作者：Jack Monahan

在这第二部分，我们将考虑在第一部分中讨论的关键特征——轮廓/比例、颜色/纹样和材质/细节，看看我们是否可以在考虑游戏玩法的前提下，把不太理想的角色概念表达得更清楚。

我选择最近刚刚通关的一款游戏《Clive Barker’s Jericho》中的角色作为分析和改进的样本。

这款游戏因为某些原因而不太受欢迎，但仍然有一些颇具创意的概念。玩家操作的是一支6人团队，正好满足本文的目的。使玩家一眼就将这支团队的各个成员区别开来，虽然有困难，但是非常重要的。

（Hanne Lichthammer是游戏中不死的纳粹头目，哥特风更加明显。）

问题是，这款游戏是围绕哥特风黑暗系（甚至是团队里的黑人也像死人一样面色惨白）超自然特种部队展开的。

除了Delgado（拿枪的大家伙）和Church（身材娇小的忍者），在战斗或光线不足的情况下（游戏邦注：这两种情况经常出现，并且往往同时出时），其他成员都不好辨别。下图显示了原版角色和他们的名字，以便你知道我在本文中指的是他们当中的哪一位。

从哪开始呢？这个团队的问题主要是外形特征不突出和角色定位比较老套。Delgad是个说话粗鲁的拉丁裔，Father Rawlings是个枯瘦的南方牧师，Black是个好战的同性恋狙击手。

现在，我们先看看角色的外形：整个小队肤色苍白，着装以黑色金属为主，这种哥特式恐怖风格很适合这款游戏。但大问题正是出在这里，我们分成两方面说。

首先，从玩家的投入和参与角度看，这6个角色都不讨喜——他们会魔法，又带着武器，这么强大的一伙人足够对付炼狱世界的任何困难了；并且，游戏机制和小说都设定他们可以复活小队成员，无限补充弹药—-还需要玩家的帮助吗？

最糟糕的地方就是。这几个准备拯救世界的哥特族，他们的着装风格不正是与炼狱世界完美契合吗？换句话说，他们与环境缺少戏剧性反差。很难想象这样的角色在这么合拍的环境中感到恐惧和害怕，因为他们不像是去异世界战斗，更像是回老家探亲。

再者，即使我确实寄希望于这种可憎的老套设计，我常常无法一眼将各个角色辨认出来。他们当中个把人穿着黑色紧身衣，因为使用的是富有光泽的材质，所以在光线不好的地方，一定程度上提高了能见度，但作用并不算大。大多数成员的服装上都装饰有古代北欧文字般缠绕的金银丝，大概是为了弥补形状单一的缺陷，但并不太成功。

上图是从几张代表性的游戏环境的截图中提取象素平均值后做成的色板。这款游戏场景的主导元素是雾、烟、火，融合得恰到好处。横尸遍野、血流成河、残垣断壁的炼狱场景主要呈暖色调，通常偏暗色系。

谢天谢地，Jericho小队穿的不是血红色的衣服，不然一定会跟背景混在一起。但是黑色服装也不够显眼，特别是在黑暗的环境中（对恐怖游戏倒是合适）。

所以，需要解决的问题就是：形状/轮廓差异化（在不显示颜色的情况下）、暖色调和低光环境下的材质和细节可见度、以及角色使玩家产生适度的同情和恐惧。

简化图

作为美术人员，总是很有立即绘制角色的冲动，但这种方法其实并不实用，因为在设计这么庞大的团队时，重复设计会浪费大量时间。所以我们应该有意识地简化设计方法——这不仅可以防止美术人员在充分考虑以前就投入过多精力，还可以让缺少或完全没有绘画才能的人也能参与角色设计过程。

这六人团队是由两支小分队Alpha和Omega组成的，我们先画出简单的示意图。

我使用简单的示意图代表角色，这样我就不会过早地为上色和渲染分心。

画得太好的角色可能会掩盖设计缺陷，以致于发现问题为时已晚——那时候用于游戏的模型和材质都做好了。到那时再做修改既浪费钱又浪费时间；还不如在修改尚不费成本的阶段就将问题消灭在笔头和笔擦之中。

