Creating Character Appearance

Once a strong Concept and Idea has been created, it’s time to begin creating their appearance. The characters external causes will affect this as mentioned previously. A model sheet and expression sheet are the perfect way to demonstrate your character. From these, a modeller can create an accurate 3.D replica of the idea that was wanted.

Model Sheets:

A model sheet is generically a relaxed pose of your character in a front, side and ¾ views as a minimum. They are designed to show an appearance, pose and gesture of a character. It is mostly a standardisation of a character in a large game, a reference tool and a final design so therefore are hugely important in the creation process. For the sake of computer game characters our model sheets appear more like blue prints rather than an animator’s style which would be in a more free flow style with several different stances.

 

The left is an example of a model sheet aimed more for animators and the example on the right is the style that we should be aiming to create. It is a lot simpler in design with one stance in different positions. This should also be presented with a number of references that have been collected such as vehicle, environment and architectural pictures so we can develop a better understanding of the character. 

People sometimes look at model sheet creation and think it is very intimidating. If you are not a strong artist you can always Photoshop over someone and if this looks bad you can find hundreds of basic templates online which you can borrow and draw over the top of. There are many ways to create a decent model sheet and the stronger the model sheet, the better the model will be.

Proportion is first to look at. There are approximations for many types of character, but a main example is that a Heroic character is usually within 9 – 10 head tall and 3 heads worth in width. The wrists on a human fall just after the waste and the forearm and bicep should be around the same length. Make sure to find a good reference so that the character does not look deformed due to bad scaling and reference.

Here is a bad example of a model sheet. There is very little consistency and the poses would make it very difficult to model from. The proportion is very off and the drawings are inconsistent with a different outfit in every picture. The expression shots also show very little in terms of different emotions. This is a perfect example of a terrible model sheet, so this is what must be avoided!

 

Here is a good example of a decent model sheet. The model is the same from the front and back. The art is neat, consistent and parallel. It would be much easier to model this character than the previous. There is also muscle definition on the far right to develop a more defined arm muscle. This is what you should aim for when creating your character.

The silhouette should be considered when creating the character, as it is very important when posing them! It not only shows the amount of recognisability your character has but it also shows you the pure form of their pose and their body language. If you can identify what mood that character is in from their silhouette, you are on the right track. Silhouettes also help to discover any abnormalities in the characters figure i.e. Scale etc. this can be seen as the front and back views of your character on the model should have the same silhouette.