Good&Bad Game Character Design

[ionanism]

From a design point of view, the character could have great design, but it could still be a crapy character that doesn’t resonate with the masses. The more interesting question would be what makes a character, a good character like: Solid Snake, Lara Croft, Mario, Link … et al.

But that’s not what you are asking is it. You want to know what makes a good character purely on a design stand point right?

If you are just talking about how the character looks or what kind of character it is then I think it’s purely subjective… like art… some people like Cubism and some don’t, it’s all a matter of personal taste.

[Keiyentai]

agreed

[Anchuvi]

Yeh good point and I totally agree.

All I am after though are individuals preferences on which charactrers they class as a good design and which they think are bad...

Personally, I like the Final Fantasy game character designs, as well as the Metal Gear and Devil May Cry...not a huge fan of Lara to be honest...

[Supervlieg]

A lot can be said for character design. Most of the time a well designed character can make a good game even better. This goed beyond personal taste.

In her first iteration Lara was a very well designed character. She had a very clean and recognizable color scheme (like most good characters.) And besides that she appealed to the target audience. She was also in her time very original because there weren't any well known main protagonist of a game that were female. (Okay maybe Samus beat her to it, but many people didn't realize Samus was female)

A lot of good character design can be learned from comics. Most the best superheros became icons because of their design. Superman can be recognized by his color scheme alone. Spiderman is recognizable by his silhouette alone. (you'll find that any good character will be recognizable by their silhouette)

There are many considarations to be taken into account when designing characters. I would advise anyone that wants to get into character design to read through "understanding comics" by Scott McCloud.

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