 Designing a Character Posted: 01/15/10 Welcome to Phoenix Tales Posted: N/A |
--Previous Page (1) The first thing you need to do when designing a character in a game, a book, a movie, or anything for that matter, is create a history for that character. What makes the character who he is? Why does he act the way he does? What are his goals? These are three very basic questions you have to answer out of a laundry list of others to develop your characters back story. In the case of Riley, it was pretty easy for me to accomplish this. I already had a pretty solid idea of the overall story arc of the game when I started writing it, and most of the game revolves around him. Not saying there wasn't holes to fill in, because there was, but overall it was pretty straight forward with him (which is NOT the case for several other characters). OK so now that we have Riley designed from a story aspect, how does he come to life? Since all the characters in Phoenix Tales are played by real actors, the next step was pretty obvious - casting. As an independent game designer, my options for actors are somewhat limited. Not only did I have to find someone willing to work for peanuts, but there were other requirements as well. The actor had to fit the persona -- does he look right for the role? He had to be willing to put in extremely long hours against a green screen, and in a voice over booth. There was also one last huge obstacle to overcome -- COULD THIS PERSON ACTUALLY ACT? I managed to finally cast someone to play Riley who fit all of those requirements. It was pretty stressful though. Originally I couldn't find anyone who met my criteria. Then I found someone who did, and after hours of green screen footage complete, and about 25% of their animation done, they decided to quit on me. That was a pretty big hit to my progress, considering the excessive amount of time put into that work. Not long after that debacle however, I managed to cast the characters current (and permanent!) actor, Joe Layton. Next Page(3)-- |
