Character Design Basics

Character design is one of the most important parts of the game design process. In this post, I'm going to be talking about what makes a good character. Bearing in mind that "good" is a very subjective term, there are still many things that can be universally appreciated in character design. However, that's not to say that my examples are definitive by any means. These are just my thoughts on the subject. I'm going to be focusing mainly on the more cartoonish styles of characters, simply because character design in realistic figures is a whole 'nother can of worms. So with that out of the way, let's dive right in.

Mario as he appears on the box of the Japanese release of Super Mario Bros. 2 (known as the Lost Levels in the United States).

While you might think that the value of a well designed character does not extend far beyond narrative driven games, that is very untrue. An aesthetically appealing character can be the most important part of drawing players to your game, and the most important part of compelling them to continue playing. Let's take a look at the most recognized and long-lived video game characters of all time to start with. The face of video games himself, Mario.

Mario is a character that has truly stood the test of time, and has proven to be one of the most recognizable characters, not just in the gaming industry, but in cartoons altogether. Though his beginnings were quite humble, the process of his design is remarkable, and proves the timelessness of his design.

Mario originally appeared in an arcade game released in 1981 called Donkey Kong. In this game, a portly carpenter (known at the time only as "Jump Man") was trying to save a damsel in distress from a big dumb gorilla named Donkey Kong. The game's creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, has said in interviews that he wanted to create a dynamic similar to Popeye and Bluto since he was unable to acquire the rights to use those characters outright. Thus, these new characters were born. But let's take a look at Mario's original design, and dissect it.

Mario's original appearance in the 1981 classic, Donkey Kong.

The process that went into Mario's design is quite brilliant in that the character was created for hardware that was quite limited. Characters back in those days would sometimes be dreamed up and then reduced to a tiny pixelated image, and this conversion created awkward looking characters. When Miyamoto was designing Mario, he was trying to solve many problems that he perceived in character design of that era. Limited colors meant that showing clothing was difficult, limited resolution made it difficult to show faces and have realistic body proportions, and arms and legs could sometimes be lost inside the character onscreen. Let's take a look at how each of these issues were addressed with Mario.

If you count the colors on the Mario image above, you'll find that there are only 3 distinct colors that make him up. This can be very difficult to work with, so flexible colors were selected. For example, blue is a color that is bright enough to be a shirt, but also dark enough to be hair or shoes. And Mario's skin tone also accounts for the button on his overalls. Wisely choosing your color palette was extremely important back then because you didn't have many colors to choose from. To solve the issue of the limited resolution available, Miyamoto did a number of clever things. When the pixels you're working with are so big, fine details like hair can be nearly impossible to portray. So Mario was given a hat, which helped make him iconic without having to give him a unique hairstyle. And the reason why Mario has a mustache is twofold: one, it helps define the character's nose, and two, it implies the position of his mouth without explicitly drawing it. To help deal with the problem that character limbs often can't be defined using such a limited color palette, Mario was given overalls, so that his arms would contrast with the rest of his outfit.

So as you can see, every defining characteristic of Mario served a functional purpose when he was created. I guess this is what you call "art through adversity," and it's something we don't see much of nowadays, since technological limitations are much less present. Placing limitations on yourself helps to keep your designs neat, clean, and succinct. When your character appears on the game screen, it's going to be much smaller than it was in your head when you designed it. It's important to keep in mind what your character will look like shrunken down. For me, it helps to think of character designs as silhouettes. The silhouette of Mario jumping over a rolling barrel is still very recognizable, and it's a symptom of a well designed character. I'll talk more about this concept later.

When looking for examples of well designed video game characters, it's always best to start with Nintendo. They have created so many memorable characters over the years, and very few of them have any actual personalities to speak of. And yet, people still fall in love with these franchises, dress up as the characters for halloween, and draw terrible fanart of them in elementary school. But let's take a look at some more modern examples.

