作者：Peter Castle

前言

我是Whale Hammer工作室的编剧。我们已经花了五个月的时间开发《Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire》，到目前为止，我们已经创作了许多生动的角色。随着我们从预生产阶段向生产阶段过渡，我们将与读者们分享这个过程。

注意，因为我所说的东西都处于制作过程，所以随着开发可能会有部分发生变化。

在本系列的这第一篇文章里，我将介绍如何创作《Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire》的角色：从草稿到可投入生产的概念。

creating a character(from gamasutra)

文字概念

《Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire》有非常明显的故事性。对于编剧的我而言，角色概念过程的第一步是，想出角色的基本形象和确定关键的视觉信息元素，以便我们的主美Peter Simpson开始设计。那些信息通常包括性别、年龄、人种和伤痕（我们将设计的角色Claw就有）。

视觉概念

Peter解读我提供的信息。他向我反馈意见，如此几个回合下来直到得到我们都觉得满意的结果。在这个过程中，我们会坐下来与我们的设计师Tom一起决定这个角色的战斗作用。从下面的两张概念图中你可以看出来Claw一开始被设计成弓箭手。战斗作用通常是由这个角色的个性和背景以及战斗系统的要求决定的。在Claw的例子中，Peter首先确定他的面部特征，然后设计他的服装和武器。

Claw的初始概念

Claw_Body(from gamasutra)

Claw_Headshot(from gamasutra)

服装和武器

Peter花了一些时间做了几个版本的Claw设计，这样我们就有更多选择了。我们总是努力找到最能从视觉上传达该角色的关键信息的版本，而不是需要辅助文字说明的版本。

Claw_Archer_CC_Doll(from gamasutra)

这不是现实生活

当我们把角色的服装和武器组装起来的时候，我们要考虑的事情之一是，玩家在游戏中实际看到的样子是什么。从你最喜欢的幻想小说和中世纪影视作品中寻找服装参考，但当你的角色只有几厘米大小时，你会很快发现太过精细的东西是不管用的。

clawhair(from gamasutra)

发型难题

我们想给Claw使用像金刚狼那样延伸到面部的发型，但发现并不太适合角色的个性。

Naked-Claw(from gamasutra)

有些设计似乎不够高雅。

clean-and-practical(from gamasutra)

实用和危险

Peter从网上收集了各种中世纪和幻想风格的服装。最后，我们还是决定保持实用性。像《权力游戏》中的Jorah Mormont这样的角色是比较时髦的，但看起来实用的服装和武器才是我们需要的。

Claw是一名自由雇佣兵，总是在战斗或在去战斗的路上。舒适的汗衫和裤子对于这种很多时候都在战斗的人来说更合理。我们喜欢重型盔甲，但决定使用轻型盔甲，因为这才适合Claw的个性和战斗属性。

最终概念

claw1(from gamasutra)

颜色

当决定颜色时，我们有许多因素要考虑：

1、我们要使用一种适合角色和游戏世界的有趣的色彩组合。

2、测试那种颜色组合与背景颜色是否和谐。

3、测试它的辨识度，特别是当有其他角色同时出现在屏幕上时。

我们仍然处于开发前期，在这个过程后期我们将花大量时间来确定颜色方案。至于现在，我们只是做出几个不同的版本，然后选择我们觉得喜欢的两个。

通常来说，做出粗糙的版本更容易，反正我们也不会使用它。这意味着当是时候细化它时，我们可以在它的基础上重制，而不是从零开始。多亏了这种颜色设计流程，意味着现在花在色彩上的时间都是为之后的色彩工作节省时间。我将在本系列接下来的文章中更详细地解释这一点。

色彩方案

Claw-Colour1-duo(from gamasutra)

Claw-Colour2-duo(from gamasutra)

最终（目前）色彩概念

Claw-Colour3-duo(from gamasutra)

灰色和米黄色的组合放在灰色的背景上，效果让我们觉得挺惊艳的。

小结

以上就是角色的概念过程。在本系列的第二篇文章中，我将介绍Claw概念图如何变成动画角色。（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）

Creating a Game Character for Tahira – Part One: Concepting

by Peter Castle

Welcome to Creating a Game Character for Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire. In Part One: We discuss creating a character from scratch and walk you through the process we used to refine that character into a production ready concept.

