{"id":337,"date":"2026-01-05T11:15:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T11:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/?p=337"},"modified":"2026-10-06T13:36:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:36:40","slug":"week-8-reflection-concept-art-character-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/2026\/01\/05\/week-8-reflection-concept-art-character-design\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 8 Reflection &#8211; Concept Art &amp; Character Design"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On 20<sup>th<\/sup> November 2025, we had a talk from guest speaker Abbie Foster on the principles of character design. Like other guest speakers, Abbie is UoS alumni, studying Games Design &amp; Art between 2017-2020. She went on to be a junior and eventually lead artist at smartphone software studio Six to Start, to a freelance concept artist at Outright Games to eventually a co-founder and creative director of local indie studio Flightful Pear, covering aspects from world-building and dialogue writing to character design and 2D art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our lecture established a number of principles to follow that will help us create more cohesive and meaningful character designs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Colour<ul><li>Association \u2013 what associations do different colours on our characters have? What do they represent about them?<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Colour theory \u2013 ideally, restrict designs to a palette of 3: primary, secondary, and accent colours.<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Progression \u2013 will the character\u2019s colours change as the story progresses? What changes within them will this reflect?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Shape<ul><li>Association pt .2 \u2013 what associations do different shapes have? How can they be used to articulate a character\u2019s personality?<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Silhouette \u2013 if your character was reduced to a single block silhouette, would you still recognise them?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Narrative<ul><li>Objects of importance \u2013 are they wearing\/ carrying relevant items?<\/li><\/ul><ul><li>Scars\/ tattoos \u2013 they can look very cool but also justify them!<\/li><\/ul>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Physical condition \u2013 are they buff? Covered in blood? Why?!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We then were challenged to create character design concepts for our game: I already had some concepts in mind and this was a really good oppurtunity to put them to paper using what I had learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"945\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-945x1024.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-945x1024.jpeg 945w, https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-277x300.jpeg 277w, https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-768x832.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-1418x1536.jpeg 1418w, https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-1890x2048.jpeg 1890w, https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/55\/2026\/01\/mybaka-997x1080.jpeg 997w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 945px) 100vw, 945px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I deliberately chose the &#8220;block-head&#8221; idea to represent the difficulties ASD people have with expressing their emotions, specifically in terms of showing facial expression. At the same time, I thought, it could also be a metaphorical implication of masking. Similarly, made the decision for all NPC characters to have animated scribbles drawn over their heads: this is representative of the challenges people with ASD face with reading emotions and social cues form other people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later, I spoke to Abbie about the designs, asking for her opinion not only as a character designer but also because she too suffers from ASD: she told me that they immediately resonated with her, especially the block-head design as it very clearly communicates the challenges of ASD, capturing well the idea of feeling like &#8220;a robot in human skin&#8221;. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am very thankful for her opinion and found it very uplifting that I could immediately connect with my peers in this way. It gave me a lot of confidence going forward with the project, actually &#8211; it finally felt like my work could really awaken something in others and that made me really excited and truly driven to make the best of this project going forwards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 20th November 2025, we had a talk from guest speaker Abbie Foster on the principles of character design. Like other guest speakers, Abbie is UoS alumni, studying Games Design &amp; Art between 2017-2020. She went on to be a junior and eventually lead artist at smartphone software studio Six to Start, to a freelance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,1,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-class-reflections","category-y2-parent","category-y2s1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/om3g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}