We recently showed you the design process behind the main character used in our initial Boingo prototype. If you missed it you can check out Part 1 - The Missing links (opens in a new window), and if not you can just jump ahead to Part 2! 

The initial Boingo prototype was developed from scratch during a period of about ten weeks and has since then participated in a couple of competitions and won a couple of awards. During the prototype’s lifespan we have received lots of feedback and criticism from many different people, including publishers and other industry people.

With the completely new version of Boingo that we are currently working on, we are aiming to make the most of that feedback by addressing some of the issues that has come to our attention. We are also striving to enhance almost every aspect of the game, technically, visually and gameplay-wise. One of the things that we have been working on is an enhanced look for our main character, and we are now going to show you how we went about doing just that. 

In the image above you can see the character as he looked in our promo materials for the initial prototype of Boingo. He wasn’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill main character, and at the time that was precisely what we were trying to achieve. He had attitude, charm, was blazingly orange and, last but not least, he was also kinda evil and hairy looking.

It has now been a while since we finished production on the prototype, and during that time we have gradually begun to rethink our design choices. Boingo is going to be an easy accessible game that a lot of different people should be able to enjoy. The main character should therefore be able to appeal to a broad demographic. Even though a lot of people liked the original design it wasn’t perhaps as well adapted to the game’s design philosophy as it could have been.

When we took up development on Boingo at the end of last year we started looking at the character’s traits, like which ones we wanted to enhance and which ones we wanted to modify. We wanted to keep his attitude, but at the same time make him more appealing to a broad demographic. Since we know that most people will enjoy the game if they only get to play it, we don’t want anyone to be discouraged by the looks of the main character.

At first we tried some minor modifications to the existing character, like legs and eyebrows. We soon felt that staying with the old look just limited our imagination, also some of the tests looked kind of crazy (jumping pig monster anyone?). We also tried a few bigger changes to the character, as you can see in the image below. 

These guys brought some new attributes to the table, but they were still a bit too close to the original. We went on to try out new facial features on the existing character, like new eyes and eyebrows and things like that. In the image below you can see some of these concepts.

We had a difficult time changing our mindset so as to not get stuck with the old design. To counter this we needed to let go of the old character altogether, so we threw him out the window in favor of some completely new stuff. There is a classic saying that applies to this, and is often used in conjunction with game development, and that is Kill your darlings. While you might not always need to kill them permanently, so to speak, it might be a good idea to hide them in the closet or similar for a while. Keep them there until you have gotten the chance to look at everything from a different angle, it might do you some good! Below are a few examples of what we came up with when applying this philosophy to our main character. 

None of the looks we came up with during the above mentioned process felt quite right, but there were some parts of some of them that we liked. However, after this short outburst of crazy concepts we were kind of back to square one. Everyone favored the old character, but we also agreed on that something needed to be done about his appearance. Well, we weren’t really back at square one. The experimentation with the facial features and the new characters had at least given us something to go on. And in the midst of the jumble of different concepts a small revelation appeared in the form a comparison of the old character and a slightly modified version. This can be seen in the image below (old on the left, modified on the right).

By just adjusting the characters eyes we could get him to feel more sympathetic, and it gave him more character. This felt like the right direction for us, and it kind of was the turning point for the character’s design. We saw a way to take the old character and make him into what we had been looking for all along. From here on out the process was quite fast, and we soon had the first concept of what would be the new look! Below you can see the first official concepts for the new look of the main character in Boingo. Enjoy!

Next week we will start look at the entities in the game, from a tech, art and design perspective.

Tags: art, Boingo, concept