I got a character that had gone through an endless parade of designs, redesigns, names, renames and endless sketches and story edits before even considering it finished (maybe). Actually I have tons of characters that is constantly getting changed.
Thinking about this I was wonder how many other people have characters that goes through a million (or more) changes before settling for a "final" design for a game/comic/story/project?
Oh, God. Having been working on my game on and off (through hard drive crashes and time-consuming life matters popping up) for the past 8+ years, I have redesigned my main character, Ronald Garner, at least 6 times. A secondary character in my game has gone through about 4 or 5. Even minor characters that I've only created this past year or two have seen 2 or 3 redesigns.
I've even gone so far as to take a waitress in a cafe and change her role to that of a prostitute, because it fit the storyline better. In fact, I no longer needed the waitress, and created a puzzle where she would've been perfect re-cast in another role.
Working with 3D as I am, things get re-used and re-designed all the time.
I keep having all kinds of great ideas to put my catgirl in, but it always falls flat when I run out of steam. Because I've got several computers on the go in different parts of the world, this means I end up redrawing her a couple of times a year, usually with a slightly different flavour. So, here's the progression so far:
(http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/progression.png)
(the last one courtesy of Victor6)
I don't usually keep inferior iterations of a design (I'm not sure why anyone would apart from archival reasons) but I've certainly designed a few characters who changed, sometimes quite a lot, between their initial design and what appeared at the end (ie, in game since I don't really draw for any other reason).
There is one character I 'do' have an original version for, and that's Limey Lizard. As he began as an Hourgame concept, I tried to keep his design rather limited and he didn't make it much farther than a couple of talk animations.
Hourgame Limey. He was meant to be a HANDYMAN (notice the little brown toolbelt thing by his hand). This design didn't make it much farther than some directional poses and a walk and talk animation due to time constraints. The original Limey was going to be a real go-getter type, eager to jump into situations that his final version wouldn't dare (not without substantial meat pie bribery, anyway). And is that a tail?!
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr218/ProgZmax/limeyhourgame.gif)
When the next MAGS was announced, I recycled the character, somewhat re-inventing him as the PLUMBER of a space ship. This is the Limey Lizard people recognize from Limey Lizard: Waste Wizard!
(http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr218/ProgZmax/limeymags.gif)
At some point during the redraw of the character I decided to make him more 'janitorial' in nature, but I didn't simply want a clone of Roger Wilco. No, Limey needed his own personality. Thus, the cockney, lazy but lovable reluctant hero emerged with much help from BOYD1981 who generously provided over 1100 lines of dialogue to help bring the character to life.
But back to the design, even though I kept the dimensions the same, this time I focused more on giving Limey a cartoony posture that conveyed his love for meat pies (belly) and gave him a bit of a slouch to help sell the tagline 'laziest lizard in space' along with flipping his hat backwards to make him more relaxed. Toss in some suspenders and the new Limey was born.
If you guys remember "Project Hecka"...
(wish I still have the pictures but the concept art is scattered everywhere now)
Well it began as a comic (Luxuria- or something like that) about this devil girl who uses her evil powers for what she 'considered' is good.
Then it changed into a story about this high-school girl who is psychotically overly religious
Then I split that character into 4 different girls, used it for an attempt at making my "first AGS game" which didn't work (the WIP thread should be here in the forums somewhere still).
Then a singer with a demonic past (actually based on one of the extras I made along the way)
Went back to the original protagonist (Faith, I think her name was- yeah "creative" >>; ) turned her into an adult seductress, then teenager again.
Then I made it about this orphan who goes into this cult church.
And now I'm still re-designing characters and storylines etc (although the name Project Hecka, stuck)
All this in the course of ...damn about 9 years or so.
And I did quite a lot of freaking research, I just have to learn how to somehow connect things.
So the protagonist character changes were
-2001 devil girl
-2003 psychotic religious high school girl
-2005 4 psychotic religious girls
-2007 demon singer
-2009 Seductress/ Teenage prostitute
-2010 orphan (and still going through development)
The only re-occurring theme that linked these ideas together was the 'nephilim' concept
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
Well, to be honest, I probably don't redesign characters as much as I should, because I am impatient. But some of my characters go through more redesign stages than others. I worked on designing characters recently for an animated short I wanted to make, and while I settled on a design I liked for the main character relatively quickly (I think it only took two or three designs, and even then they weren't really all that different), his boss went through a number of very different revisions before I was finally happy with his design, and I still haven't come up with a design that I'm satisfied with for a certain sinister shopkeeper.
