely based around kicking. Or Karin, a tiny young woman, using Zangief's moves, when the latter is a professional wrestler the size of a bear.
Daw's design as a tanky healer could have been fixed with simply giving him a white coat with a red heart on it, a mechanical backpack to house his devices, some armor plating on his arms and chest, and probably change his weapon from a generic rifle to an arm mounted device or from the backpack a shoulder mounted device.
With that you convey his playstyle, he is a tech based healer that can take some damage before he goes down through the universal color and symbol, the presence of devices, and the presence of armor plating.
Honestly, even those Street Fighter examples sound like they could be good thanks to the comedic contrast. The huge character having a swift and agile moveset, while the smaller, more frail-looking character brawls like a gorilla.
Though the difference is that those characters you named already have striking designs unlike Concord. So we loop back into their bland appearances being a huge issue.
So I just found out the blue coat guy from Concord was not only supposed to be male but also a medic. Man talk about misdirection
Yeah he tripped me up to on both accounts
They designed a character you couldn't guess ANYTHING right about. That takes some special talent
I was wondering why the "improved" version was suddenly male lmao
soup Kitchen Bouncer, thats the next character i would like to see in a game.
@@sachintendulkar3556 yeah me too
So, Steven Seagal? 😉
Sometimes you have to hit the bottom before going up again.
Many developers are right at the bottom right now due to a focus on revenue, relying on technology, and ignoring the fan base.
Good writers, artists, creative people make good art, as evident as that may be, it seems the industry has forgotten that.
Yeah, i think so, we are about to hit a big boom in good gsmes again, thanks to both devs and gamers being fed up with leftist agenda nonsense plus clueless producers.
Elements: texture
Design: unity
Animation: appeal
Gestalt: continuity
Art: composition
All has some indication thdt the audience isn't annoyed at least and infatuated at most.
And other words could have been used as well.
you know what i noticed is that the entire roster has no "evil" characters. like, for multiplayer genres like this usually there's a good faction and an evil faction but in this game, everyone seems to be the good guy. like they can't even make their characters evil for some reason.
@@Skyflakes05 the Milquetoast squad.
One of the most bittersweet parts about Concord is following artists like Adrian Bush on Twitter and seeing the absolutely AWESOME classic sci-fi designs for environments and spaceships. The suits at the top of Sony completely mismanaged this project from top to bottom, and the rumoured cost of the development is classic scope creep, inability to iterate, refusal to look at feedback because the bossman says things are great.
Anthem was exactly like this, too - cool promise, good start in terms of designs, then dropping the ball in every part of the design because they were forbidden to even mention their main competitor - Destiny. It's completely unprofessional - yet that's how the corporate world works. Money talks, but sometimes the wrong kind of money is doing the talking...
Agree, except with the anthem part. Anthen just tried to get in a market that was already exploited, too late. It also did not help that gameplay was extremely boring, but the art was quite amazing imo.
I agree with a lot of the analysis in the video except at 10:00
I think regular looking characters can be fun & interesting to play if design & appeal where actually applied skillfully
It’s a games job to be interesting or engaging in some way, the industry is definitely dropping the ball on that. That being said I think we’re witnessing the growing pains of an industry trying to explore & figure out what that means without relying heavily on cultural beauty expectations.
it’s an artist job to show us what we don’t know we want yet & from personal experience I’ve been surprised - character designs from disco elysium, hades 2 all characters are hot & varied in proportion. I’m sure others can mention other examples I’ve missed
I’m worried that we are letting the status quo limit our imagination for what can be beautiful
Completely agree with you, and I don't want character design discussions between artists to be co-opted by this gender-war fueled argument between "beautiful sexualized eastern female character designs" vs "unattractive and thus worthless western character designs". And I think your worry is right on point. It's not everyone's job to critique beauty standards, but it doesn't mean designs who critique them have no space in our industry. Striving for excellence can also mean striving to understand more than we currently do. Disco Elysium is an amazing example of that. And the designs work so well because shape language and narrative/personality was taken into account for all characters.
@@onigirls exactly Eastern design are primarily conventionally beautiful but doing that constantly can become a crutch. Like you mentioned - actually employing design techniques like shape design, color and how it contributes to the personality of the characters is a more valuable critique to me than culture war bs
Art has evolved through the centuries by exploring what was conventionally ignored from paintings of royalty & noblemen to paintings capturing the lives of common people neither is better than the other to me I like the full breadth of life to be explored
I think it’s perfectly fine to dislike a work based on its failings and there are many!!lol, but to say those failings primarily comes from the trend of adding diverse characters!? I can’t help but read that as shallow & simplistic
There are many pieces of media that I like that don’t match up with my worldview or with messages that I completely disagree with. It wasn’t the creator’s addition of their beliefs that could’ve been a failing but the lack of skill in communicating their beliefs in an interesting & competent way.
After all, media with messaging has always existed throughout history
Listen, you can complain about beauty/ charm standards if you want, but at the end of the day, if the client wants an appealing design for players to purchase skins, as designers we usually need to incorporate charm or outright power/ masculinity for a male character & sensuality/ appeal for a female character. They can also have cutesy charm (think about Nintendo games- they follow the rule of cute).
Sure, you can make something super unique & you may love it - I’m not saying it’s not good or artistically valuable to be creative. But ultimately when we’re asked to draw a design that’s going to be sold, we have to take into account what the majority wants.
@@scarletsletter4466 you’re right full stop
Also in addition is it okay to ask if your argument is shortsighted, I don’t mean that in a patronizing way, I’m saying doesn’t it depend on your ultimate goal?
I want more diverse representations of beauty that is my ultimate goal & I know that many people want that too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it shouldn’t be earned.
I want the regular everyday people to be shown as they are in an interesting way & I also want the best version of everyday people to be displayed as well, it is human nature to strive to be better and for our ideal image of ourselves.
One of the many problems I find when interacting with opposing views on this is that they don’t seem to believe that there is beauty in the average diverse range of the everyday person, I believe that’s the first question to ask
If you don’t like it it’s ok to say so, my ideal reaction is “you haven’t convinced me yet” not “it’s trash don’t bother”
If I’m trying to do my job & a client asks for the usual of course I’m going to do that, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t ultimately look for other avenues to push the envelope and expand my imagination and hopefully that of others as well
I don’t recall ordering a yappacino
If Concord designs were used in a gacha game, even less people would have played it.
Even plain and "ugly" characters can work when you lean into them. Soldier 76 is just "old white guy with a gun an leather jacket." But it makes him stand out next to the tiny korean teenager in a plugsuit piloting an anime mech. Junkrat and Roadhog arent exactly designs that scream "I wanna f#%k that" but they fit big fat bruiser and manic tweaker archetypes to a T. Ana is well past her prime but they went for "wisened old woman" look instead of subverting it for "sexy granny" thing.
