2nd Post : BF2 Mod : Alien Game Character collective [Crits please]

[Mr Squires]

Hi, I did this last year in May for a Battlefield 2 mod called Terranova to help me learn the process of creating a game character ready for an ingame engine. A video of the character in action is on my site. Its a 3 view render of the same character to show the model in the enviroment before i showed it to the team i was working with.

Thanks, let me know what you think.

[Mr Squires]

www.matsquires.co.uk [any crits of my site are welcomed too] thanks alot

[Stormdar]

Disclaimer - This might come off a little harsh sounding but its intended entirely as constructive criticism.


This character design lacks a clear definitive form that is immediately readable.

In a lot of ways its kind of blobish. Your ideas seem to lack drection or are incomplete. I cannot read or feel the functionality of what you have here.

In particular the guns and gas masks are poorly designed. They lack a cool look and feel as well as looking awkward at best in terms of functionality. The eyes and armor feel both cliche and uninspired.

When you design you should actually think through how the thing works. An excellent example of this is the Star Wars Stormtrooper. From the design of his uniform to his equipment everything has a believable and functional purpose. On top of that they are both striking and bad ass looking. There are books you can get where they go into great detail about this.

Given the restrictions of game art you really need to push the limits of strong character design and then after you have something that truly is both readbale and works, you need to really get into the business of additive economy of art. Find ways to use tricks and cheats to further pump up and enchance you work.

Additionally consider that this is a game and charater recognition and visibility are important feature. Otherwise its just blips and blocks running around.

And because this is a mod, you have to come up with a incredible new take that reinvigorates an already fantastic game. You have to make people want to play, becaue your concept is a whole new way to think about it. I'm not seeing that at all.

In order to have a deeper more immersive experience the player needs to be able to identify with the avatar. I have difficulty identifying yours let alone being able to imagine the story of the characters in order to idenfity with it emotionally.


Rethink your character from the standpoint of functionality in terms of the needs of the environment an the species as then build upon that adding flare and style. Create a little bit of a backstory and then imagine motivation and a mythos for the characters in your game and the rest will kind of suggets itself. And its important to do it in such a way that it all fits into the game art, on onto the BF2 skeleton. Otherwise you're making a new game entirely.

~S

[Sepulverture]

I didn't read the last guys long post, but I just wanted to say that it looks like you took the high res models and super imposed them on a very low res screenshot from something. Also, a greater degree of variation for the textures would help a lot for everything, including the background.

Edit: Resize the photos, by the way. It's very hard for us to crit your work if we can only see small portions of it at a time.