This course is aimed to give you the tools and knowledge you need to start creating simple art for video games. Through the aesthetic of pixel art we will explore artistic principals like shape language, color theory, and composition as well as show you a step by step workflow for creating assets that you can use to make your own games. The course is broken into 4 main modules, props, environments, characters, and animation. Each of these courses will have a series of video lessons alternating between artistic and technical skills culminating in a peer-reviewed project based assignment. The last module will challenge you to take the knowledge learned in the previous 4 and use it to create your own pixel art asset pack. This course is aimed at art novices who are interested in creating art for their own games or contributing to game projects. If you are a game designer or programmer, you will find this course helps give you a glimpse into the world of game art. You will be able to better work with artists, or create your own prototype or final artwork. If you are an artist or visual designer who is interested in bringing your style to the world of video game development, this course will give you the workflow to properly interface with a game engine and help contextualize how your artistic sensibilities can enable gameplay. If you have ever wanted to start making art for video games but have no idea how to start, this course is the perfect for giving you a solid foundation while teaching you usable practical skills.
Character Design
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來自 Michigan State University 的課程
Pixel Art for Video Games
1 個評分
從本節課中
Week 3: Pixel Art Characters
與講師見面
Andrew DennisProfessor of Practice
Media and Information
Ricardo GuimaraesProfessor of Practice
Media and Information
Hi everyone. In this video,
let's talk about character design.
Let's apply the same principles we've seen on our composition video and try to apply
this principles now to characters as we did with environments in our previous video.
So, let's get started. Whenever we have a shape,
let's say we have a square.
Okay, let's draw a square here.
If we have three equal shapes,
we have a perfect example of unity.
We don't have any kind of variation,
not even in size.
Now, let's see what happens if we change,
for example, the size of this squares.
Let's begin with the principle of big, medium, and small.
So, if we have a big square and we change the shape of
this square inch or a rectangle and have a medium and a small one,
we have a much more interesting composition,
one which we can combine in several different ways,
as you can see from the demonstration,
and apply the principles of unity and variety.
Unity comes from the rectangular and square shapes,
and variety from the sizes.
So, let's mark this squares and rectangles as B for big,
M for medium, and S for small.
So we have a medium,
small, and a big shape.
And this makes for a much better way to combine shapes than to have three equal shapes.
Now, let's see how this applies to characters.
Let's say we have a head,
a torso and a hip,
and you can see that it's pretty boring when we have the three equal shapes,
one on top of each other.
So, if we change the size and the proportions of each square and rectangle,
you'll see that we have a much more dynamic set up for the figure.
So, let's play with the shapes and come up with an interesting figure.
Let's use a big shape for the head,
a small shape for the torso and a medium shape for the hip for example.
And we have a more interesting configuration than the one above with three equal shapes.
So let's mark it big, small, and medium.
Okay? And let's try another combination with these shapes,
and you can see that these shapes provide you
the ability to combine in many different ways.
So, let's have this set up for the head,
let's please the ice here just for the sake of representation,
and let's have a big torso and a small hip.
You can see that this is pretty much the setup for
strong and heroic characters with
a little bit of exaggeration but with a much better design.
So, let's try to come up with a design for our character, for our game.
Since it's a female character,
let's go for a small torso,
medium hip, and a big shape for the head.
And if we add a couple of triangles here,
you'll see that we immediately have an interesting figure with
good proportions and much more dynamic than if it was just like square on top of squares.
So, you can see that I can complete here
the waistline with two triangles opposed to each other,
a small rectangle for the neck,
and I'm following the same principles of just opposing different proportionate shapes.
And we can apply the same principles for the design of the hand of the character.
We can have a square shape for the head,
round shapes for the eyes which gives us contrast in shape,
and a small triangle for the nose and we can have
more triangles for the front portion of the hair and then a big irregular shape.
We are having contrast in unity in the design of the head of the character.
So, let's begin refining our character now.
Still exploring the design of the character,
let's turn off this layer and by creating a new layer,
let me redraw the character with
the better proportions we came up with on our last section.
So, a bigger shape for the head,
small shape for the torso,
and medium shape for the hips,
slightly triangular shapes for the legs,
and we have variation in sizes and shapes,
a larger shape for the hair to break up with the evenness of the shapes of the head,
round eyes, and small nose.
So, you can see that we have a pretty good design for a cartoony character,
and now, of course, we can add details such as the feet and the arms.
All very simple. You can see that,
in order to design a good character,
you don't need to be a master of the anatomy or the human figure.
Even though you need to know that it's a good knowledge to have,
you don't need to be a master of drawing,
you can practice drawing all your life but you need to understand
the design principles to design a good character.