Introduction

Hi, I’m Peter Castle, the Lead Writer at Whale Hammer Games. We’re five months into the development of our game, Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire, and so far we’ve had a lot of fun bringing the game’s characters to life. As we move from pre-production into production we wanted to share that process with you.

Bear in mind that everything I’m discussing is a work in progress and it’s likely that parts of it will change as we continue to develop the game.

The Written Concept

Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire has a strong narrative component. The first step in the character concepting process is for me to work out the basics of who a character is and to identify any key pieces of visual information that our Lead Artist Peter Simpson needs to get started. That information usually consists of things like gender, age, race and in the Claw’s case, his scar.

The Visual Concept

Peter takes that information and spends some time working on his interpretation. Once he’s satisfied, he shows me and we bounce it back and forth until we’re happy with the result. Somewhere in that process (it varies) we sit down with our Designer, Tom, and decide what combat role the character will fill. You’ll see in the first two concepts below that the Claw was initially drawn as an archer. The combat role decision is usually informed by the personality and history of the character as well as the needs of our combat system. In the Claw’s case,

Peter nailed the facial features on the first go and we moved straight into concepting the clothing and gear.

Original Claw Concepts

Clothing and Gear

Peter spent some time iterating on the Claw design so we had some options to choose from. We are always trying to find a design that conveys key information about the character to the player visually rather than needing that information to be explicitly stated in the written narrative.

This Isn’t Real Life

One of the things we had to consider when we put together his clothing and gear was what the player would actually see in the game. It’s all very well to look up your favourite fantasy and medieval TV shows and movies for clothing reference, but when your character is only a couple of centimeters in size you quickly find that anything with too much detail doesn’t work.

The Hair Conundrum

We liked the Wolverine-esque facial hair on the Claw, but decided it didn’t fit with the character’s vanity.

Some Designs Were Deemed a Bit Risqué

Practical and Dangerous

Peter scoured the web for all kinds of medieval and fantasy clothing. In the end we kept coming back to practicality. Characters like Jorah Mormont from HBO’s Game of Thrones have that mix of stylish but practical looking clothing and equipment and that was something we wanted to capture.

The Claw is a travelling mercenary, always on the road and ready to fight at a moment’s notice.  The comfortable shirt and pants combination makes sense for someone who spends a lot of time in the saddle. We liked the heavier armour, but decided to use the light armour as it fits with the Claw’s personality and combat role in the game.

Final Concept

Colours

There are a number of factors we consider when we sit down to colour.

1)      We need to create an interesting colour scheme that fits the character and the world.

2)      Test that colour scheme against likely background colours.

3)      Test its readability when you have a lot of other characters on the screen at the same time.

We’re still quite early in development and colours are something we’ll be spending a lot more time on later in the process. For now though, we played around with a few different schemes and found a couple that we liked.

Generally we find it easier to do something roughly, even if we aren’t going to use it. That means when it comes time to do it properly we can iterate rather than starting from scratch. Thankfully our colouring workflow means that any time spent on the colouring now will save time later in the project. I’ll go into this in a lot more detail in a future post.

If you’re looking to get started with colour, there is an excellent guide that Valve has put together on colour theory for Dota 2. You can view it here.

Colour Scheme Ideas

Final (For Now) Colour Concept

We were a bit surprised by how readable grey and beige are on a grey background.

Final Thoughts

That wraps up part one. If you have any questions or insights into the development process fire away in the comments. In Part Two, we will take the Claw concept and begin the process of turning him into an animated character.(source:gamasutra)