比例

现在我们已经画好三男三女的简单轮廓。原设计的角色比例关系不错，所以我们将沿用原设计的比例。

Cole是“正常”身材的女性，是“正常”身材的男性，Delgado是当中块头最大的, Black是女角色中最高的。我们将把Rawlings画得瘦直一些，把Church设计得娇小一些，以突出她的忍者身份。如下图所示：

看起来很简单，本来就是，不过别着急，基础是关键。将所有角色放在同一张上也是有帮助的——虽然很小，但有利于通盘检查和对比所有角色的设计。

轮廓

在这里，最大的变化是给Black穿了一套狙击手专用的伪装衣，而不是游戏中的那种紧身衣（那使她与Cole非常雷同）。其他方面，我在这个阶段最关注的是如何提高能见度。经验告诉我，当设计一支超自然特种部队时，灵活是最重要的，所以我基本上是在考虑领子和袖子的长度。

尽管服装在这个阶段还不明确，但我已经在考虑把Cole的护目镜做得更大更夸张，以增强她的朋克范儿；Jones的服装领子做得高一些，起到防护作用，使他看起来像防爆兵；Rawling的外套还是像原设计那么大（显然开发团队在这里也意识到这些问题，Church的概念设计中并没有笨重的护甲。他们可能是意识到在黑暗环境中将难以辨别角色，也可能是觉需要突出角色的女性特征，或二者兼有）。

纹样和颜色

因为大部分游戏场景都是红色系或土色系，所以我给角色服装选择了互补色：绿色——更准确地说是橄榄绿。我用这个颜色是因为考虑到游戏小说和玩家识别的问题：即使世界面临灭顶之灾，我也很难苟同政府不会给它的秘密机构“超自然国防部”（如果存在这么个部门的话）提供可观的资金。

我又进一步想到这支秘密部队，或者姑且算作超自然国防队：如果他们没有最先进的装备和隐形黑鹰直升机作为交通工具，会怎么样？世界仍然是要拯救的，但没有与他们的能力一样大的预算，谁会相信他们能拯救世界？所以高端的装备会使这支小队看起来更强大，更拉风，总比所有角色都穿同样粗糙的高科技哥特装来得好。

之后我还会再解释这些概念，但由此可知，角色们将变得更有军人范儿。我让这支团队中的黑人回归正常黑人的肤色，并且使他显得稍微和善。

我还给两组成员以相应颜色的识别臂章。出人意料的是，这不过是拣回原设计丢掉的创意：如果你仔细观察这6个角色的设计，你会发现只有下面一组角色有戴红色臂章。

在Delgado原来的概念设计（如上图）中，你可以看到蓝色的臂章。我只能猜测，Alpha分队原本有蓝色臂章，以呼应Omega分队的红色臂章，但为了体现真正的哥特风，这个设计被抛弃了，因为他们认为，当一支小分队有臂章，而另一支小分队没有臂章时，两支小分队就已经被区别开来了。

事实上，我是在撰写本文一半时才发现Omega分队有红色臂章，再次证明角色设计的不成功。我只能想到，红色和蓝色臂章的设计其实更好，所以我重新设计时把它们拣回来了。

总结

以上是这个阶段的gif动态图。由图可见，设计这么一批角色并突出各自的特征，并不需要多少时间或绘画才能。如果你是美术设计人员，在你开始绘制详细的分解图以前，先画出这样的简化图是很明智的。时间就是金钱；当你浪费了一整天做设计，结果美术总监看到你的成果立马要求你重来，这时你就知道时间的可贵了。

最后，奉上完整的概念加修订说明。

我夸张了她的标志性特征，也就是头盔。另外，她的动作是角色轮廓的另一个主要特征。

Cole的头盔（60年代宇航员头盔的改版）使她与其他角色的区别一目了然。她的改良FAMAS突击步枪视野会传入头盔HUD中；她的步枪弹药可以与Delgado的武器共享。

姿势：肩部后倾——以专业而自信的姿势拿着步枪。

Jones是“正常”身材的射击手；装束与现代士兵差不多。

他具有心灵感应能力（游戏邦注：这个角色令人联想到美剧《迷失》中的一个角色Miles Straume，他能够聆听死者的心声）。他带着一把老式M14，可以与Black的狙击步枪共享弹药。