@@awesomesauce980 you are absolutely correct
Love it or hate it, eastern companies like hoyoverse and others of the gatcha genre are making infinite money on the strength of their character design alone. These games are held up entirely by the appeal of their attractive characters with entertaining personalities. Some of these games, infamously, basically play themselves. I think any aspiring character designer should spend time looking at the community discussion around these games to get a sense of just how much appealing character design effects people.
Sex sells, and nothing will ever change that. And that is fine and good because we are freaking animals with an evolutionary drive. No, you cant brainwash us to like women with stubble, penis and dressed like a trash bag.
If you want a good example of a game with attractive characters and entertaining personalities that have lively community discussion around them, look at which IP took the top spot in terms of the number of booths dedicated to it at Comiket C103 and C104.
Speaking of Eastern games, if you want a good example of a game with attractive characters and entertaining personalities that have lively community discussion around them, take a look at which IP took the top spot in terms of the number of booths dedicated to it at Comiket C103 and C104. I think you'll find it ticks all those boxes the best out of any IP in its market.
TH-cam keeps deleting my comments. 😑
@@McCaroni_Sup Yeah it does that. I think they have ai tone police you.
i miss those days in 90s where anime character designs are cool, i hope it will come back in our todays art era.
Some designers are trying to bring that back, a good example is Virgin Punk which will be out next year, and the creator of Cowboy Bebop’s new series. I agree it’s missing, but hopefully these steps put creative characters designs in the right step for anime at least.
There's the Indie Game Mullet Mad Jack.
What abt arcane?
@@introvertion6460 Looks great, doesn't really scream 90's anime though.
are you purposfully ignoring all modern day anime or are you acting like everything in the 90s was cool
Im drawing my own version of all the concord characters. Its a very good exercise!
Games are prettier when the graphics are less realistic
@@lucasjleandro couldn’t agree more
I really dont mind the game like Final Fantasy that has realistic graphic but at the same time keep the OG design of em, attractive, and really good looking fantasy character a like.
When I was younger, when I played games that you could customize your character, I never once made them look like me. I always made them look like a made up character. A great physique, Awsome clothing (mostly like ninja designs) and glowing weapons. I always made them idealistic, not realistic. I dunno why the AAA industry is so hell bent on representation. Like I couldn't care less.
I miss the days where things where more idealistic then trying to be realistic all the time.
It's not even good representation most of the time either. Like, make it fun and a good story that's cohesive and nobody would give a damn. Media in general is about having fun ffs, let's prioritize that first.
Good for you?
That's because people play games to escape reality, not be reminded of it.
I agree sexuality should play a bigger role in "fanservicey" female characters' actual personalities instead of being an autopilot thing, but if we're gonna say "Lara's old design is impractical & would get in the way" that opens a gigantic can of worms if we're actually gonna be consistent. Link starts out in basically his pajamas in A Link to the Past & immediately faces off against highly armored guards, yet no one cares (remember, he was gonna go to sleep in that tunic). In Wind Waker & its spinoffs, not to mention the first half of Ocarina of Time, he's a small child pulling off things a small child absolutely couldn't. Also gauging how "ok" a sexualized design is based on character assertiveness honestly feels like a red herring & ends up artistically limiting in the long run.
The real answers are "make sure a sexual design makes sense given the tone & context" & "sexualize male characters too", but Japan's been doing the latter for eons (some Tales male protagonists wear less than the women!) so the recent trend of Japanese creators "being careful about representation" based on western anglophone standards is a step back.
Absolutely agree on the last paragraph. It's why I call bull on the "sexist Japan" crap. Yeah, you have characters live Ivy or Judith, but have you *seen* Maxi and Yuri?!
When you brought up eastern vs western games, I agree that eastern games all look good but also they almost always look similar and have very bad same face syndrome and there outfits don’t have too much variety. But that’s just what I think but I would understand if someone thought differently
@@Def_not_a_Jellyfish awesome always happy to hear different thoughts
Exactly what I mean, relying too much on beauty expectations can be limiting & eventually overplayed
I’ve mentioned before that artists from whatever industry can work to show us what we didn’t know we wanted
That's half true. It's true most of the resident evil female characters look like these, but they also have lady Alcina Dimitrescu, she is attractive in her own way, a very iconic character design.
I hard disagree with Asian character designs being similar looking and lacking outfit variety. So many of the games he showed are actually Japanese, Korean games . Bayonettas face and outfit looks nothing like Ashley from re4 and stellar blades eves face looks nothing like Zelda. Does princess peach and 2b from nier look anything like?
@@AliHamza-sv4ni Eve from Stellar Blade looks like a woman who's had one two many plastic surgeries. Especially when you compare her (and all the other female characters) to the male ones. I personally think Stellar Blade has awful character design because it's just not consistent.
Wow, what a master class in character design. Thank you for making art education accessible.
I try
Thanks so much for this video. I've been studying character design for the last year and this eloquently summarized so much of what I have been learning in a very clear and succint manner that helped me clarify a lot of core ideas. You are a great teacher.
When i play rpg's or any game that lets you choose a character (be it fighting games) i always pick the monster looking class. Because they are honestly just the coolest looking one most of the time, and i want to look cool in a video game. Yes, i like the ugly characters but concord has a different kind of "ugly" in it.
They went full ugly, never go full ugly
@@TylerEdlin84 i'll take looking like an argonian over looking like fupa guy with colonoscopy tube
The problem is not that they're ugly, ugly or weird looking characters can have a place, especially depending on the character's intent or background. The problem is that they're ugly AND boring.
@@obsiangravel I think the problem is they are boring. They aren't even ugly, they look normal. They lack distinctive features, and that's what they desperately need.
@@obsiangravel it's not the ugg response Concord elicit from overall visual design, it's really eww.
When played against the ochre, beige and virulent yellow/green/purple environment, I can't help but feel nauseated. Then add immersion breaking with everyone running like boys in female caricature bodies.
The game is simply revolting in the inception level.
Tyler's design critiques are usually spot-on but I disagree with that point about characters lacking beauty in Western games. A girl not being dolled up or hot enough isn't rly a critique unless it's a part of the character's identity, like a succubus archetype similar to Evelynn, Ahri or Mileena (in some games). If it's a warrior/fighter woman, I don't see why she needs to be pretty. I like looking at pretty people, but I also love seeing that unconventional variety that makes me feel more connected to the characters and world.
No hate btw, I just don't like this being posed as even in the same realm as something as vital as shape language, exaggeration etc 🙂
That’s fair. I’m def biased there.
