CHAPTER 1
A HERO IS BORN
The Hero of the Game
In this first chapter we will create the hero for our video game idea. Video game heroes come in all shapes and sizes. From humans trying to save the Earth to aliens trying to save the galaxy, heroes are an important part of making a video game more than just a game. The hero adds a story for the player to follow and understand. The hero can be a brave warrior ready for battle or a weak little wimp with little to no hope of saving the day. Get ready to create the most important character of the game, the hero.
Is your hero brave and cunning?
Big and bad?
Or just plain wacky?
Chicken Scratch?
Keeping Your Character Ideas Loose and Fun
In this chapter you're going to see me use sticky notes, index cards and scraps of paper to create rough doodles or ideas for my characters. I am going to show you how to draw various characters, but my real goal is to show you the process I used for coming up with a rough character and then breaking it down into simple steps so I could easily draw it again and again in different poses. I started with a simple chicken character. Our chicken is the hero, but this is not a brave warrior of a hero — it's a chicken.
After creating several rough ideas for the chicken character, I stumbled upon this one. When I broke this character down into easy-to-draw shapes, I saw a marshmallow with eyes and wings.
Then I drew this character in a bunch of different poses. I wanted to make sure the personality of this character is easy to recognize. Even when this chicken is doing something brave, its face should show a hint of fear.
DEMONSTRATION
Bad Guy or Good Guy?
Maybe the hero of the game is closer to a bad guy than a good guy. What if the hero does terrible things to defeat the enemies? Here I'll show you how to create a character brought back from the dead to bring villains to justice.
1 Start thumbnailing ideas for the creepy crusader. I was going for a half zombie and half voodoo doll look. Color is going to play a big part in the design of this character, so I threw some color ideas into the thumbnails.
2 Here is the rough thumbnail I decided to go with. I liked the pose and the face of this living dead hero.
3 Drawing lightly, rough out the shape and movement of the body and the pose.
4 Now work on the hairstyle. I tried a couple of looks but this is the one that looked the best.
5 Add some fun details to the boots. I also added a bandana around the neck.
Even as I inked and colored the final drawing, I made changes to the character. I added spikes to the boots and another bandana to the leg. I decided to make the pupil of the eyes red and added thick black lines around the eyes for an even creepier look.
DEMONSTRATION
Painter Pete
All the colors in the world are being sucked off the face of the Earth by evil color-stealing clowns. Only one person with a magic paintbrush can thwart these color thieves from ending the world as we know it.
