Character Design

This week, as well as the last, I spent some time designing characters for the game. After all, this is the RPG where you can recruit anyone. So if the NPC's are the game's unique selling point, they should be interesting! And making characters has always been the most fun part of making a story to me.

Click read more to check out more of the process I put into designing characters.

The Wolf Knight, Sybil, Viola, and Mallow.

Idea, Reference, Drawing, Sprite

Before we get started, I want to show a game I found with the same concept: every NPC can join your party. It's called Radiata Stories, and came out on the PS2 in 2005. I had never heard of this game before! Apparently, it sold very well in Japan and got good reviews, but didn't sell that well outside of Japan. You can recruit a grand total of 176 characters!

However, a game designer for Sony named Roppyaku Tsurumi that the character designs were cookie-cutter and indistinct, just like other JRPG's. "Even when I look at the characters in Radiata Stories, it just looks like the other games." That's... not a great response to get.

In any case, that meant I had to step up my character design game. Nobody cares that you can recruit all the characters in the game if they're boring.​ In a nutshell, I need to make characters that people want to add to their party. On top of that, I obviously can't make 176 characters by myself. Right now I'm settling for 20-ish characters.

The characters in RPG's I end up loving the most are the ones that are distinctly different from the player. Some of my favorite companions in RPG's were:

• Urdnot Wrex and Grunt (Mass Effect)
• Sten (Dragon Age)
• Selan (Lufia 2)
• Veronica (Fallout: New Vegas)
• Robo (Chrono Trigger)

Inspired by that, I think companions for Viola should be or have any of the following:

• Designed with a different  from the player (Wrex, Robo)
• Funny, weird or interesting dialogue (Sten, Robo, Veronica)
• Established backstory in the game's world (Selan, Wrex, Veronica)
• Easily recognizable (Wrex, Robo, Sten, Selan)

Character design for the 'Wolf Knight'.

Now onto my actual process. I usually start with a few sentences outlining the idea for the character. For the Wolf Knight, I started with the following lines:

• An old knight who transforms into a wolf
• People are turned off by his appearance
• 'Tutorial character' who initially guides the player
• Plays the cello

After these lines, I start collecting reference material, then I draw out the character, basing their size off Viola's size and proportions. I usually have some sort of image in my head that goes along with the character. In this case, I had the idea of a knight bursting out of his armor as he transformed. However, old knights are kind of boring. So I drew him to always be a werewolf, with a bit of knightly armor here and there. But, since he's a tutorial character meant to guide the player, I don't want to make him look scary. So instead, I made him more dog-like and friendly-looking.

After I'm happy with the design (which can be anywhere between one and five drawings), I resize the drawing to match the size of Viola's sprite. I simply draw the sprite over the resized drawing to create their initial sprite.

Different possible colors for the Wolf Knight.

This is usually when I experiment with color schemes as well. The sprites make it very easy to do so! I'm using a set color palette called AAP 64. It has a lot of bright colors and is well-suited for gradients, perfect for an SNES-style game. Not having to pick my own colors makes this process a lot easier as well, although I did have to add a few more to get good looking dark skin tones, as well as a more unique red.

I don't always know the color scheme, so I get a few friends to weigh in. For the purple-haired mage character, I pretty much nailed it right away. For both Viola and the Wolf Knight, I went through a few ideas before settling.

While I could totally add shading like I did for Viola's sprite, I find that's not a very useful way to spend my time. It doesn't take that much longer, but it's not necessary for what's ultimately conceptual sprites.

Sybil, the cynical mage. I had an initial concept for this character already done. Translating the design was very easy to do.

Mallow was based off a character I made for D&D. They ended up being almost completely different, looking way more like other reference material I found.

It's important to show your failures, too. Emerald is a swordswoman born from magic stones. The design I ended up with, however, just feels unclear. I want to go back and think of a different shape for her, to make her more magical and stone-like.