Your Friendly Neighborhood Manticore

me:

me:

Choose your Character!

Red-eyed Treefrog Rogue

Toad Fighter

Desert Rain Frog Cleric

here’s a line up of some male and female Overwatch heroes to show why people are so god damn upset abt Ashe cheers

The first major step is fleshing out your characters shapes / forms so that you can avoid complications in step two

It doesn’t matter if you use heights to tell two characters apart; if they’re the same body type/shape, it’s still going to cause issues at a distance which is why height comes after the first step

once you have good distinguishable forms/shapes, then you get to play with heights and clothing, then coloring

because it won’t matter if two character’s have the same color palette. You’ve put a distinct difference between them via basic shapes. It’s why in games like TF2 are successful, you can easily tell the difference between their cast from a distance which lessons confusion, despite them having similar color pallets (red and blue).

Note how most of the classes are roughly around the same height and share a very similar red/brown palette, however, they are still very easy to visually pick apart and tell who’s who.

Though, you could argue that this is because TF2 has a very cartoony style and therefore has more freedom with playing with shapes vs Overwatch’s slightly more realistic approach, but here’s an example from a few games that have realistic styles:

Left 4 Dead 1 and 2′s characters are memorable because their silhouettes (and personalities lets not lie to ourselves) are recognizable from a single glance (which is incredibly necessary for a game like l4d, especially the monster designs since many need to be immediately recognizable from a distance so players know how to approach the upcoming problem)

^Bill and Joel from The Last Of Us, despite a “similar” frame, Bill is chunkier and has more rounded shapes than Joel’s standard male frame.

Dishonored 2 (note the shapes between the first 2 men and the 3rd man here. The 1st two men have a similar build, but the first male has more triangular shapes vs the softer flow of #2, and male #3 has a more blocky approach to his design)

So now with all this we can compare it to Blizzard’s Overwatch (and I’ll explain male and female this time with 2 men who have little clothing accessories and 2 who do)

note the heavy reliance on clothing rather than body shapes to tell their cast apart. You can pick Hanzo and Reaper easier since there’s a cloak and sharp shoulders vs Hanzo’s oddly board-shaped body with wide pants

However when you look at Genji and Soldier 76, they heavily lack those shapes which could make it very difficult to tell them apart from a distance. They also share a similar broad-shoulder shape with only a slight difference in waist. It’s tiny details that would be fine albeit lazy if the game wasn’t fast paced like it is.

Now, the female department is much worse and will blatantly put visually what I’m talking about:

Again, I took 2 heroes that didn’t rely heavily on a costume vs 2 heroes that did

Widowmaker and Dva have almost the exact same frame. Their only differences is height and hair, which do not help from a distance

Mercy and Pharah, the two very costume reliant heroes, have almost the exact same frame AGAIN. THEIR differences, however, is height, and clothing/wings.

I’ll throw in Genji and S76 too to show their lack of diversity. The only difference is S76′s side bags vs Genji’s lil pointy head things. 

Basically, this copy paste behavior from Blizzard is very frustrating. We’ve seen their concept art and the refreshing variety they could have introduced to their game, but it’s obvious they want whatever is quick, fast, and makes them money sooner.

That’s why there’s frustration towards these new human heroes. The females are all from the same base model with little exploration, and some of the male heroes are no better. If you’re going to make a FPS, you defo need distinguishable characters so your players aren’t struggling wondering whether that skinny female in the distance is a dangerous sniper or a vulnerable tank.

I’m gonna end this with a quote from Skullgirl’s lead designer:

“ I like characters that can sell their theme or design in a very simple, fundamental manner. Details are neat, but more of a bonus: if the color of a character’s hair or placement of their bangs is the only way you can tell one character apart from another, something went wrong….  A good test of a character design is if you can sell the design at a very simple doodle level: Taokaka can be drawn as a doodle and still read as Taokaka because her silhouette is so distinct.  ” (http://skullgirls.com/2011/05/character-design-big-shapes-vs-small-details/)

some ref links if you want to learn more:

Rick Lacy: Character Design Class: Lesson: Silhouette

How Can a Character’s Personality be Conveyed Visually

Silhouette Design Game Environments

untitled comic!!

Written and sketched by Alex