姿势：经验丰富的现代军人的标准射击站姿。

Delgado仍然配备重装武器，但去掉了原设计中明显装饰性、老一套的风格。虽然在原设计中，他右臂的装备很有意思，但太扎眼了，使人忽略了他是一个活人，也很脆弱的事实。

Delgado的右手不再是原设计中的大手套，而改成了他的宠物火焰精灵。他的枪是复古式斯通纳63。

姿势：昂首挺胸，坚定有力。

Black保留了原设计的粗放风格，但去掉了不合适的装备。因为穿着与背景相似的伪装衣，一旦拉上拉链，她就不容易成为敌人的攻击目标。她的武器是CZ700狙击步枪，与Jones共享308弹药。

姿势：保持狙击兵的警觉的坐姿。

Rawlings被设计成非战士的形象，这与他的术士能力更契合，并且有战略上的考虑——作为团队中的牧师类角色，他的自我防护能力比较差。

他是相当喜怒无常、神经质、说话滔滔不绝的南方人；Jericho团队给他取了一个外号——“灵魂暗夜”。

姿势：拘束，怒容。

Church仍然是忍者扮相，但服装更讲究了。忍者的血统体现在她背上的神秘纹身上。她的武器是意大利的幽灵M4冲锋枪和日本刀。

姿势：完全是忍者的样子。

正如前文提到的，再次修改的版本将会更具体地解释Jericho和相应的设计图。

就如何强化视觉清晰度而言，在我的新设计中我还没有充分地解释，但这篇文章已经说得够长了，是吧？（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Visual Clarity in Character Design (Part II)

by Jack Monahan

In Part II we’ll consider the key characteristics discussed in the first entry–silhouette/scale, color/patterns, and materials/detailing, and see if we can’t make an existing set of less than optimal characters “read” more clearly in gameplay situations.

The very gothic Jericho Team.

For candidates, I looked no further than a game I had finished playing just recently: Clive Barker’s Jericho.

It was not well received and mostly for good reason, but there are some inspired concepts running through it. It’s ideal for our purposes because you control a larger than average team of six characters, and it’s tactical enough that identifying characters different squad members at a glance makes a difference.

Hanne Lichthammer, an undead Nazi boss character in the game, seen out-gothing the Jericho team by a wide margin.

Trouble is, the game revolves around a decidedly goth-leaning, melanin-challenged (even the black man of the team is ghostly pale) supernatural special ops team with a fondness for shades of black.
With the exceptions of Delgado (the big chain-gunning fellow) and Church (the small-framed ninja), this is a large group of friendly characters that are difficult to tell apart in combat and/or low light levels–both of which recur regularly, often together.

Here’s a collected image of the original characters and their names, so you know who I’m referring to for the rest of the article:

Where to begin? Many of the problems with the team extend further than just visual appearance and into their broad, even offensively stereotypical characterizations.
Delgado is the sass-talkin’ latino, Father Rawlings is the deep fried southern preacher-type, Black is the militant lesbian sniper, etc.
(I think the game interesting enough that the follow-up to this entry will be a full-fledged design sketch.)

For now we’ll stick to their appearances: in keeping with the gothic, spooky ambience befitting a Clive Barker game, the entire team is pale and black clad. This ends up as a significant issue in two ways.

The call is coming from inside the crypt.

First off, from the point of view of player investment and interest, these six characters are a hard sell–they walk into this hellish landscape overpowered with magic and arms, imminently well-qualified to deal with the problem, and the game mechanics as well as fiction hold that the team can both resurrect members and resupply them with ammunition indefinitely–so why do they need my help at all?

What’s horrifying about these gothic sulks having to deal with the end of the world, aren’t all their own apartments furnished in the same style as the oozing rivers of blood and hellscape they now traverse? In other words, the team seems to be lacking dramatic contrast to their environment. Far from being put out and suggesting fear and terror as appropriate responses, they seem at home.

Second, even if I did feel invested in the obnoxious stereotypes, I often have trouble seeing them at all, certainly in telling them apart at a glance. A few of them are attired in shiny black catsuit-type material, which improves their visibility somewhat in low light conditions, but not enough to be helpful. Most of the characters are designed with a kind of runic filigree covering their suits, presumably as a replacement for lack of shape or form differentiation, but it’s none too successful.

