How Can a Character's Personality be Conveyed Visually, through Shape

The aim with this study was to further understand the art of character design, in order to get a better understanding of how visual attributes - especially shape - can be purposely used in order to communicate aspects of a character's personality. The first step was to investigate the subject o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ekström, Hanna
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: Högskolan på Gotland, Institutionen för speldesign, teknik och lärande 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-204196
Description
Summary:The aim with this study was to further understand the art of character design, in order to get a better understanding of how visual attributes - especially shape - can be purposely used in order to communicate aspects of a character's personality. The first step was to investigate the subject of character design through relevant material and literature. From this investigation, a total of four character designs have been developed - two"good" and two "evil" - within two different game titles of different graphical styles: One that is more cartoony/stylized and one that is more realistic. Prior to the production a number of work processes - production pipelines - used by artists in the game and movie industry were investigated. From this, the pipeline for the study was compiled. To end the study a survey was conducted, in order to obtain outside feedback for the character designs regarding their style and what personality traits they were associated with. The results show that the majority of the participants perceived the characters in the way that was intended, while the perception of graphical style was a lot more varied.