Today’s episode of Design Table, comes straight from the beautiful Champion Workshop in the illustrative town of Aldackelm brought to you by the talented artist team at Polywick Studio.
Polywick Studio: Mission
We’re a close team of creative designers, artists and illustrators who work together to create beautiful and engaging artwork.
Most of our collective professional experiences came from the video games industry. We are very much interested in pursuing other art fields like concept art for film, sculpting of toys, illustration for book covers, etc.
Having worked in the outsourcing industry for more than six years, our collective experiences include working for clients like EA, Naughty Dog, Ubisoft, Warner Bros and Disney. On top of that, we have world-class artists whose works have already been published in annual art books and magazines such as Infected by Art, Advanced Photoshop, 2dartist, ExposŽ, Exotique and ImagineFX. We are a vibrant team, hunting down challenges and adventures and take opportunities to further refine our craft.
Areas of Focus
2D Graphics:
•Concept Art
•Character Design
•GUI Design
•Game Design – Assets and props
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3D Graphics:
•Character Modelling
•Environment and Props
•Sculpting
•Vehicles and Industrial Design
The Team
Our members are drawn from various aspects of production. We have concept artists, illustrators, 3d character artists and 3D environment/props artists. We do art using our accumulated work experiences and our desire to explore uncharted areas.
From Right to Left: Anne, Jak, Ferdinand, Robin, Allen, Anjelica, Sally, Mary Jane, Gerald.
Taking Photo: Derek
Character Designs
Character design can be a challenge because although many of the timeless characters we are all acquainted with through cartoons, movies and advertising look simple, that simplicity usually is the result of innumerable hours of work. The time and effort that have gone into their development, from color selection to their characteristic features, style and expressions all make a difference. We would like to present you with a checklist of things when designing a character:
1. Decide about your audience and target those demographics
2. Design to fit the medium - mobile apps, PC games or movies have different criteria for detail level
3. Research I – character backstory, goals, aspirations and dreams
4. Research II – other similar characters to make yours stand out
5. Research III – character environment
6. Settle for either 2D or 3D
7. Make all characters distinctive - use styles to describe them, exaggerate features and characteristics, accessorize with props and clothing
8. Be mindful about your choice of color
9. Experiment
10. Get feedback from others and polish, fine tune your designs
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Design Table Inbox
Q: What is the first thing you do when drawing a character? - Xi
We do not actually deviate from the normal practice when doing an artwork. Like other artists and studios, we do intensive research and reading to come up with different ideas for the character then comes the sketching. We do many rough studies for us to be able to select the best possible outcome.
Q: How does one settle on a graphical style for a character? - Peter
Creating a character is composed of a lot of aspects and considerations. There comes color, anatomy, usage and purpose. Putting and considering these aspects together is something to start with. The graphical style of the character always depends on the purpose and the client’s requirement. More often than not, we follow the client’s preference and make suggestions on how to improve the look without deviating from the style that they want.
Q: I suppose this game will feature historical characters and my question is how much research did you do? - Greg
Considering the historical impact of this game, we really did a lot of research and reading. We have to take into account the character’s story, background, physical and mental aspects. We try to be as accurate as possible and to be able to do this we did intensive analysis and investigation to couple with our own sense of imagination.
That is it for today’s edition of Design Table. Next week, we will focus on the topic on Randomness or Chance in a game. I would like to finish the question session with thanking todays participants for the questions. If you would like to send in questions or write us feedback on today’s session, you can either do it via Twitter, Facebook or email and we will possibly make them part of the next series.