At left is a sample palette of the game’s environments, derived from pixelated averages of a few representative screenshots.

The game is heavily atmospheric–fog, smoke, fire predominate to good effect. Mounds of sloughed off rotting flesh and rivers of blood show up as with any self-respecting time-fragmented hellscape, so the general palette of the game tends to run to warm, flesh and earth tones, and generally very dark.

While thankfully the Jericho squad isn’t wearing blood-red catsuits, which really would make for unfortunate camoflage, the black suits don’t really help visibility, especially for the extended sequences shrouded in darkness (perfectly appropriate for a horror game).

So as we begin, we’ll identify the specific issues we wish to solve: shape/silhouette differentiation (for when color information is not present), visibility of material and detailing in warm colored and low light situations, and finally player sympathy/horror game appropriateness of the character designs.

First things

The temptation for me as an artist is to get to drawing and painting characters immediately, but this isn’t actually that helpful when I could end up with a lot of wasted time for a redesign of such a large team of characters. So we’ll stick with a consciously simplified approach–not only does it keep artists from pouring too much effort into a design before it’s well considered, but it’s simple enough that little or no drawing ability won’t stop someone from using the same process.

We begin with a simple diagrammatic layout of the team divided into their control squads, Alpha and Omega.

Like the L4D color comparison in the first entry, I’m using simplified representations for the characters in order so I do not distract myself with painting and rendering too early.

A well drawn character can mask design flaws that don’t manifest themselves until it’s too late–the model and texture are done running around in the game. Revisions at that point are extraordinarily expensive in money and man-hours; far better to squash as many problems before they ever happen when revisions are as cheap as the point of an eraser, the point of a pencil.

Scale

So now we’ve got three men, three women in simple outlines. The scale relationships of the team originally are a good starting point, so we’ll stay fairly consistent to the original team designs.

Cole is the “medium” female, Jones the “medium” male, Delgado the largest of all characters, Black the tallest of the females. We’ll make Rawlings a narrow, vertical form, while Church is the diminutive ninja form. Like so:

If it seems simple, that’s because it is, but take the time, foundations are critical.

It’s also instructive to do this kind of designing with all characters visible on a sheet–small as it is, this workflow reinforces the necessity of cross-checking all the character designs against each other as much as possible.

Silhouette

The biggest change here is giving Black a sort of Ghillie suit/dress, instead of the black catsuit that appears in the game (and makes her look very similar to Cole). Otherwise, most of what I’m paying attention to here is a simple factor of how much skin is visible. Something tells me tacti-shorts are right out when rethinking a supernatural tactical response team, so I’m mostly looking at collar cuts and sleeve lengths.

Though it’s not pronounced at this stage, I’m already thinking of exaggerating Cole’s augmented reality visor’s scale in order to giver her more of a Daft Punk head silhouette (added bonus of hugely reflective helmet), whereas Jones gets a high, protective collar, almost like a bomb technician. Rawling’s duster/great coat remains largely unchanged.

(There’s evidence the development team ran into these issues, as the concept art for Church doesn’t have the large suit cut-out panels. Either they realized the difficulty of recognizing the characters in the dark or needed some sex appeal–or both.)

Patterns and Colors

Knowing that most of the game’s environments are in ruddy/earth tones, I swung to the complementary color on the wheel: green. Olive drab, more specifically. I considered this in tandem with my problem with the game fiction and player identification issue: even if there are potentially world-ending supernatural threats out there, I have a hard time believing that the government would actually give decent funding for their super secret “Department of Occult Warfare” were it to exist.

This gave rise to the thought of a second-rate secret force, a kind of discount BPRD: what if the team didn’t get all the latest gear and an unmarked Blackhawk helicopter to deliver them to jobs? Still saving the world, but without commensurately magical budgets, because who would honestly believe them, anyway?

Certainly would help make the team less invincible-seeming, more personable, and helps free me from having to straightjacket all of the characters into the same vaguely high tech gothsuits.

