Arcane Fist Character Designs

I am beginning a new project for the developer of the Arcane Fist game, a PvP multiplayer fighting game. This project entails designing a new character and a selection of skins, providing a great opportunity to demonstrate the creation process from the ground up.

Previously, for the same game, I developed three skins for a character named Nile. Nile is a waterbender inspired by Avatar, meaning his appearance and abilities are centered around the water element.

Now, we need to design an "Earthbender," which requires a similar design approach.

You'll notice that the "waterbender" above isn't overly muscular, and this was a deliberate choice. We aimed to maintain a gentle association with the gentle flow of water element.

However, for the earth element, we need to create a character who appears bulkier and embodies the strength to control and hurl large rocks.

Let's cover initial idea and concepting

It's common for concept artists to illustrate characters from various angles and poses, but in a small studio, budget constraints typical of indie games often necessitate a quicker, more direct approach rather than numerous iterations.

I prefer to create concepts myself because my favorite aspect of developing game-ready characters is devising the overall design.

Therefore, it's crucial for me to find the fastest and most effective method that clearly conveys the character's design and personality to the client, but also is technically clear enough so I can jump straight into production as soon as I get the green light.

 Choosing a reference base pose

very first sketch

I start by finding a pose I like on Pinterest because I don't see the need to draw a humanoid character's body from scratch as there are endless options online. However, having drawing skills and an understanding of anatomy is essential for tweaking muscles or posture. The image I created is a blend of two different drawings I found online, which I quickly redrew in Photoshop.

I always start with 50% grey background to make sure character's colors look good in both dark and light environments.

Assembling a moodboard

Even before beginning any drawings, we had already discussed with Austin, the creator of Arcane Fist, that the character should be muscular, similar to Ryu from Street Fighter or Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear X. Austin also expressed a desire for the character to have long, chaotic hair like Sol Badguy, as this would allow us to incorporate physics simulation into the hair. So, I put together this initial moodboard and began drawing a fusion of all these elements.

In this process, you need to apply both your drawing skills and sense of color composition, along with an artistic intuition to determine what looks good or bad.

"Design is the art of what goes with what"

First initial pass on Default Skin

After messing around with shapes and colors, I ended up with this default skin. You might notice some similarities to characters from video games, movies, or anime, but it's still its own design, just inspired by other media.

I start by drawing line art and then paint with shapes to get a good color composition. If I could give you one simple tip, it would be: don't stress about details like line art on fingers because it doesn't really matter. Focus on the main forms and colors. Overpolishing you'll spend 80% of your time on perfect line art or shading, but that'll only give you 5% of the results. It's not efficient.

You might notice some little imperfections in my drawing, but that's okay. I can already start sculpting, and this sketch gives both my client and me a clear idea of what we're aiming for in the final 3D piece. Also, remember that you'll probably change some features during the sculpting, modeling, or texturing processes, so there's no need to stick to a perfectly crafted 2D artwork.

Here's another tip: Just NEVER zoom in on your artwork. Always work on your character while zoomed out.

"Keep in mind 80/20 principle"

all thre skin variations

Take a look at the concepts above: They're not super precise, but they still give us a clear idea of what we'll be sculpting later. One character is a regular fighter, the second is a bit more brutal, and the third is a fancier, more luxurious imperial type. I'll still need to tweak some parts to avoid any ties to the original Avatar, but as always:

"Make it happen first, improve later"

There's one more idea I want to share with you, but it ended up being a bit too wild or off-theme, so we'll probably just put it on hold for now.

Interesting skin, but probably too experimental for the game's theme

You're probably curious about whether AI can help with this kind of work. Absolutely, it can!

However, I didn't use any AI for this project because I found tons of references online and wanted to stick to my original vision. But when the topic is super niche or tough to find, I'm all about using AI to come up with ideas you might not think of.

Plus, you probably don't want AI taking over the most fun parts of your job, right?

I remember when I was a kid playing video games and using cheats to get all the weapons and infinite health. But after about 15 minutes, I'd usually quit because it just wasn't fun anymore. I was totally into Witcher 3 and ended up ruining the experience for myself with cheats. Witcher 3 with cheats, can you believe it?

Then I replayed it without cheats and had one of the best times of my life.

It's the same here - I know AI can conveyor 1000 character concepts for me, but do I really need that? I'd rather have a robot wash 1000 dishes so I can draw more.

That's it! Now we're all set to start sculpting these characters, and I hope you feel more confident about diving into the character development stage.

You can take a look at a closer look at Arcane Fist project in my portfolio.

See you soon!