Yeah, I also don't mind characters not looking sexualized and if I would make a game myself, I would try to feature all types of people (if it makes sense for the game). But what I think went wrong in that regard with Concord is not only that they tried making all characters unappealing but they are all literally so much covered up as to not even show a bit of skin. Haymar for example is probably the one character that most people would agree that she looks appealing, but then they have her wearing something that covers everything below her head, even adding a collar so that nobody could get attracted to her for seeing to much skin and she stays below a certain value on a scale that is aplied to all female characters in the game (or general modern games). While the shroom head is allowed to show his blank 'shoulders' and the muscle guy even walks around topless. And as I said I don't mind characters not looking appealing in video games if it's not only to adhere to a certain agenda.
What people seem to forget is that the design of characters isn't what they would look like or would wear on an everyday basis, but is a costume. And costumes should bring out the best in a person (or other humanoid characters) even if he naturally doesn't look that good. Or why do characters in every video game wear the same clothes even if it they go on an adventure that takes several years (unless it's a feature like customizing characters in gta or a necessity to provide contend in live service games)? On the one hand it's readability, as to not get confused, but first of all it's a design.
That's why I think there's nothing wrong with characters not looking sexy as long as they are well designed (purpose of the design?, does it still look appealing / interesting), as long as it's not for the sole reason of not making them beautiful. If Concord would really try to be representative they should also include characters that are supposed to look good, because beautiful people do exist to. No hate btw., more of a general critic about concord characters' appeal design decisions 🙂
Art is meant to be beutiful. Ugly art is failed art.
I'm a female player & I hate a majority of female characters in games. Please for the love of hell give us bloody variety 😅! Not long ago there was a leak with offical female merc for Team Fortress 2 and OMG I'D LOVE IF THOSE WERE IMPLEMENTED. They Genuinely LOOK GOOD. Even if they're a skin overlay they're a design WE ACTUALLY LIKE.
@@meikahidenori yeah I saw those they were quite good
I'd agree to most of this but personally don't think Aloy is a good inclusion.
Aloy is a hella pretty character, she is just not dolled up like videogame characters usually are. And according to her story and the world she lives in, it makes a lot of sense. That girl has to save the world, she does not have a lot of time to be "conventionally pretty"
+ Characterwise, she isn't a "typical" female too. She was really refreshing in a world full of oversexualized characters.
(and yes, she can later wear make up , but it resembles warpaint. Also a very clever touch imo, compared to what culture they're leaning on in the entire game!). As much as I love Loish's design (as a big Loish fan, she was the main reason why I touched that game in the first place) I was glad that they made her the way she is. Her look is incredibly iconic and unique imo. If you say Aloy, I directly have a associaton to her and her reddish hair, her braids, the type of layered clothing she is wearing. How machinery parts are implemented in her clothing, the fur, the type of Material her dress might be made of etc. etc. I'm actually annoyed that a lot of Male gamers are like "Oh yeah well...she could have been prettier" and totally miss the mark on her. Horizon Zero Dawn DOES have other pretty characters too. One that comes to mind is Petra. Or Talahna (who is this pretty architype with heavy make up and everything). Aloy does look like an average woman. And this is actually a representation that we need in vidoegames too.
I think if you aim for realism in your games, this is an aspect that designers need to understand too. Not everything can be hot. Not everything should be hot. What makes Games good is not the sexyness of the characters (regardless if it 's male or female) but the gameplay and the story. Ellie might be a weird example here because I think i the first games she is a minor, but as she grow older, she looks like an average woman too. In a setting like the last of us, it's something that makes sense. They have to survive. Dolling her up wouldn't make a lot of sense. It might make male gamers happy if she were dolled up, but as a girlgamer I would just be annoyed at "Wow , yeah, and there goes another character down in the male appeal gutter!"
Or at least handle it like Baldurs Gate. Karlach is hot (no pun intended) but if you look closely, she hits a similar note like Aloy. Strong, muscular. Not convential pretty but pretty in her own way.
Maybe this is just my female view on this subject matter, but I'm really tired of dolled up characters.
As another loish/aloy fan I agree to some extent and see where you are coming from. I think my main issue is that they made her face a bit too square in comparison to her real life model. I love Aloy and all her flaws, and I enjoy she is not really all that feminine. But I can also see where she might have been whacked with the ugly stick just a bit.
I agree. And it’s so wild hearing people argue that a female character sexualizing herself is somehow empowering. Having to lean into the male gaze will never be empowering. Some women choose to do it to improve their life bit that’s as far as it goes. If sexism didn’t exist they wouldn’t even have to do that. Men can get what they want without sexualizing themselves
@@sonder2874Concord has zero sexualization. Maybe you’ll like that.
@@renemartinez3451 maybe you should watch p*rn if you like sexualization
@@sonder2874 The ironic thing about this discussion, especially with Aloy is that I only hear guys complaining that she is ugly as heck. But I rarely hear similar takes from women. She is actually very popular among female Gamers because of her looks.
"Oh a character not appealing to the male gaze, which is why she is badly designed."
The only sexualized character I'm not complaining about is Bayonetta, because she was designed by a Woman and acts as a parody to the Male gaze!
I took a few character design classes with Kevin Chen years back and I remember him mentioning that each element of the design is an opportunity to re-enforce the: backstory, personality, or world.
The Concord characters don't look like they belong in the same world and I have no information at all about who they are through their designs. I'm really surprised that they got approved and made it into the finished product.
I don't think there's a decline in character design, there's more games and characters than ever before so you're naturally going to see more wins and duds, and ideas can saturate much more quickly. Dwelling on the duds is kinda pointless. I'm sure the creators of Concord realize they missed the mark so they'll either do better or get left behind.
What's more worrying to me is when something badly designed or annoying is part of a successful game so it proliferates. Like how "Ubisoft" towers and empty open worlds have flooded the industry. The worst part about Horizon wasn't Aloy's face... it's climbing Ubisoft towers and running around in empty spaces. It's the same problem with Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, FF7 Rebirth, and Eldin Ring... among many other problematic similarities those four have.
I think Aloy looked great in the first game, her hair is really cool. But the second game looks... idk if its the graphic improvements or what, but her face looks like dirty and puffy there's a weird uncanniness to it that reminds me of those creepy Japanese robots. And it's not like they can't design, Horizon's costumes, creatures, and key locations are pretty cool.
When it comes to videogames and animation, I don't think the characters should use the likeness of their voice-actors especially if its a celebrity... something about it just feels uncreative.
Thanks for checking it out I agree with all that
8:56 I LITETALLY saw someone in a comment section say that Terry Bogard in sf6 is inspiring them to want to work out. People don't want ugly characters that nobody wants to be. People want to aspire to something, even if they never reach the goal.
The East vs West panel is weight because the Aloy's model/Aloy part is flipped compared to the other entries.