I’ll explore these concepts later, but for now it means that the characters end up more irregular military-looking, rather than pale and black everything. The black character in the group gets to actually be black, a small kindness.

I’ve also given the different squads identifying armbands with associated colors. Here again is some surprising vestiges of discarded decisions from the original team: if you look closely at the set of six original character designs, you’ll notice that only the Omega squad (bottom row) have red armbands.

Looking at the original Mercury Steam concept art for Delgado (above and right), you can see a blue armband. I can only infer at some point, Alpha squad had blue armbands to go with Omega’s red armbands, but in the continuing quest for true gothification, these were discarded, with the assumption that you only needed armbands for one of the teams, making the other team distinct by nature of having no armbands.

The fact that it took partway through writing this very article to discover that Omega squad only had the red armbands should be proof enough that this is less than successful. I can only think that the earlier thought of red and blue-coded squad armbands was the better choice, and in my redesign it is one I have reinstated.

Summary

Here’s an animated .gif of the above stages, showing that it doesn’t take a lot of time or even drawing ability to take a large group of characters and make them distinct from each other. And if you are an artist, it’s a smart step to take before you launch into fully-detailed sketches. Time is money, or rather time is what you’re wasting toward the end of the day when the art director comes over, sees what you’ve drawn, and asks for a complete revision.

Finally, the completed concepts, with accompanying revision notes (reference the laughably game guide-esque Wikipedia entry character bios for comparison, before they get scrubbed):

Cole

I made sure to exaggerate her defining feature, her helmet. Otherwise, her stance is the other major defining feature of her silhouette.

Instead of the nervy rookie presentation, Cole’s bulbous augmented reality helmet (retrofitted 60′s astronaut equipment as it happens) keeps her at a quiet remove from the rest of the team. Her modified FAMAS rifle scope feeds into the helmet HUD; it’s 5.56 rounds are shared in common with Delgado.

Poise: shoulders back–professional and assured, high rifle carry.

Jones

Jones is reconfigured as a player surrogate, the most “normal” character for a shooter player; gear trappings like that of a modern soldier or PMC.

Though still a telepath, he treats his power with a matter of fact sensibility (reminiscent of Miles on Lost). He carries an old school M14, which can share rounds with Black’s sniper rifle.
Poise: hunched combat glide of a trained, experienced modern soldier.

Delgado

Delgado is still the heavy weapons man, but stripped of both the distractingly overt power armor and stereotypical mannerisms. While the onyx sheath on his right arm was interesting, his former man-portable minigun was distracting and over-powered. The whole get-up distracted from his humanity, any sense that he might actually be vulnerable to attack.

Delgado pulls the glove off his right hand to unleash his pet fire spirit. He carries a vintage Stoner 63 machine gun.
Poise: casual swagger, nerves of steel.

Black

Black retains the coarse manner, but ideally without the ill-timed and obnoxious barks. She’s unhappy that she couldn’t plan ahead with a hell-colored Ghillie suit–though even in the infernal backdrops of Al-Khalil, once her Ghillie suit is zipped up and hooded she makes for a hard target. She sports a bolt-action CZ 700 sniper rifle, which means she can share .308 ammunition with Jones, but he’s not likely to get any of long-distance-balanced handloads short of begging.

Poise: crouching, furtive gait of a sniper out of position.

Rawlings

Father Rawlings is redesigned as a non-combatant–as glorious and hideous as his double deagling was before, it makes more sense with his priestly vows and deepens tactical considerations that the healer/resurrector of the group cannot directly defend himself.

He’s considerably moodier and sardonic, less drawling southern; the missions of Team Jericho have initiated a long “dark night of the soul” for the priest.
Poise: hunched and glowering.

Church

Church is still the ninja of the group but with a more elegant strain to her bearing. As a blood scribe, she wears a mysterious tattoo covering much of her back. She carries the coffin-magazined Italian Spectre M4 submachine gun, in addition to her katana.

Poise: strictly ninja.

As the modified dossiers suggest, another update will feature a wider critique of Jericho and a matching illustrated design sketch.

I feel as though I haven’t explained my re-design choices all that well in terms of justifying their enhanced visual clarity, but this entry is getting quite a bit too long already–what say you?(source:designreboot)