{"id":686,"date":"2025-11-25T17:56:33","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T17:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/?p=686"},"modified":"2026-01-11T15:19:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T15:19:35","slug":"piano-player-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/2025\/11\/25\/piano-player-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Piano Player Development"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One of the NPC’s in my game is loosely based off of the real life piano players at the actual Jelly Rolls location. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are notes I made about him, focusing on his physical appearance and his relationship to the player.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is very young, only just getting his first professional gig so when I design him I want his appearance to reflect all of these aspects. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reference Board<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is the reference board I created for the character. He is new to the professional music world so I gathered images of baggy clothes to suggest that he is scared by the big responsibility the job brings, he still feels like a kid playing dress up in grown up clothes. I also looked at actual piano players and saw that many have developed long skinny fingers to easier reach the keys. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After my reference board I began sketching him. Starting with basic block shapes to figure out his proportions and physicality. I liked the ones that emphasised his height and legs making him feel and look awkward. For his actual face I played around with different shapes but found myself drawn back to the long rectangular face, I felt it also resembled a piano key. I initally liked a messy haired lookkeeping with the theme of him feeling out of place but I thought it looked too careless and that is not one of his traits. Eventually I found a curled style that can still look slightly unkempt but ultimately suggests that he cares about his appearence, he just lacks experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After my pencil sketches I used Ibis Paint X to finalise his design more and make a turnaround poroportion sheet. I started with the forward facing one incorporating the elements I previousely looked at. Then I drew lines from each important part such as hip placement, size of head etc. and began drawing the side profile. I am really pleased with how this came out as I am not very experienced drawing turnarounds. I also tested the silhouette of his design seeing if it is recognisable and if any parts are unclear. I think it is a successful silhouette as the contrast between his skinny neck and larger torso communicates the baggy clothes and his hair nicely breaks up the uniformity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once I had a good base sketch, I went into Photoshop and used a large blocky brush to create some colour thumbnails. So that I could see the colours for what they are I used a neutral grey background. After making the reference board I knew that I wanted subtle deep tones for the colours to reflect the establishment he works in. Once these were done I showed them to my peers for feedback and most of them liked the red one. I went with the decision as I also belive this one suits him the most and the ginger hair looks more youthful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Character Design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am happy with the harmonius colours and his appearance I think I have accomplished what I wanted to communicate with the character design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the NPC’s in my game is loosely based off of the real life piano players at the actual Jelly Rolls location. These are notes I made about him, focusing on his physical appearance and his relationship to the player. He is very young, only just getting his first professional gig so when I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas-and-iteration","category-worldbuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/stw1g24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}