So, let's create a profile view of our character so we can explore more of the design.
By keeping the same proportions, big head,
small torso and medium hip,
and larger shape for the hair.
Following the same principles,
let's suppose curved and straight lines for
the profile of the legs and a small shape for the feet.
Let's sketch the features of our character,
small oval shape for the eye and just a small shape for the nose,
and you can see we kept the same basic proportions but with different angles.
Let's refine the head of our character.
And you see that the same principles of design are going
to be applied here and that shapes have a meaning.
So, let's go with the design we currently have.
Let's make the hair bigger to break up the oval shape,
so slightly more geometric and a small shape for the neck,
and let's go with the scarf,
like a theme one to break the shape of the hair as well to bring variety to our design.
Let's copy this head to a new layer and let's copy
this so we can explore the design a little bit more.
I'm using the eraser tool in getting rid of what I want to change now.
Let's go for a larger triangular scarf so it creates even more variety in
our design by opposing the triangle with
the rectangular shape of the hair and the oval shape of the head.
So, we now have even more contrast and it looks nice,
looks childish but yet the triangle brings a dynamic element to our design.
Let's duplicate this, and this time,
let's try to have like a pirate's hat.
So, let's make an even bigger triangular shape for the rim of the hat,
and the top of the hat and not a triangular shape but opposing the previous triangle.
Let's have the skull and the bones here.
Perhaps this is a little bit too big for the upper portion of our character,
and our character may feel to heavy.
So, let's explore another design here.
Let's copy this head to another layer.
And let's try to get rid of anything in the hair and let's add something like a ponytail.
So, I'm getting rid of the scarf and let's have
a rounder shape instead of the big rectangular one,
and let's add a more angular ponytail.
And even though this works really well with our character,
it may look a little bit too childish.
So you can see that different shapes bring different messages.
So decide what kind of message do you want
your character to pass to your players, to your observers.
I think we're going to go with the triangular scarf because
it brings a dynamic element without getting in the way,
without being too heavy for our design.
So let's place these four hat designs of our character
a little bit out of the way and below the front and side view of our character,
okay, let's resize it, it looks nice.
And basically what you are creating is a model shift.
It's called a model shift because it'll serve as a model for animators,
for anyone into production to use this as a reference,
to have the character drawn with the correct proportions,
correct colors and to animate the character properly.
So let's try to have now a dynamic view of our character.
We already have the technical views,
the front side and the designs for the hair and the face of our character.
Now let's try to create something a little bit more dynamic,
what we call an action shot,
with the character in a more natural pose so people can see
the personality of our character in a much better way than with the technical views.
So I'm basically drawing a very simple pose,
a very simple skeleton here,
so I can use as a pose for my character.
So I'm using the same elements we've used before.
I think it would be nice to have the idea of a small ponytail.
So let's use this to add a little bit of contrast to our shapes.
So round eyes, small nose,
small neck and I'm keeping in mind the same design principles we've worked so far.
Big, small and medium shapes,
trying to repeat shapes as triangles and rectangles but I'm also trying to introduce
a little bit more of contrast by creating new shapes and contrast means variety.
So same principles of unity and variety, okay?
I'm using more rounder shapes on the legs,
but they are still triangular if you consider them as an entire shape.
So let's try to refine our design even more and introduce some clothes,
some elements that make contrasts,
not only in tone but also in color between themselves.
So let's go for long boots for our character.
In all this, we will be takintg into consideration when we
consider the pattern of values of lights and darks,
as well as colors.
So let's try to come up with a nice corset for our character.
Let's go. It's just a simple design,
it's just a basic idea,
we can refined this later and it's just an experimentation.
Let's go with some gloves.
So we bring some weight and interest to the extremity of the arms.
And you can see the character is getting pretty interesting just by thinking about
other shapes we can introduce to an already well-designed character.
So always consider this,
once you have your design,
break this design into smaller interesting shapes.
If you do that, you'll just make your character more and more interesting,
if you follow the same principles of unity and variety.
Okay, so let's duplicate and resize our character.
Control J for duplicate and let's
resize it because now we have a sketch with a more dynamic pose.
You can see that it's slightly different from the technical views front and
site but gives us a nice understanding of the personality of the character.
So let's move the character a little bit and lets us start working with black,
white and greys to create a pattern of lights and darks for the reading of our character.
Actually, it's interesting to oppose light greys and darks,
so we can have a good understanding of how the character will appear on screen.
So let's go for a light upper portion of the clothes,
let's make it a dark grey for the boots.
