Marearka Project Character Design

**kanada514** · January 14th, 2008, 08:56 PM

Those are completed character designs for various classes in a PC tabletop game experiment.
I'm a professional game designer in a video game company that happens to not be developping any RPG's.
I am therefore attempting to combine two of my passions. Creating games, and creating a RPG.
The twist is: it's a table top that will entirely be downloadable online to adapt for PC's with interactive character sheets. A paperless table top game that plays with dices altough I'm considering including instead a simple algorythm to generate random dice rolls.
I am thus attempting to make the game as attractive as possible with great illustrations to accompany the rule sets.
These are some of the character classes that will be available in the game.
I did the original concept, design, and drawing, my friend Vivian Rockray did the shading.
BTW, the game is called Marearka. Hopefully you'll stumble upon it online sooner than later.
I am both interested in your opinion on the art itself as on the design of the characters. I'd appreciate your help on how to make them more appealing.

**Justin.** · January 14th, 2008, 09:19 PM

I really don't think it's clear enough about who did what on these pictures, maybe make the watermark bigger and more obtrusive? (I joke, I joke)

-For real though, that is stuff you can write in a post and only serves to detract from the art as a whole. If someone steals your art, you have the fullsized PSD and they don't- not to mention they won't leave the writing on there.

The art; Why the outer glow? Just make the BG lighter. It really really looks bad and again, does nothing at all to help the art that a less visually painful method can't achieve.

That said; you have a collection of potentially awesome work here. There are pretty much only 2 things that would make these pictures with a good base into something really great; Right now, almost everything shares the same value range. It really confuses details and makes it hard to read, especially when it comes to material. The other thing is edges. There are alot of places in this piece where a soft edge should be hard (according to the lighting setup), and where harder edges should be soft. Go up to the search tool and look for "edge tutorial" in quotes and see what you get. I know we have some great ones around here.

That said the lighting is good and you were definitely paying attention to cast shadows, which helps ALOT. However, out of 8 characters, you drew one foot. The one in the shadows doesn't count because it's in the shadows. Be careful not to avoid things that are challenging- if anything you should embrace them. If you don't get them right, don't sweat it. If you can't find ref, ask someone else about it and see if they have a good suggestion.

Keep going, you're headed in the right direction, for sure! But they all definitely read as RPG illos to me, which is a good thing (I guess)

**kanada514** · January 14th, 2008, 09:57 PM

Very valuable advices, thanks a lot.

As for the outter glow and black and white, I wanted to bias a potential player as little as possible with the art quality to have him rather focus on the character itself along with the options it brings. That's why they are all drawn in black and white, with a glow on a black background. I was trying to establish a certain uniformity or standardization.

From what I understand, you'd rather see the whole body than a waist-up shot.
To be honest it's not really drawing feet that I avoid (although I must admit I find them uninteresting), it's drawing a character from head to feet without losing focus and detail.

That is definitely something I have to work on, and you are right to point it out. As for the colour value, you are right again, we are indeed losing details that were clearly visible on the first hand drawn sketches.

I appreciate your help a lot.

**Justin.** · January 14th, 2008, 10:05 PM

You're welcome =)

Instead of using a straight black BG, try using a valued gradient that goes from a very very low gray (but not quite black) to a very slightly lighter gray. This will make all the edges visible, as well as not distract the viewer! =)