@@billbillson6779 yeah I noticed it too late as well
Great video! You articulate a lot of the problems I have been seeing crop up in character design, not just in games, but in movies, tv, and fictional media in general extremely well. I'm not a creator myself but I greatly appreciate the perspective of someone who's willing to talk about these things from a creators perspective.
one of my favorite "Stereotype inversion" is in Berserk's two mains.
Griffith with the typical traits of the naive yet destined for greatness hero of light and Guts sporting the typical traits of the evil tyrant with brutish muscular figure and dark brooding persona.
both are basicly the stereotype of the Hero and Villain swapped
I don't know, the Concord characters had their flaws, but I don't think that specific example took himself too seriously. I mean he looks jovial and happy. The "beating with an ugly stick" example LOL...Yeah they uh...they kinda messed Mary Jane Watson up just a bit.
The worst thing about Yasuke is they are a real and interesting story, but because Ubisoft is using them to be a tolken character they've enraged a whole lot of people. I'd totally be fine with someone making a game with them as protagonist, but they have 0 place as a player character in ASSASSIN's creed. They were an exceptionally tall black man in isolationist japan, they have 0 reason to be every in any stealth. Put them in a samurai game about Nobunaga's conquest and he'd be fine, he has no place as an AC protagonist.
I'm baffled by these studios not realizing they're just doing the same tolken characters as always.
The fact that this content is free is insane. Absolutely stellar content as usual, you're the man!
The thing with video games is that majority of gamers approach them for the escape from realism and real life, often after working in a dead end job, just wanting to have escape from reality.
Hyper Realistic games have their audiences, but the gamers trying to relax and escape reality, do not want to have real life forced into their own face, which puts stress on their mental health, same stress that the dead end job has inflicted on them already. Instead of playing that hyper realistic game that tells them that they're EVIL for liking video games that are unrealistic, they might as well open the front door and go outside and experience the realism in real life, and suffer the further stress on their mental health and possibly collapse and then have to go get psychiatric help, most likely never heal and recover, as success rates are not great for 100% recovery.
And to listen to the woke cultists, is like to go to a church/mosque/etc. and listen to a sermon how the religion is great and etc. hinting how you have no agency as person, and is pretty much a slave to a deity with child like mind that swings on calm to absolute rage and hatred, killing and saving random people and so on.
Sure some may find it enjoyable, afaik usually the types who don't want to think about future, and let the deity decide the future for them. "It is not my fault that god decided that my friends die today. God works in mysterious ways".
Love all the points made.
I like how technical limitations in old games helped shape their art & design
I really love these breakdowns, as a character artist, really love how you broke this down. Nice one Tyler!
@@animarch3D thanks appreciate this
Both this and your last character design videos are great, honestly. You made an excellent point how trope subversion can make character designs more interesting, but also how subversion for the sake of it or for trying to "make a Serious Point" can result in a design that just misses the mark. Its definitely way more interesting than all of the dumb videos that just go "game bad Cuz Woke" without articulating what made the designs in games like Concord fall flat compared to their more successful contemporaries, that's for sure!
Also, really love the Battleborn shout-out in this one lol. I enjoyed that game a lot when it was still online.
Thanks for watching I appreciate it
Honestly this and the video dissecting Concord's visual design (or lack thereof) are genuinelu invaluable, professional takes on why the character designs of that game just left NO impact on people at large. It was honestly kind of baffling how the characters did such a poor job of being *charismatic* in a genre that's all about the characters' appeal!
That being said, i do somewhat disagree that the 'pandering' part of Concord, dustborn, and other games is necessarily why they weren't as successful as they could have been (or at all, in Concord's case). Representation isn't inherently a bad thing; the problem really comes where representation overrides all other basic aspects of a character design. It's just another tool to be used to generate appeal in characters, because audience members WILL appreciate a character if they 'represent' a non-normative group and but are first and foremost overall appealing.
Look at Guilty Gear Strive lately, for example - Bridget was one of the game's most popular character releases, and she's a trans character, which is something that's HEAVILY politicized today. But her design succeeds because she's an overall fun and appealingly designed character, not just [Mandatory Representation with No Thought Past That]. the same could be said for Bloodhound from Apex Legends; a nonbinary character sure, but also a stylish and well designed character first and foremost, who appealed to MULTIPLE audiences because of that.
I miss seeing weird and unique art styles
@@bugsinthewalls yeah lots of studios are afraid to take risks especially with design. Games take to long and are too expensive
Hey, really nice overview of the topic, very helpful.
One thing I can’t fully agree with is the idea that artists are deliberately making their characters less appealing, at least in some of the examples you mentioned. To me, it seems more like technical or artistic issues, rather than a conscious effort to 'uglify' characters. I get that the perspective you're presenting taps into current conspiracies and drives engagement, but can you honestly imagine going through a review and having your art director say, 'This woman is too pretty, can you make her ugly?'
Most of the time, stiff facial animations and poor lighting are the real culprits which is often due to corporate greed and poor planning. A lot of cutscenes are outsourced to the lowest bidder, and these teams often lack proper knowledge (and their work comes back at the very last moment leaving no time for fixes). Also, taking a screenshot at just the right moment while the character is in motion, and then presenting it as a representative example feels a bit disingenuous. It's a bit disappointing to see this narrative being supported by an actual artist.
Sorry if that came off a bit harsh.
I have friends that work on designs for some of these large properties and they have told me horror stories when committees get involve and destroy a lot of the intent on design. It happens things are complicated the larger the project.
@@TylerEdlin84 That’s absolutely true. I just don’t see the intent when there is plenty of incompetence involved. They don’t want to make the characters ugly. They just suck at their job.
Respectfully, you can be disappointed with reality, but that doesn’t change it & you shouldn’t be expressing disappointment at Tyler for telling it like it is. Saying he’s spreading “conspiracies” is unfair & inappropriate. I’m a professional concept artist too & Tyler is spot on.
If a client wants me to draw a design to sell skins for example, we’ve got to appeal to the majority & usually that means masculinity/ power & charm/ sensuality. Family-friendly designs can also follow the “rule of cute” (Nintendo is the gold standard example for this). Unfortunately sometimes to meet non-aesthetic goals, execs or ADs may force changes that make the design less appealing.
Listen, you don’t have to take his or my word for it. Go look at the original Concord concept art. You can see it’s far more appealing than the way the characters ended up. Anyone can see that these designs were changed in ways that made them less appealing to the majority. You’re the 1 who’s calling that “uglifying,” not Tyler.
As someone learning art and also wanting to illustrate characters they write about, this was eye opening and same time, kind of discouraging - but not in a bad way. Just got a lot to learn before I even design a character.