The cast of playable characters in Valve's multiplayer shooter, Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress 2, shown above, has no story to speak of, yet the developer sought to create humorous personalities for each of these character designs. Because of these great designs, people develop an affinity for whichever character they choose to play as, and you'll often hear players saying "I only play as the Heavy." And sure enough, if you know nothing about this game, you can probably guess which character is known as "The Heavy" simply by looking at the image above. The diverse, colorful, and iconic characters of Team Fortress 2 are great designs in their own right, but it's also great that they're simple and effective enough that you can get a fine idea of what each of them is all about, just by looking at their picture.

Now that I've talked about some good examples of characters, let's talk about some examples from the school of how NOT to do things. Examples of this are harder to come by, since there aren't really that many games that have bad character design, but had good enough gameplay to be successful anyways. Somewhat of a testament to how important good character design is.

Street Fighter is a long running series of fighting games. The core mechanics of these games are very solid, which is why they've had so much success in spite of what I consider to be some of the worst character designs ever. Here's an image from their most recent game, Super Street Fighter IV.

Adon, as he appears in Super Street Fighter IV.

This character seems like it was designed to make you hate him. And while I can't honestly say that I know that to be untrue, making a character that is so aesthetically repulsive that it causes you to be put off simply by looking at him is not a good idea, even if it's done intentionally. It's obvious that he's supposed to have goblin-like features, and his personality should be very mocking, but there are many examples of characters that do this without making the design so atrocious. Some good examples of this would be the Joker and the Green Goblin from Batman and Spider-man comic books respectively. Sure, it can be fun to play as an evil jerk in video games, but making the jerk character be visually off-putting is just bad design.

Another important distinction to make is the difference between an ugly character and an off-putting design. For example, many characters in cartoons, comics, and video games are ugly by design. Super villains and monsters tend to be great for these kinds of designs. Take a look at this classic villain from the cartoon, Dragon Ball Z.

Frieza, the evil space alien dictator.

He's evil, creepy, menacing, and yes, ugly, without making you be fundamentally put-off of the character. He's exactly what a villain should be. The creator of this show, Akira Toriyama, is well-known for his good character designs, and he has been the art director and character designer for many video games, including the wildly successful Dragon Quest series and the critically acclaimed Chrono Trigger. His excellent designs have allowed very simple concepts to flourish into instant classics and even cultural phenomena.

One last thing that I want to comment on is art style and how it can affect character design. Sometimes a character can be fundamentally a good design, but the style they are portrayed in will cause the design to suffer greatly. The best example of this is another classic character, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic the Hedgehog as you might see him today

Sonic the Hedgehog in his original art style.

Getting back to what I was talking about before, it's important to keep in mind the silhouette of your character. The design on the left is very iconic and easy to recognize even if it was colored in solid black. Two round spiky circles with stubby arms and legs. There is brilliance in its simplicity. However, in the design on the right, you have a highly amorphous head with the spikes looking more like tendrils or wet noodles. The body was made oblong, and the legs were made much longer. The problem with all these things is that it's making a simple cartoon character become more and more abstract and complicated. In modern Sonic games, when you see the design shrunken down and put on the screen, you can oftentimes barely see the body underneath the enormous misshapen head, and the legs are so long that it makes the character look like a giant head with legs coming out of it. Take a look at these two screenshots to compare.

In the image above (from the 1993 classic Sonic CD), the most important features of Sonic remain plainly visible even in such a small form. You can easily make out his facial features and general body shape. Sonic's design was such that it would be translated into the final game without any hiccups.

However, in this screenshot from 2010's "throwback" Sonic 4, Sonic gets highly obscured. His legs are so long and skinny that they're practically invisible, and his tiny body can barely be made out underneath his enormous head and giant hands. The modern design he was given abandoned the simplicity of the original design, and the character is much less iconic for it, not to mention the design is just no longer effective here.

So that's just my basic thoughts on character design, at least for cartoonish and stylized characters. The most important thing to keep in mind is the idea of making a character be a symbol. This forces a certain amount of simplicity that will help make the character easily recognizable and avoid making a design that's too busy or too complicated to make out effectively. Good designs can make the player feel attached to characters that have no personality and no back stories. The most successful and long lasting franchises of all time tend to have good character designs centered around them. It's easy to spot good or bad designs, but making good characters can be tremendously challenging. It's a difficult but invaluable thing to learn about game design.