Industry Practice: Presentation Work and Character Ideation
-Our game will have a PEGI rating of 12. This is the age rating that will best fit our project. As such, our project will not contain excessive violence.
-We don't want it to seem like characters are perfect people made imperfect by their mental health issues; these flaws are a part of their character, not a stain on it.
-We won't use copyrighted material in music, images or writing in our project. Everything we use in our project will be of our own creation.
-Our game studio and game name will be unique to differentiate our project from pre-existing media.
-As we are publishing our game on Itch.io, our project will abide by Itch.io's terms of use.
Character Ideation:
My group has decided that each of should have the responsibility of creating a character, as this will ensure that we all have equal access to create our game's visual style. These sketches and designs will then be passed over to our lead character artist who will create the final renditions of our characters for use in the game.
When we worked towards ideation, the idea of multiple character options for the game came up. This would mean that the player could, at the beginning of the story, choose between one of several characters to play as. Each of these characters would relay personal experiences to a narrator character, who would note them down. This character would be analogous to a therapist of sorts, though is somewhat more nebulous in presentation: they are not a therapist, yet have a similar role in the arc of the story. Each of the characters, as they speak, would enter flashbacks of a sort in which details of mental health conditions would arise, impulses and ideas relating to the condition shown through a "manifestation" character that would relate to how the character views their mental health condition. We would each design one of these characters.
My character is the narrator that each of the player characters speaks with, the pseudo-therapist who writes down the thoughts and feelings of those they speak to. Similar to the manifestations of mental health issues, this character is too a manifestation: they are Rememberance and Self-Forgiveness.
In this, I drew several thumbnail sketches and rough concept designs for them, exploring different ideas in their physical appearance and presentation. I played with the idea of them being in a wheelchair, showing how they must be moved by the player, in the way that their own self-forgiveness is their matter to move ahead.
Additionally I examined the idea of how this character, who is the only manifestation directly helpful to the player, may be the most physically frightening to look at, with an obscured and unidentifiable face and a medical, somewhat mysterious appearance. This stems from the idea of how confronting what they represent - Remembrance and Self Forgiveness - can be difficult and intimidating, even if ultimately helpful.
Though I am happy with these designs I feel they diverge too much from the creepy/cute aesthetic that we seek to cultivate in our game. As such, in future developments, I will work to realign these designs with the aforementioned aesthetic and will create finalised concepts and reference sheets in this style for the use of our character artist.
Bibliography:
PEGI, 2024. What do the labels mean? [online]. PEGI. Available at: https://pegi.info/what-do-the-labels-mean [Accessed 24 October 2024]
Itch.io, 2024. Itch.io Terms of Service [online]. Terms of Service: Itch.io. Available at: https://itch.io/docs/legal/terms [Accessed 24 October 2024]
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