You probably heard this already but there were affirmations from a developer that worked for Concord explaining how the enviroment was a "Toxic Positivity" enviroment.
They litterally didnt (could not have) someone say "No this doesnt work" It was always "yes yes keep going" so designs became a hodge podge of whatever with the orginal intention probably lost to time
@@jamesbond3w yeah I def want to talk about that
Interesting that the topic of beauty only had female examples. Video games also set cultural standards of beauty and influence them.
If a female character doesn't have a reason why she is supposed to be attractive, they should be allowed to look plain or even unattractive. There's way more elements to character design than a character's face. That one edit at 10:13 literally makes the character look empty in favor of a sultry sexy look. And there's not even an expression on her face because smiling causes lines in the face or, god forbid, makes her look unappealing.
9:33 I think and yea it's also clearly AI generated as well. Just soulless sexual slop. I'm not a purist by any kind, but when it comes to female characters with sex appeal, I'd like for them to make sense and also have some sort of flavor to them, rather than a completely generic machine approximation of a person that is just meant to be attractive to the largest common denominator on twitter etc.
While art is allowed to be extraordinary, alien or robotic in its appeal, it should also be allowed to be human. And it is the artist's job to abstract and recontextualize human experiences into artistic form. It's not the presence of political ideology that distorts art, since all art IS political. It's just seen as a distortion when those politics misalign with our personal preferences of what art should be, what female characters should look like.
IMO some of the examples were completely fine, and some missed the mark on execution, which I'm sure has plenty to do with overhead at studios, crunch and other business-related reasons. Just because some of them failed it doesn't mean we should all simply design carbon copy pretty-women now and nothing else haha. There's room for that in the industry, and there's room for more too.
While I disagree with some of the commentary on eastern vs western designs, I do appreciate the structure you're teaching with these redesigns! It is important that we iterate or infuse a template, rather than attempting to disengage from all visual language/shorthands overall :')
Always a good thing to learn and practice fundamentals then breaking them over time.
Outstanding video by the way.
22:42 the issue with tomb raider is classic tr and reboot tr are literally 2 completely different characters with only superficial similarities.
One is a female power fantasy that is hyper confident, knows she's a bomb shell therefore she uses her sexuality to her advantage, does a lot of gymnastics and the setting is not realistic while the reboot is a grounded story about an inexperienced young woman that fights for survival to find the secrets her father died for, she barely has any personality of her own honestly she's just a girl doing the right thing.
Both of these designs work great for both characters in my opinion.
I'm not a visual artist, but as a writer I still have to play with visual design to try and get an image to my audience. I especially like to play with colors. Having a strong meaningful color associated to a character can be such an amazing boon. Oh that guy who is always wearing this drab practical clothing has a distinct red scarf? Why? Oh its the color of their homeland's flag and they can't go home. Suddenly it gives more to the character.
Roka's design is literally so bad that you, along with everyone else in the universe, failed to catch that the rocket launcher is held by a robot arm attached to her back. BTW literally every video I see talks about "silhouette" and it's something that I've heard many times before as far as character design going back years. How exactly did the Concord designers miss this lesson?
As someone who makes costumes and props, you hit the nail on the head. Lately numerous properties and artist have been making totally bland characters to the point of me not being able to sell merch on them. It doesn't matter what innovative thing you did, how hard you tried, or cool technique you implemented. If the character is overall bland people don't attach to them. Which I can directly see, since then people don't buy costumes or props of the design.
There is not a single weapon, mask, helmet, or anything from Concord I could see selling or even being potentially requested to sell and that's an issue. I think this video can apply to lots of recently made stuff, but that's a story for another day.
The modern game cannot comprehend the sheer genius of the Dingodile design
It might’ve not been your intention, but with the examples chosen for male and female characters for this video, it felt like the message is to move back to a time where female characters’ appeal is almost always tied to their physical attractiveness, and male characters’ appeal to action and personality despite how they look. We can have both, and both ways, but that’s not the message I’m getting with this video in regards to good character design. The examples used in the video paints a picture that conventionally non-attractive male characters can still be super cool, and have far more exaggerated proportions, but that it doesn’t apply for female characters.
@@winterflow_machinima yeah maybe the message didn’t land as clear as I intended, that’s totally fair. Context is everything and that’s something I could address in part 3! Let me know what else you would want to hear about.
@@TylerEdlin84Cheers for the response! A bit of my background: female, been an avid gamer for +25 years, working in games as an artist for 12 years, including outsourcing. Despite the supposed ”wokeness” of the current era, I feel there’s still a strong bias for male characters to get the free pass to be cool despite how they look (young, old, big, small, thin, chubby, serious, goofy etc) while for female characters it is still much more restricted to beauty appeal (young, conventionally beautiful).
While you make some good points in the video too, and I agree that game visuals should cater to the intended target audience, I don’t wish for a push for female characters not receiving the same freedom that male character design enjoys when it comes to creativity! Hope that clarifies my thoughts a bit more!
@@winterflow_machinima yes you are absolutely right and I definitely think I made the wrong call in the editing process where I did trim upwards of 20 minutes worth of additional examples and I had the entire female cast of red dead. You know which were regular woman and they were all amazing. But I feel your point and that’s definitely something I will echo in an eventual follow up.
Another important thing is the way in which games define our expectations and attitudes towards designs.
We associate designs and design choices with certain games and thus our expectations of that game will be informed by design choices.
Take Fair Game reveal for example.
People have immediately taken issue with the character designs because they remind them of other titles that have garnered a lot of bad attention (Dustborn, Concord, Borderlands 3 etc).
WHAT. The redesign of the Prince in The Warrior Within was a genious move and Warrior Within is arguably the best PoP game ever made.
@@Kandisz_nora I don’t know, I think a lot of us really missed the charm of that first one.
@@TylerEdlin84 You got your charming prince back in 2008 :)
@@Kandisz_nora hahaha that game was was so odd in its design choices very good looking though
@@TylerEdlin84 It did not age a single day in 16 years. Absolutely futureproof art direction.
I'm designing some characters of my own since I'm trying to make a manga of sorts. I always thought design was definitely easy and then i realized how wrong i was. There is so much to take into consideration like shape language, region, species, personality, role, silhouette, and status. I have been having lots of fun experimenting though. Thanks for the great video, it gave me so many ideas.
Im not the best artist, definitely not a professional (freelance at best), but I knew at glance that Concords characters were off to say the least. As i ran through my favorite character test. If I completely black out the characters and put them side by side can i still easily tell them apart? Y/N. Are they telegraphing any sort of personality with body language? Y/N. My rule of thumb is stereotypes and tropes exist for a reason, because they work ppl like these type of characters or in case of stereotypes hold some inkling of truth and can be fun as long as its not malicious.
