PROCESS
AIM OF THE PROJECT
For this project, I wanted to examine different characters across different games and see how shape psychology may have been implemented into their design. I was inspired by a previous project done on character design done by artist tomatoro. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept of shape psychology, the idea is that the three core shapes of squares, circles, and triangles embody different characteristics, and said characteristics may impact how we view certain phenomena that incorporate said shapes. For examples, we may see triangles as a more aggressive shape as opposed to the circle due to its edges resembling real life objects such as knife or spikes that could cause us harm. Consequently, characters embodying such shapes may come off as seemingly more hostile or aggressive.
I thought that by limiting the categorisation to simple shapes, it would simplify the requirements for the learner’s understanding as they would simply need to try and understand the shapes and how they are incorporated, thus removing any need for prior knowledge. Another thing to note is that I did not use any colours in my 100 drawings. Since my focus was on the use of shapes, I thought that adding in colour would distract from my area of focus, and could impact the learner’s experience in trying to identify and analyse the different characters and shapes used.
METHODOLOGY
The images were hand-drawn on Procreate on iPad using references to the characters found through Google images.
ISSUES DURING DESIGN
01 - FINDING THE CHARACTERS
Soon after starting this project, one major problem that I came across was actually finding the 100 characters that I would draw. Since I wanted to show the connection between character design and shape psychology, I thought that it would be more appropriate to choose characters from games where the players could choose what character they wanted to use. This is because in such games where players need to make a choice, I thought that there would be a stronger emphases in using design to show the characteristics of the character, as in these games it is more important for characters to be identifiable at first glance so players can more easily make a decision on who they want to play or find appealing. Conversely, I thought that if a character was from a game with only one playable character, it might be more common for the characters to be simply designed to be appealing instead of using shapes or other design factors to introduce the character and their traits to the audience.
02 - POSES AND HOW TO DRAW
Another issue that I ran into while drawing my 100 images was struggling with deciding the poses for the characters. As many of the characters I had chosen were humans or humanoid in shape, if I were to draw them all standing normally, I thought it maybe be hard to learners to grasp the difference in shape. As such, in order to make the content more easily digestible for the learners, I thought that it would be more effective to manipulate the poses so make the shapes more easily identifiable in line with the character’s traits.
03 - SIMPLIFICATION OF THE DRAWINGS
Similarly, I also had issues as to how much I should simplify the characters. If I were to simply the characters to a large degree, I think it might make the content more easily understood by the audience. However, I often had trouble simplifying the character designs to a large degree as it was something that was rather difficult to effectively visualise for me, and so I mostly decided to stick to drawing the characters mostly in line with what they looked like in the original source material.