Character Dichotomy

Our final project of this term was a character dichotomy project. If you're unfamiliar, that basically means two characters that work together harmoniously, yet have distinct and contrasting characteristics that set them apart.

Some popular video game classics that come to my mind are Ratchet and Clank, Jack and Daxter, Mario and Luigi and even Joel and Ellie from The Last of Us. In terms of Movies or television you could point towards Hellboy and Abe, Arya and the Hound in Game of Thrones or Rocket and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Asterix and Obelix or Calvin and Hobbes are also some perfect examples of dichotomous characters from cartoons/comics.

There are literally endless examples of dichotomous characters throughout video game, cartoon, writing and movie history.

Talking about the brief for this project, we were given exactly 3 weeks to design two dichotomous characters of our own. As a minimum, we had to model and texture at least one of these characters, however stretch goals included modelling both characters, as well as adding rigs and animation.There was no given tri budget for this project either, which meant we could go wild. However, I will talk briefly about how this wasn't necessarily the best idea.

As there were no style guides or technical restrictions I thought that this character project would be the perfect opportunity for me to learn about high poly baking and Zbrush, so when I began concepting I designed characters with the idea of having some level of realism in mind, and with the idea that I would have one very detailed character modeled and textured by the end. My idea was two characters. One a burly brawling type, and the other an agile ranger style character.

First concepts

In fact, the tutors advised avoiding Zbrush all together for this project. The emphasis was on strong overall design, and the dichotomy of two characters. Not having a single character with a lot of surface detail.

During the first presentation to the tutors, I was given feedback to change their designs. The tutors pointed out that these characters were too similar, and didn't necessarily create visual unity. They were right, and I had designed the characters with little thought towards dichotomy as I had only planned to model one. I decided to go back to the drawing board and take a very different angle.

Since the emphasis of this project was having two characters that worked together visually, I decided that I would model both in the end. I had to think of a way I could realistically model, texture and rig two characters before the deadline.

While thinking of ways I could create both characters in this time frame I remembered 3D artist Tommy Tallians' rendition of the Team Fortress 2 characters. He created the entire cast of Team Fortress 2 as ultra low poly 500 tri characters. This illustrates that the strongest designs will read well and still work at the most basic level. I decided that I would try to create both my characters with the same budgets and low resolution textures.

Team Fortress 2 cast, by Tommy Tallian

Team Fortress 2 cast, Valve

I began by re concepting the male character, based of an earlier silhouette that people liked. I also pushed for some level of stylization too, as it lends itself well to low poly modeling.

This led onto some re-concepting of the girl too, in order to fit in with the new style I was aiming for.

After some thought and sketch overs, what I ended up with was the same two character archetypes that I began with, but with a totally different style and stronger silhouettes.

Modeling in the next post...