Honestly the only good thing concords characters have done is make good redesign and character design practice as a lot of the characters are outside my comfort zone, (robots, armor, and guns). Oddly has been fun practice.
I mean appeal in a way does depend on the person some people enjoy playing hot or sexy characters while others may gravitate more to silly characters, or scary/edgy characters, or even just cute characters. But very few people like bland characters, so I think its fine to rely on the tropes a little bit, particularly if they sell your games, or other media.
@@spruceforester3038 thanks for your input !
@@TylerEdlin84 no problem
Spot on. I think you did a good job of keeping the topic about character design without delving into the politics.
@@arytaus so hard, politics are all around this industry unfortunately.
The problem is this is a pointless conversation without politics. Bad designs will be pushed to the forefront by bad actors and all of your skill will be wasted. All your, in my opinion, correct points of view will be ignored or actively suppressed, replaced by someone misguided sense of morality that denies physical reality. Reality like: people want to look at attractive people.
@@SpentAmbitionDrain 100%. The likes of inexperience or ignorance that leads to mistakes are things that can be addressed. Knowledge and skill are not the issue at all. What has to be set apart from ignorance are motivations of spite and narcissism. It is pitiable, but these are personality deficiencies that cannot be remedied by way of teaching. Disassociation and allowing bad faith actors to self-reflect is how this gets addressed. Otherwise, this situation isn’t something that any working professional can reason their way through in the hopes of finding some mutual outcome. A game that had 8 years of time worth of opportunity to head in that direction didn’t; that is clearly negatively motivated.
@@CTomCooperSpot on. I will add that you cannot logic someone out of a position they did not logic themselves into. These are ideological choices and the only way to reverse the course is to let all of these games fail and gatekeep projects from the "ugly pushing" artists as they will never change their cemented world view.
The discussion surrounding how we should design characters, and where trying to be different goes to far, is the only good thing to come out of Concord.
Quiet breathes through her skin! lol come on Tyler, makes sense to me! haha anyway great some points made. we really do have to be careful when making more realistic games, but at the same time, characters like Aloy,Kratos,Joel etc work for those worlds because the realism in unorthodox situations is part of the appeal. a bit confused on why Alloy is part of the subverting beauty standards and calling assassins creed token is a confusing take that makes me think we've changed the definition of token characters
For just because they made her in game model look worse than the face model, on my opinion.
I love how objective you are
Hey man, love the video you did here and found it very insightful with character design in general.
I wanted to request you do video on the principal of *"immersion vs substance"*.
To give an example. I play a game that you definitely know named battlefield. Ive been a battlefield player since battlefield field 2 on the PC. I have played every entry up until battlefield 5. I feel part of the appeal of battlefield is that you are (especially in multiplayer) supposed to feel like a grunt against an enemy team in a combined arms effort.
My immersion broke when i saw the trailer and gameplay of battlefield five, showing a woman with a prosthetic, fighting in some battle in france, with a soldier carrying katana on his back. It made me dissuaded to play the game period because you were playing a grunt in WWII, just someone special.
Even in 2042 this happens as every "soldier" is a cookie cutter of a special operator instead of a near future soldier that yoh would come to expect.
I wanted your take to see if immersion matters as much as gameplay to make a good game.
This is the first time I have seen a fellow artist state my exact posture towards style. I have had so many arguments with other artists and non artists about the importance of style in the development of both the art and the artist. I believe that style is so overvalued at the moment that, to me, it feels like a potential pitfall for artist. I have seen time and time again artist justifying poor construction, somewhat shacky line art, or even color theory with the excuse of saying it's "their artstyle". Now I am not saying that art should be done in a particular way or that you as an artist should behave in a particular way either. But to me, style is just another tool in favor of the intention of the project. Basically the artist should be in control of the style, not vice versa. I don't believe that you need to enjoy drawing everything, in fact there are styles and even sometimes scenes that I won't draw just for lack of interest. But whenever your style limits you to something, then you should probably consider studying a little more that subject in which you are shaky just so your style can be improved and encompass an even wider range. Many times people ask me what my style is and I will tell them that I change it in accordance to the project. Of course there are some things and habits that will point you as the artist, but I feel like many times artist confuse style with visual motif. Having a way of drawing noses, or eyelashes, is not really a style imo. It's merely a comfort zone. Now none of this comes with any hate or criticism towards any artist nor its habits.
Nah I'm pretty sure design shown in east vs west is due to a lack of technical know how on the west side, looks junior's first pass at sculpting 3d capture mandated by manager as a crutch to replace talent, hence uncanny Valley effects. That's not challenging beauty standard when it's plain bad, and the east has non traditional beauty well done, like aside from alloy, these are crummy direct photogrammetry with lens distortion still baked in and bad texture shader 😢 on the east side the way they pushed ashley and the re3 girl is not the typical oval head smooth jaws beady eyes, nor is the traditional bimbo aside from tifa, but technical execution is absolutly flawless.
It's sad that something nobidy is commenting on, which tells me we no longer havemthe expertise despite being in photo realism era, that's scary for the future of the art.
Nah i dont buy it. The artists of "the west" combined cant be worse than japanese artists. Just due to the numbers alone its statistically improbable.
In some cases, sure, there is a lot of DEI hiring going on.
But a lot of it is deliberate.
@@MrDezokokotar not combined, after indiscriminate lay off that chase talents. Eastern artist are more likely to have long career or attract western talents, and they oscillate between stylise almost doll like idealised figure, or extrem realism, and very few are in extreme realism like capcom, which actually use the years of idealised shape to enhance realism, for example the re3 girl is excellent in knowing what to push to have effect.
That's nuanced stuff, you need to develop an eye to get the subtleties.
Meanwhile kay vess look doubly cursed, because the shape looks like the potatoes you get from straight scanning, but also it seems there was a sculpting phase to over emphasizes some curve, I know they didn't used AI, because it would have pushed towards averages, and the texture has baked a curvature pass that further overemphasised curve, leading to chin lady effects, side by side shows that cheeks bone are a tad too big and lighting get easily caught up in cavity, these elements hints at lack of technical knowledge in the nuances of how to handles faces. It's not helped when it start moving in real time cinematic, a decent face can have up to 200 bones, if you use a blendshape workflow you have 200 blendshapes x number of vertices on the face, that's a shit load of data, especially on an open world, leading to obvious compromise.
Other character has numerous defect typical of lack of skills or experiences, when you know where to look, knowing how to handle limitations artistically is also part of the skillset. I already mentioned overshading of cavity, there is also how shape are pushed to clean the scan, but also the eyelid area or the mouth (nasolabial) area, how character do oh and ah shape are typically dead give away. Most open world game avoid ultra expressive facial shape during small talk dialogue for issues of data density and limitations it impose, they supply emotion with emote and body reactions or camera shot, mass effect original is a master of doing a lot with a small set of expressions. Outlaws break that. Same issues for the fable girl.
