Industry Practice: Developing Background Character Art

I have been tasked with creating art for several background characters in our game, namely the Biology Teacher, seen throughout the game, and the student in the bathroom who speaks to the main character in the Bad Route of the Health Anxiety path.

When speaking to my group about what was expected for these characters, we discussed how they are considerably less noteworthy than the primary Spirit of the Health Anxiety Path, and as such may have a less complicated design: they are background characters not fully formed in the memory of the main character, and their designs should reflect this as such. Because of this, I wanted to go for basic but recognisable designs that, whilst standing out from Crowley, do not put too heavy a focus on the character. Since the beginning of the project, we have also discussed using Rorschach test symbols for the heads or faces of background characters, which could tie in to the theming of psychology and mystery, our game is based around.

As I was tasked with creating these characters late in development (14/03/25), and considering that these characters were not particularly important, we decided not to go through with an extensive thumbnailing phase and instead decided to just create the characters as-is. As such, i drew the sprites for the characters over the background art of the scene to keep them in scale and communicated with my group for feedback. 

I first created the design for the Biology teacher, going with a fairly basic costume of formal wear. I had previously discussed with my group and asked how many poses the character should have: it was decided that they should have two, one standing at the front of the classroom and one with them standing in the background, in the middle. This is because, whilst Crowley is speaking, the teacher would step aside and enter the background environment of the scene so as to not clutter the space. I drew these both on the same canvas to show the size and compositional difference between them, and would then be able to export them separately as different files. 

This would be useful, as I could then add them back in to the final environment scene and use that as the environment in the final game, integrating them into the background and streamlining the workflow as my group had previously decided upon. I also believe this would be easier to add to Ren'Py, as we would not have to worry about the positioning of the character: we could simply place them in the environment as-is, instead of having to use Ren'Py code to tell the software where to display the character. 

As this scene contains half of the character hidden behind the desk, and in the background standing in a specific place, this may be difficult to achieve using such a method, but would be much simpler if the character is integrated into the scene.

I also created the design for a similar background character: a student who can be found in the bathroom if the bad route is taken. They have only a few lines of dialogue, being the least important character in the path. This character, more or less, exists only to make the main character feel more uncomfortable in their situation, and I wanted their design to reflect this. As such, they stand hunched and have a sickly, green colour palette, holding rolls of toilet paper that they have stolen from the stall. Like with the teacher, I used a Rorscach test to show their face and head, though unlike the teacher the pattern looks more insect-like in form, perhaps akin to the head of an ant or other insect. Again, this was to push the idea of them being somewhat uncomfortable to be around. 

With these sprites done, I went about adding them into Ren'Py alongside our current work-in-progress environment art, created by Holly and Evie.

When inputting the bathroom character into the scene, there was a scaling issue that I had to resolve in order to get them to fit onto the screen. This is because I created the art with them at double size, as this would allow for a greater resolution to be in the final piece. I did then, however, forget to scale the sprite down again, which I then had to do. 

Group feedback indicated that these character designs were satisfactory in the context of the game.