First off let me say I have a great admiration for what Tell Tale Games are doing in bringing back adventure games, and Im very excited that there is a resurgence of interest in the genre as it was my absolute favorite type of game back in the days of DOS. I felt like I was getting to interact with and manipulate a fully realized cartoon movie or show with those games, much more so than anything I had played up until then on NES or Super Nintendo. So, I dont mean for this to be a “diss” on Tell Tale and their artists but more of a constructive critique hopefully (with an exaggerated, silly title, heh). Of course, art and design are subjective and this is all coming from my own preferences. At the least, I want to better understand what makes a character design work or fall flat in my mind as an exercise.
Those of you who follow my Twitter know I recently went on a little rant about the character designs in the new Tales of Monkey Island game that recently came out. I find it very uninteresting and even strange and unappealing. Since he is the main character in the series he needs to really draw people in with an appealing design. Of course thats not the ONLY thing that matters, but thats my focus here.
Here is a screenshot of the game showing Guybrush. I’m just going to focus on his head’s design in this post. I think its important to first think of who he as a character when we consider his design. His personality in the series is an aloof, not-so-bright but likeable wanna-be pirate. The Guybrush shown in this screenshot looks a little dimwitted I guess, probably because his eyes are close together and appear to be sort of glazed over (but that might just be the 3D lighting speaking, or his too-big-for-his-eyeballs pupils, heh). The rest of his design and in this case, his pose communicates slight over-confidence and I guess bad hair grooming technique? I dont really know. Its sort of a blank slate with wonky hair attached.
Speaking of the hair, I cant stand that its glossy. I think it should be matte like his clothes, with little or no shine to it. His hair also juts out in awkward, superfluous angles that add nothing to and distract from the design. It leads your eye all over the place and is confusing to look at. I personally dont really dig goatees in general (in real life), so thats a minus for me too, and maybe a double minus since his sticks out like an overgrown bee stinger. The ponytail is in the original Guybrush design of years past, so I’ll give it a pass, heh.
In order to better understand what makes up the design of his face, I traced over it in Photoshop. I found the face to have too little “meat” to it and the eyes are uncomfortably close together. The attempts to make the design “interesting” end up coming off as distracting (the aforementioned hair problems) and the size and shape of his nose add to the feeling of a strange, sunken-in face.
After doing that quick study, I tried my best to improve each of these things that I feel cause problems and a lack of appeal in Guybrush. I tried to give his face a more relaxed, less pinched look by filling the cheeks out slightly. Then I gave some distance between his eyes, but tried to keep them feeling aloof and slightly dim-looking. Instead of that ghastly goatee I gave him a slightly exaggerated and (hopefully) fun chin with a wide, kind of distant grin. Im a little worried I went too anime on his hair, but I think it feels more attached to his head and part of his personaility this way.
So this is what I came up with as an improvement to his character model – the face specifically. What do you think?
P.S. – Dont even get me started on this side character model they use at least 3 times in the game for different characters. Its so profoundly dull it would require a full post on its own.
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