I don't have those designs scanned in at the moment, though, and they're scattered over a number of different pages anyway. As it happens, however, I do have one set of rough redesigns for a few characters from another project that for whatever reason I happened to do all on one page, from top to bottom, so it's I guess a pretty good showcase of my redesign process (or at least how that process went in one particular instance -- I can't really say I always follow the same procedure). So, here we go; the same three characters undergoing progressive redesigns:
(http://www.alunclewe.com/misc/traz01.gif)
(http://joelphilippage.webs.com/Media/Evelution.png)
That's six different sprite styles that I actually animated. I actually did this for most of the characters. I've been having lots of trouble deciding. The last one is the easiest to animate though and has the most style in my opinion.
Is the second-to-last one a vector drawing? I would love to see a game in that style if it's not too hard to animate, I love the ligne-claire drawing style and muted colors. If it's vectors, I suppose it could be animated quite quickly using cut-out style skeletal animation, though I don't know if there's any free programs for that (Anime Studio isn't too expensive tho').
(I know this isn't the critics lounge, but you mention having trouble deciding, so I'm taking the liberty to comment. I'd suggest if you go for the last one, at least anti-alias the outlines, or vectorize them for an even thickness. The roughness of the outlines makes me think they're based on a drawing scanned in black/white? If that's the case you should try scanning in gray-scale and overlaying it on top of the colors with a multiply blend mode - I think it would look really nice with that drawing style).
On topic, I'd like to know how early in the development process you guys start animating characters? Personally I'm saving it for last, since I know I would maybe have trouble matching the style later on, if additional animations are required, and I'm a stickler for consistency. But it does feel a bit odd to walk around a game world populated by placeholders or lifeless single-frame character views.
The original Frantic Franko looked like this:
(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/krasny.jpg)
But then I decided to improve his looks, and he came out like this:
(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/franko-talkr1.png)(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/franko.frontN.png)(http://hardydev.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/sax0.png)
True story.
Well, not the greatest revamp, but at least it was great for my skills. Ford Prefect from
This:
(http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q53/JustLedZep/front-2.png)
To This:
(http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q53/JustLedZep/spr00090-1.png)
Using the Michael Jackson Transformer :D
Aside from slight overall improvements in drawing technique I don't do a lot of redesigning; probably I think because if a character's visual doesn't stick in my mind then I'll never attempt to draw them again.
(http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs31/f/2008/235/c/1/Madge_and_Wray_by_EggHeadCheesyBird.png) (http://fav.me/d1kzr3c)
But Magical Whatever Girl's (http://fav.me/d1dv1jb) certainly been through some tweaks. (http://fav.me/db54im) Her head-shape used to slightly make sense.
Oh, and there's a prototype Ray character here (http://fav.me/db5psf) who also has the dot-eyes. Story-wise she was also going to have a secret identity and parents and have to go to school and stuff before I realised that those tropes are comedy-sucking demons sent from hell to make stories about child superheroes awful so SNIP.
EDIT: Oh! And she used to have Superpowers. I decided superpowers weren't funny either.
When we first made the Blackwell series, it was going to be in high resolution. It soon became obvious that this was an impossible dream. Since then, Rosa and Joey have had a number of low-res incarnations:
(http://www.davelgil.com/blackwell_evolution.png)
Rosas done by: (from left to right) Big Brother, Big Brother, ProgZmax, and Ben304
Joeys done by: (from left to right) Big Brother, Big Brother, TheIvy, ProgZmax, and Ben304
What happened to your version of the characters, Dave? I can remember a very rough Joey sprite you made :=
Nice to see a timeline like this though.
Quote from: Dave Gilbert on Sat 28/08/2010 23:44:32It soon became obvious that this was an impossible dream.
Why did this turn out to be impossible? Too much work?
Quote from: TerranRich on Sun 29/08/2010 05:36:39
Quote from: Dave Gilbert on Sat 28/08/2010 23:44:32It soon became obvious that this was an impossible dream.
Why did this turn out to be impossible? Too much work?
That, and too much money and it would take too long. We'd still be making the first game, if we went with that style!
Quote from: IndieBoy on Sun 29/08/2010 00:32:43
What happened to your version of the characters, Dave? I can remember a very rough Joey sprite you made :=
Nice to see a timeline like this though.
Yeah, and what about the Bestowers of Eternity versions? Trying to rewrite them out of history, Mr Gilbert? ;D
Quote from: IndieBoy on Sun 29/08/2010 00:32:43
What happened to your version of the characters, Dave? I can remember a very rough Joey sprite you made :=
Oh, you mean this?
(http://www.davelgil.com/boe/ghost.gif)
that sprite is way cooler...
Of course it is, Calin, but there's no way Dave could find a background artist to match such style and talent.
Quote from: GarageGothic on Sun 29/08/2010 17:35:04
Of course it is, Calin, but there's no way Dave could find a background artist to match such style and talent.
Exactly. Nothing beats BESTOWERS OF ETERNITY. In terms of graphics. Pure EYE CANDY. :D
*Not that I draw better or anything*
Bestowers schmestowers, Purity of the Surf 4evah!