Guide:Character Design

So you wanna design your own Weissblatt character? Here's everything you need to know.

High-level basics of Character design

If there is one guiding principle to follow during character design, it's that audience perception is key. Make sure that your characters are unique and intuitively communicate a clear concept (ideally) from their appearance alone. Some helpful tips may include:

• Black out your character to see if they have a unique, recognizable silhouette. Try drawing them in different positions to see if they can retain their uniqueness.
• Keep it simple: Can you draw a crude yet recognizable version of your character within 30 seconds? How about after you haven't looked at them for a day?
• Let your influences inform your character's design: Where does your character come from? Do they prefer functional or extravagant clothing? Are they sloppy? There are many ways to convey character visually. If your intuition fails you, research various ideas and aesthetics until you find what you wanted to do all along.

Animation, expression and posture

Remember that Weissblatt's characters are designed to be animated. You're going to need to draw this character many, many times:

• Get a clear idea for how to break your character down into simple shapes like cubes, cones spheres or tubes and how to maintain consistent proportions.

• Provide guidelines for posture and expressions of your character. Define how they act and not just how they look.

Types of characters

Furry Characters

Furry characters or Furries are planet Weissblatt's equivalent to humans - they are (usually) bipedal and act and talk in a human-like manner. The average adult male furry (such as Kleene Cognara or Dr. Roy Asura) is 1m tall, although this is an average and not a rule (e.g. Babel Memto is only 60cm tall due to being a mole). Females are naturally slightly shorter than males (~90 - 95cm, such as Elise Cantor).

Furry characters follow the rubber hose style. Their torsos are usually constructed from "Disney beans" - bean-like shapes made from two spheres (one for the shoulders and one for the pelvis). An adult furry's height is usually proportioned as three heads tall for illustrations (such as comic books or cutscenes) and two heads tall for toonier depicitions such as in-game sprites and playable 3D models. Children have bigger heads proprotional to the rest of their body, depending on their age/maturity.

Example construction of Alex Felitas. Notice the two spheres forming a Disney bean underneath Alex' garment.

There are no (natural) humans on planet Weissblatt. Instead each furry is given features of a specific species to communicate their character. When designing a character, ask yourself: What does it tell the audience when character X is a Fox/Elephant/Lizard/etc.? As the line between human and non-human species can be blurry across fantasy media, we provided a guide as to what species are generally appropriate for furries:

Species guide for Weissblatt, ordered by likeness to humans vs. animals.

Cross-species transformations are currently undecided:

• Natural/intuitive transformations (such as a worm character turning into a butterfly upon enlightenment) are fine.
• (TBA)

WIP notes

- Bipedal rubberhose Characters (ex: Chimera)
-> Species is derived from character (Aesop)
->> Intuition is key. Make their themes readable
-> Body shapes may vary.
->>Keep your characters unique and interesting
- Spirits are feral
- Feral animals allowed.

- Character Carnivores allowed*
-> Cross-species characters: Cannibalism
-> Feral animals: Animal cruelty (, phrenology?)
-> Delfid: Soul of deceased must be honored.

Feral characters

Feral characters are more animal-like - they generally also look and act like animals.

Spirits are (visually speaking) feral characters.

Weissblatt character are

Drawing sprites

Weissblatt - The Asura incident follows a consistent texture scale of 64px == 64 Fracunits == 1m in-game (although some maps may scale some textures differently for visual effect).