And this is just a sketch,
you don't need to be too mindful about staying inside lines,
you just need the basic shapes and we are now filling the shapes
with basic shades of grey and black and white of course.
Let's go for the trousers so we can have
an opposing tone with the upper portion of our character.
So let's fill this with
this mid grey tone and you can see we have light middle tone and dark tone.
Okay, let's use the same value for the scarf,
it doesn't mean it will be the same color but it will be the same value,
which is important because we also need unity and variety in the tones, in the values.
Okay, let's go with the same dark from the boots, to the gloves.
Let's use a slightly lighter tone for
the hair like so.
And we can use an even lighter tone for the skin. Okay.
And whenever you fill a character with tones you
see that it will have a much stronger presence,
a visual presence than with just lines.
So, that's why it's important to fill your character with
tones and plan that lights and dark for the reading of your character.
Okay. Well this works pretty well.
Let's make a simplified version of the reading,
some sort of like tunnel chart of the distribution of tones in our character.
Okay. So, let's choose a flat brush.
And what I'm going to do is,
I'm just going to select the tones and lay these tones on their respective areas.
So, we have one for the hair,
one for the scarf,
one for the skin tone,
one for the upper portion of the clothes,
one for the trousers,
and one for the boots.
And you can see that there are no two equal tones next to each other.
There is always variation.
So, let's go for a simple representation of the arms, skin tone,
and the dark for the gloves and then we can duplicate this
and just move to the other side because it's the same design.
And now we have a good tunnel chart for our character.
Let's make it smaller.
Let's select everything and make it a little bit smaller and place it on top of our page.
Let's make the figure itself with the tones and the lines a little bit smaller.
Let's place it better here and let's
duplicate this and create a color version of our character.
So, your model shape will be complete with technical views, lined drawings,
dynamic poses, hair design,
tonal charts, and color charts.
So, let's go with the color.
We can use our black and white character
and take advantage of the already established tonal scheme.
Let's duplicate our tonal chart as well,
let's make the same setup create a new layer,
create a clipping mask.
And now let's try to use color on top of the tones.
Let's just change the blenny mode of this layer to color.
And what it does is it keeps the same tones as the layer beneath,
but adds the color you choose on top of that.
So, we now have a pink hair with the same tone as the hair of the character.
We have a greenish scarf let's go for a skin tone,
and this can be applied to the face and the arms.
Her shirt will be light in tone,
so let's keep it like this for now and let's think about her bottom portion,
which is trousers and boots.
So, let's go for a brownish color for the trousers.
Let's see like so.
And a darker brown for the boots.
Okay. It can be a little bit darker and the gloves with the same colors.
Now let's apply this to our character.
But first, let's move on tonal chart to the other side of the color scheme.
So, by using the move tool I just move here.
It seems more organized to have first a tone and then the colors.
Okay. All right.
Now let's go for the character.
So, I'm using the same principles by changing this to the color blending mode.
Let's make sure it's in color.
And now I can apply the color and see our character comes to life.
So, the pink hair, the greenish scarf,
okay there is a slight hint of
the pink hair underneath
the greenish scarf to bring a little bit of variety in the broken shape.
So, it's a light and vibrant skin tone for the neck, head, and arms.
The shirt will still be white.
Let's go for the brownish color for the trousers.
Okay. And the dark color for the boots and the gloves.
Okay. Let's go with this dark brownish color.
And you can see the reading of the characters is the same,
because we kept the same tonal scheme.
We just added colors on top of it,
which adds a little bit more of interest,
but still we have the same reading,
because we kept the same tonal relationships.
Okay. So, make this layer into an overlay layer
and make it a little bit darker to have more contrast on the boots, and the gloves.
Now let's just make some fine tuning here with the colors.
I think we need a slightly more vibrant color for
the trousers to bring some interest to the lower portion of the character.
Okay. Just a little bit more.
And of course we need to adjust our color chart above later.
Looks good. So let's do the same work here.
Let's adjust the same color.
Let's have our new layer and place it with
the overlay blending mode and try to adjust.
Sometimes it's tricky because we're overlaying colors and we're just eyeballing it.
Okay. Looks a little bit more accurate.
Let's go to darker colors for the boots. This is too dark.
Let's go with a more reddish color, slightly darker.
It seems good now.
Let's just adjust a little bit the trousers,
which I'm not entirely happy with the match with the character,
so a little bit more yellowish.
So, now we have our model sheet complete,
and this can be used as a reference for the remaining of the project.
So, whoever needs to animate or draw
this character will have a nice example of the proportions,
the color, and the tones of the character.
Okay. So thanks for watching and I see you all in the next video.