This is what diversity hires gets you, hiring people because of skin color or sexual prefrence, instead of their actual skills
It might be because of the aggressive focus for certain Western titles to be excessively realistic in their styles. Even some Eastern characters try to follow a type that tries to make them still fit conventional norms of what is attractive. When it comes to Western ones it seems more inconsistent with some characters looking fine and others not being as good because their design might translate well on paper, but with all of the added details and animations, it looks worse. I don't figure it's also the issue with diversity, as there are plenty of games that have good characters that are diverse and inclusive even, but still flow well with in their implementation. Examples are more like Overwatch or Apex Legends. Hopefully game companies pull away more from heavy realistic styles, otherwise the spectacle they bring with detail is going to be very boring in every newer title. This is what made Concord even less appealing in my eyes.
@@neweducatedyoke7206 yeah I agree with this all
It's one thing to design a character the best you can and just missing. Happens to the best of us. Sometimes you just think something is awesome and the target audience doesn't agree.
The problem is that in the case of Concord and spiritual peers, the designers decided to intentionally discard what they knew the audience wanted.
This wasn't an accident.
They didn't design these characters and think "these will do gangbusters". They intentionally designed them to avoid the Male Gaze and toxic masculine appeal, which ended up making characters that nobody liked or wanted to be like.
Hilariously not even the alphabet soup community liked them because they're as vain as the rest of us and also don't want to identify as a pear-shaped blob of humanity, regardless of what its pronouns are.
People from the likes of Sweet Baby inc claiming that they're not telling artists what to make rings awfully hollow when you can see every design decision adhering so closely to the values of the consultants while managing to miss every last bullet point for how to please the customer.
Maybe you can get away with something like that for a small indie project. It's your time and your money, you can make whatever character you like for whatever target audience you like and you get to tell people that don't like it to not buy your product and that's fine because it's your product and your lost revenue.
But we're talking a 400 million dollar project and thousands of jobs involved. At that point making decisions like this borders on criminal negligence and neglect of your professional responsibilities.
One of the best videos on this topic, well done👏
@@quietly_redd thanks friend
I find that icluding what you should do and what you should avoid to be very informative, I loved this video!!
Great vid! Yeah, the East is definitely winning over the Western art design in my opinion its way more appealing.
@@SketchPLAY1 damn right
My hardest disagree is on Lara Croft's re-design. It took something iconic and instantly recognisable (and also beloved) and made it bland and forgettable. Comparing that to the various designs of Links across his many different games, from the overly cartoony to the more realistic, his overall design retains the core features and appeal of his character. If I wasn't familiar with Tomb Raider, I wouldn't have been able to tell with certainty the original and the redesign were meant to be the same character. Ask me the same about the various Links (assuming I'm not familiar with him), and I could've told you at a quick glance they're the same character.
You know the Ian Malcolm line "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should"?
I feel like many modern artists are so focused on putting their own twist and subverting genres that they don't stop to think what makes the genre work.
I am not saying that all the OG designs and tropes should be treated as holy relics, never to be hampered, but sometimes people just... don't get it.
I remember the early 2000s, when superhero comics switched from "iconic" to "utilitarian"... I was never as turned down from buying comic books as I was back then.
Same thing right now: "Ugh, why does this character that have already a massive fan following has to be this way? Let's switch it out for something that caters to me specifically or people who never cared! What could go wrong?"
Companies are so focused on the "new", on creating something different (all for the sake of selling new and updated merchandise, do not think even for a moment that there is honesty behind those "change of hearts") that they hire people who actively despise the franchises or the genres they are handed.
See Mindy Kaling spouting insult after insult at the previous iterations of Scooby Doo before producing that Velma garbage... and see how it ended: lowest ratings in history.
Once again, this isn't to say EVERY OG design is perfection and every redesign is garbage... but you can certainly feel if the artists (or those commissioning the artists) are more interested in the content they are being handed or their personal bias.
Sorry for the long post and the possible typos, I'm ESL and I am really getting tired of this generation of "what I redesign is great and what you liked is wrong".
Great talk, I always thought of style as a method to tie the story to related inspiration from art history. When they were designing the characters and environments for Mulan, they were referring to Chinese brush paintings, history, and culture. Dexter's laboratory, which was made for tv, has a very UPA feel to it while keeping the lab coat and environment in the early 50s. When I was creating my Anansi Design, I started by researching Jamaican and West African Art and Culture even though I am Jamaican and grew up with the stories. Style isn't an arbitrary thing. It must serve the story and medium. Your character's for a TV show with limited animation budget might need to be simpler because of budget constraints. There are a tonne of art movements that we can also refer to along with things that define a brand. From the perspective of an industrial designer, the lines, stance, and face of a Ford Mustang are going to differ greatly from a Porsche Carrera. So when styling anything you also have to consider your audience as you stated in addition to its history, where is it coming from, where is it going, how has it changed, what does it mean now?
I agree that much of the designs we have been seeing lack visual appeal, too often, and ugly for ugly sake. Style is just the start, character's need to function, a character designed for 3d animation will have a different set of constraints than a character designed for 2d animation, a 2d animated rig, or illustration.
Concord wanted to challenge stereotypes in character design, but forgot that those stereotypes serve a purpose. Visual stereotypes allow us to heuristically recognize what something is at a glance, without looking at lore. In real life, stereotypes can be harmful at worst, or misleading at best, but in games they are vital. You need audiences to see an ad for your game, and to be easily able to deduce what you're looking at.
In Team Fortress, you don't need to understand the deep lore behind the Medic to understand his role in the game. He wears a white coat with red accents, and looks like an old-timey doctor. In Halo, Master Chief and the other Spartan IIs are massive, imposing figures compared to later Spartans generations, showcasing their superior strength and legendary status. In Resident Evil, a series with realistic aesthetics, the character of Rebecca is a rookie medic on Bravo Team; she has white accents on her outfit, with a medical pouch, and wears her trousers rolled up in a youthful, innocent manner.
Now, if you NEVER challenge stereotypes, you become generic -- and that is where you thread the needle. You follow the stereotypes to about 75%, and then get creative with the remaining 25%.
Concord, however, pretty much had zero stereotypes, and was just pure 100% challenge -- meaning nothing was recognizable.
As soon as a game has super realistic character design I have to admit I lose a bit of interest in it, I think it’s why that new 2d hd pixel style or cartoonier styles always appeals to me
Subscribed for the Battleborn love. You got it; I played it while the overwatch ads were going crazy, and the narrative turned into “overwatch clone”
Yeah it’s always unfortunate when things like this happen to solid games.
