I have decided to try and grasp as much knowledge as possible about character designing and what trully brings the him to life.
I am highly convinced that creating a character is only a fraction of work. But creating a story alongside the character and immersing audience into it's world is a whole another thing. There's always a responsibility that is lying on the shoulders of an artist, whether his attempts, to guide the player through the game as a "tourist" or make him part of it, are successful. Nowadays, some games offer multiple choices to the audience and adapt further story to player's decision. That is always an advantage.
Last of Us is fairly new game, which came out this year. The game was created by Naughty Dog, who are mostly known for their Uncharted game sequences. After Uncharted 2 was finished the company decided to have built a second team and start a whole new project. Last of Us features main characters Ellie and Joel, who endeavor to survive in the sunken world of disease and living dead. An outstandingly emotional bond between a parent, who lost a beloved daughter and a girl, growing up by herself in this dark and dewy world.
From the start Naughty
The reason why I have chosen this particular game to write about is that not only it features realistic characters (which of course I'm interested in), but the game itself has established a strong emotional bridge towards the audience. It completely immersed the player in the post-apocalyptic world from head to toe.
Let me clear some things out - this game does not feature a zombie invasion, but rather a spreading of fungus that is infecting the people in that world. Infected do not become a walking or decaying corpses, the are pretty much living and breathing things, which are trying to find new ways to spread the disease. An interesting story element for me was, the fact that when the infected feels like it is going to die, it finds a distant place and becomes part of the environment, if it stays there for long enough, the spores will come out. If the humans inhale those spores, they become infected. The second way to get this fungus is to be bitten by the infected.
Character development:
There are few types of infected in the game:
1. Runners are the second stage of infected people. It is quite easy to tell them apart from others, since they tend to act a bit unnaturally and their eyes tend glow in the dark. The speech of a runner becomes inexplicit, he mumbles, gets aggressive, shouts. Infected still posses most of his human instincts, he moves fast and chaotically and run amuck everything in his rapidly weakening sight.
3. Clickers are the infected, who reached the fourth stage. Because of the fungus constantly growing, it starts to break the skull of its owner, squiring his eyes. The victim completely looses its sight and stars to rely purely on its echo - detection. For this purpose the infected constantly makes a clicking and waits for someone to encounter his the sound waves.
Sculpting a Character.
Michael Knowland - the lead character artist for the Last of us project has created some amazing sculpts for the game. They range form the main characters to infected and even things like back pack or even teeth . The amount of detail he put into each sculpt is outstanding I would especially accent on the skin details, such as wrinkles, ... Another eye-catching thing are clothing folds.
Naughty Dog actually gave a presentation at Gnomon School of Visual Effects for Zbrush users featuring Michael Knowland (lead character artist), Bradford Smith (Senior Texture/ Shader Artist) and Frank Tzeng (Character Artist). Artist were providing and in-depth look into the art of Last of Us, sharing cloth,texture and face sculpting techniques.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xygceOR4_I
“I took a Computer Games Design degree back in University, where initially I wanted to be a level designer. At some point in my 2nd year there I really got into modeling characters—about the same time the D’Artiste Gears of War 2 Making Of book came out, and also as Dominance War 3 began. At the time there was just something very appealing about making a ‘hero’ type of character to me. From there I graduated and got a job at Frontier Developments in Cambridge (England) and worked on a project called The Outsider (it got cancelled) and Kinectimals. At the same time, I was working on a character that got me top row on Zbrushcentral ‘The Gunslinger’, which ultimately helped me get noticed by Naughty Dog just a year later after being at Frontier. From there I did their art test and got the job. I then came in pretty fresh into the Last of Us as the only character artist working on it in-house, and worked hard as the character team grew, and eventually Neil Druckmann asked me to be the lead character artist on the project. Two and a half years later we shipped the game.”
Let me clear some things out - this game does not feature a zombie invasion, but rather a spreading of fungus that is infecting the people in that world. Infected do not become a walking or decaying corpses, the are pretty much living and breathing things, which are trying to find new ways to spread the disease. An interesting story element for me was, the fact that when the infected feels like it is going to die, it finds a distant place and becomes part of the environment, if it stays there for long enough, the spores will come out. If the humans inhale those spores, they become infected. The second way to get this fungus is to be bitten by the infected.
Character development:
There are few types of infected in the game:
1. Runners are the second stage of infected people. It is quite easy to tell them apart from others, since they tend to act a bit unnaturally and their eyes tend glow in the dark. The speech of a runner becomes inexplicit, he mumbles, gets aggressive, shouts. Infected still posses most of his human instincts, he moves fast and chaotically and run amuck everything in his rapidly weakening sight.
2. Stalkers are the infected, who have reached the third stage of the virus. The fungus starts to grow on the victim's head. It starting to loose the vision plus its aggression reaches the peak. Although, their tactical skills are rising.
3. Clickers are the infected, who reached the fourth stage. Because of the fungus constantly growing, it starts to break the skull of its owner, squiring his eyes. The victim completely looses its sight and stars to rely purely on its echo - detection. For this purpose the infected constantly makes a clicking and waits for someone to encounter his the sound waves.
4. Bloaters is the last stage of fungus growth in the body of its victim. An infected becomes incredibly strong. They body is covered with thick fungus which serves as an amour to its owner. Bloaters take the longest to develop, this makes them the rarest of the infected. Although, they are slow, bloaters capable of throwing a mass of exploding spores.
Sculpting a Character.
Michael Knowland - the lead character artist for the Last of us project has created some amazing sculpts for the game. They range form the main characters to infected and even things like back pack or even teeth . The amount of detail he put into each sculpt is outstanding I would especially accent on the skin details, such as wrinkles, ... Another eye-catching thing are clothing folds.
Naughty Dog actually gave a presentation at Gnomon School of Visual Effects for Zbrush users featuring Michael Knowland (lead character artist), Bradford Smith (Senior Texture/ Shader Artist) and Frank Tzeng (Character Artist). Artist were providing and in-depth look into the art of Last of Us, sharing cloth,texture and face sculpting techniques.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xygceOR4_I
“I took a Computer Games Design degree back in University, where initially I wanted to be a level designer. At some point in my 2nd year there I really got into modeling characters—about the same time the D’Artiste Gears of War 2 Making Of book came out, and also as Dominance War 3 began. At the time there was just something very appealing about making a ‘hero’ type of character to me. From there I graduated and got a job at Frontier Developments in Cambridge (England) and worked on a project called The Outsider (it got cancelled) and Kinectimals. At the same time, I was working on a character that got me top row on Zbrushcentral ‘The Gunslinger’, which ultimately helped me get noticed by Naughty Dog just a year later after being at Frontier. From there I did their art test and got the job. I then came in pretty fresh into the Last of Us as the only character artist working on it in-house, and worked hard as the character team grew, and eventually Neil Druckmann asked me to be the lead character artist on the project. Two and a half years later we shipped the game.”
The video pretty much focuses on Ellie's clothing details. The artist goes about explaining the basic steps in character creation. First thing she does is she creates a base mesh in 3Ds Max plus the basic shapes shapes of any other accessory ( in this case a backpack, shoe, hair)or models them later and imports into Zbrush eventually. Even though that's a fan art sculpt (if it's possible to say that)
The purpose of this post was to help me grasp as much knowledge as possible about the process of character development. From planning the story to focusing on characters behavior and never stop asking questions like who is the character? what is his role in the story? what type attitude he has? on so on.