4 :10 A long time ago I was watching some fzd . (Concept art stuff) and he said something like, be 80% recognizable and 20% unique. Like making a tank just look loke a regular tank. Then making it unique, but not so unique that people don't know its a tank anymore.
Also I don't think there's an over reliance on sex appeal. That's more of a games identity. I never want tk see a dead or alive or a soul calibur get made for "the modern audience". And the men are attractive in those games too, I've heard so from my sister, but you know if these games get "modernized" they are ONLY going to target the females.
Finally! Good vídeo Tyler!
This video was really educational. Imma sub.
0:46 "doo-doo"
Lol
Bro actually made the soup kitchen bouncer real
The problem with the soup kitchen bouncer approach today is that higher ups might go with the odd, out of left field designs just to chase shock value and you as a designer have shot yourself in the foot. Now you are stuck with designs that you added as a joke or deterrent just to go green with them and a project you despise linked to your resume for the rest of your career. I like to approach every blunder by thinking that a higher up had too much weight and pulled the project down by not taking the negative feedback.
I'm not sure why you guys that keep redesigning these characters just make them into overwatch knockoffs visually instead of looking at the influences they were trying for and doing that more successfully. Like man, they are all clearly meant to be riffs on Moebius.
@@RJPalmer I love möbius but they not have enough mass appeal or work for this type of game. Maybe if it were an rpg or adventure game. I think they could work not saying impossible but would require more time and effort to implement.
@@TylerEdlin84 I just dont agree that Moebius doesnt have mass appeal potential as an inspiration source. Guardians of the Galaxy which was clearly another influence on Concord also burrowed heavy inspiration from Moebius. Ditching the retro euro scifi aesthetic is completely losing the main actually interesting idea they had to expand on.
@@RJPalmer I’d love to implement more retro sci-fi iteration if I did more.
I like potion c looks like a doctor/butcher and a character that has both jobs sounds interesting. Gameplay wise a medic that can heal you and hurt you in equal measur sound legit too. Imo of course.
its not a stereotype if it works out to feel 'true' to the character
for example, i wouldnt design a character set in the ming dynasty as a black person in modern clothing.
id design an asian raced character in ming dynasty costume & maybe change the color or styling to reflect their character.
guys, its really not that hard. we have to appeal to the audience somehow and get the message across, & our intentions need to be very clear and obvious.
allthough i disagree w using horizon's aloy as an example. i think she has great character design.
Particularly her hair is very appearling, and it makes her stand out as the main character. She is fit, athletic and strong which is true to her character, but some people dont like that she has freckles or dont like that she is muscular,...but for the context of the game of when it takes places, that totally fits and makes sense.
Battleborn also suffered from having poor servers. It was hard to play it without it crashing or not being able to play multilayer(might be due to a lack of people, though)
Great vid. "Anti-heroism" describes it perfectly.
I didn't realize soup kitchen bouncer was supposed to be male in the original design.
Very insightful video! I’m not an artist myself, but I have commissioned a lot of art on Fiverr and unfortunately I made a lot of bad experiences there. I always try to be very specific with my ideas and provide reference fotos of what I have in mind - at the end I often receive something completely different or art that just blindly follows my ideas without any cohesion…
Could you share some ideas of how to commission art the right way? What is the best design process to get at the end a good result?
I hope you read my comment and can help me out. Thanks :)
@@janbiela8596 honestly sounds like what you are doing is pretty spot on. Having a solid description that describes what you need and how it should feel is important. I would just focus on the consistency of the work on the art portfolio. A lot of artists end up on fiver because they can’t get work anywhere else.
@@TylerEdlin84 thanks for taking time and replying! Are there any other platforms you would recommend to commission art?
@@janbiela8596i think twitter x, instagram or cara could be good. There are also discord groups. Maybe ask around first to see if there are artists that other people had good experiences with. Honestly I would never recommend using fiver, there are a lot of people pretending to be artists on there using AI art.
On one hand, I kind of get part of why they're doing some of it. They want people to feel like anyone can be a hero, like "you can be a hero even if you're not beautiful/straight/cis/white/etc." I get that, but at the same time, they need to develop actual characters from that instead of just stopping short. It may even damage your efforts because some people will then link the clear trait with flat, underdeveloped characters and call for way less of them as a result.
No one's saying you can't have these characters, just do more with them and try harder.
I wish final fantasy would go full Amano style with one of their games all the patterns and long flowing shapes it’d be awesome
Doesnt all this end up being a little bit generic? I mean yeah all those other games set a foundation on this but when we talking about players perspective i think that the audience can be trained to explore new things and aesthetics. Personally i see all those remakes you guys did to those characters and i got to say this: Yeah its more clear now but lacks in freshness and authenticity. From artist perspective i wouldnt like to produce based on a formula when there are plenty of new things to explore. The conclusion: Is Concord design so great? Maybe not a 10/10 but does suggest something fresh and new? Absolutely yes. So maybe in the future this new kind of aesthetic or problem solving will set the foundation better ( like the older games set the foundation and now can be compared and studied). Note: i didnt hate your or others remakes but i feel we turn around the same things sometimes :)
No, the audience is dumb and cannot figure anything out for themselves. This has been true since the start of gaming as they have become easier and easier as each year passes.
They actually need recognizable patterns from mainstream media to understand what is actually going on, which is why concord failed.
In overwatch, you look at reinhardt, and you know exactly what his role is.
In concord, you look any of their chsracters and would not have any idea of what they do.
If by fresh and new . You mean, making all of the character look like the heros look like random npcs from Wal-Mart of a comic book convention. No I'm sorry . Noone wants to play that . We have had comic books , movies etc for years .characters playing into femininity and masculinity always sell no matter how much you try to move away from traditional masculinity and femininity m only chronically online people think that people's minds have now been changed etc . They haven't. Everyone still finds an athletic body , wider hips , larger breasts , square jaws on men , soft features on women attractive. No matter what .
in a way yes, its like rebuilding the only burned down house in a nieghbor hood to standard while it may have standed out more burned down and covered in ash compared to standard house but its clearly in a worse state. concord fixes end up feeling generic cause it makes completely terrible designs not terrible.
@@jeanpierrepolnareff9919 Basically Concord failed not because of Design but of economic management reasons. Also i think is bad to critique other artists this way and ''fix'' thei art. Also my point is not to use mainstream patterns but the way you use them.
@@AliHamza-sv4ni And thats why most of the companies recycle old franchises instead of building more new IP. Also i dont find bad the mainstream patterns but we can create more unique stuff with this instead of milking the same and the same stuff. Otherwise we are not artists or designers we are recycle copycats with no new ideas.