An Expert's Guide to Outstanding AAA Game Character Design

AAA games usually set the benchmark for game quality, pushing the boundaries of graphics, gameplay, and narration. This leads to superior-grade art that becomes the standard that other games hope to emulate.

Where AAA games are concerned, it is the superior quality of art that helps make players feel a connection, narrates the story, and sets the tone for the game. It is game asset production that creates a whole new world in which players get engrossed and lose themselves in its atmosphere.

Consider the game – Fortnite; this battle royale game is all about vibrant visuals, and cartoon style characters and worlds, and it appeals to a far-ranging audience. The artistic style offers a unique visual aesthetic, and its flexibility facilitates collaborations and creative events (with movies, music artists, and brands). This helps to reinvent the game frequently, keeping it exciting for players.

In Overwatch 2, the characters here have a distinct cartoon style, with in-depth character designs that offer a strong sense of identity to the heroes. This not only makes them easily identifiable but also helps to amplify the game narrative.

AAA game character design helps with:

• Visual consistency, by establishing a robust brand identity, making the game aesthetically attractive. High quality art guarantees that everything, including minuscule environmental details, up to the UI, are in line with the overall aesthetic and branding of the game. In addition to making the game visually attractive, it helps to showcase a robust brand identity, ensuring instant recognition.
• Emotional connection, as meticulous design, emotional expression, and characters with strong backstories help players to engage with the game and its characters.
• Storytelling, as properly developed characters improve the narrative experience, making the game more interesting.
• Immersion, with lifelike imagery and audio effects.
• Clarity, as players can track their characters even in chaotic scenes when they are well detailed.

Anatomy, textures, and emotions

While AAA game character design forms the core of the game and is chiefly responsible for triggering player emotions, the game script, storyline, environment, and style are also extremely important.

For instance, the narrative has to be compelling, and the game world must feel either real or interesting enough that the player feels like exploring and completing tasks. This can only be achieved when an AAA game art studio produces high quality art. It is the combination of all these factors that make the game immersive. However, we will focus on character design and development.

The appearance of the character and his background must be conveyed through voice, temperament, and clothes, to develop a compelling character who can bring out the player’s emotions. To make players feel that the character is real and with a past, a mere narration of the character’s backstory will not suffice; the intricate details of the script must be reflected in the appearance of the character, its clothes, tone, props, and so on.

Game concept art services involve creating the first visual concepts from a script or brief; the concept includes the characters, environments, vehicles, and props. Concept artists set the style and tone of the work, bringing an abstract idea to life. The development team refers to the concept art across the development cycle of the project

That is when the character displays a temper that aligns with his history, showcases a logical reason for its existence, and its actions have a purpose; moreover, its appearance expresses its story. That is when the player’s curiosity is piqued, and they feel like they want to know more, and experience his journey themselves.

If you observe the Star Wars universe and the games based on it, you will notice that each character has been developed methodically and in minute detail; each has his or her own long path, which is not overtly mentioned, but can be gleaned from their temper and appearance.

Let’s take the example of one character, Terisa Kerrill from Star Wars: Squadrons.

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Her backstory is about her mentor betraying her and defecting to Vanguard Squadron, and so, Terisa wants revenge. Her experience has hardened her, and she looks tough, menacing, and non-nonsense. The character’s imposing appearance is brought to the fore by her imperial uniform, her stern expressions, and her dialogues, which helps players understand that something immensely hurtful has happened in her past.

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Art is an essential element of a game that guarantees player engagement. When done right, visuals attract players, encouraging them to explore the gaming universe in detail. An example is the game Ratchet & Clank, with colorful, expansive worlds, full of exotic creatures and devices. The rich visuals enhance the fun component, and builds curiosity among players to explore every inch of the gaming world.

A game with realistic character anatomy and expressive animations is capable of establishing emotional connections with players. In AAA games, the development of both the character and the story are crucial.

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For instance, the protagonist Nathan Drake from the Unchartered franchise has evolved in appearance over the years. In 2007, when the game first released, the character lacked visual details. But the invention of Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) has enabled realism, adding more depth to the character.

The character design, including their voice lines, costumes, and more, enables players to understand and connect with the character more deeply. The more the players are emotionally invested in the game, the more loveable and interesting it becomes.

Game characters have a much larger function than allowing the player to control a specific object or body; they get players involved in the story, and make it immersive through movement, dialogues, emotions, engagement with the environment, and more. Today, it is nearly impossible for us to imagine a game without characters. Even modern Match 3 games have characters and plot lines that progress as you complete levels.

AAA game character design varies in style and essence based on several factors like the platform, setting, storyline, and so on. While there are numerous 2D and 3D graphics styles, these two styles are widely used for AAA game characters:

• Realistic – where characters look lifelike and near-perfect anatomically, with the right proportions, details, and textures. These characters are developed for games that are serious in nature, and are story-driven. Example: Fortnite.
• Stylized – where the characters have a cartoon-like appearance, with exaggerated features and movement, and are used mainly in fantasy-type games. Example: Dead Redemption 2.

The purpose of both is the same: make the game immersive. Each character style has its distinct needs and approaches to creation. Whether it is stylized or realistic characters, they need to be expressive.

3D character anatomy is very significant here, as this will dictate how the character moves, speaks, and displays emotions. Anatomy is one of the cornerstones of realism in video games.

A game art studio with AAA game character design expertise can help craft interesting and engaging characters, whether realistic or stylized characters.

1. Concept

Everything begins with a plan; this is the stage where the design team creates the story, mood, and the distinct appearance of the character. We first make a detailed drawing of the character from all angles, with his chief possessions that are with him always. Things that players cannot immediately see – like what is under the coat – are also defined at this stage.

Designers ensure that the drawing is anatomically correct, and then the character is animated further. This stage of AAA game character design often goes through several iterations, with a number of instant sketches from which the most satisfactory silhouette is shortlisted after filtering. Finally, we have a detailed analysis, and every little detail, like location, material, and so on, are drawn.

2. Blocking

3D characters usually have to go through this stage of AAA game character design, unless they have unusual stylistic and technical aspects. Blocking is a simple 3D modeling of a concept that showcases the body’s main shape and volume. In this phase, we craft parts like joints, proportions, and so on.

3. High poly

This stage of AAA game character design is where artists develop and detail the future character. All the facets of the character, including clothes, anatomy, and objects are recreated depending on the blocking performed earlier. The muscles, oral cavity, shoe soles, facial pores, and more, are defined, usually in the sculpting mode. Zbrush is the popular choice for creating the high-poly.

Developing the clothes for the character could be done separately, based on the style of the future character, and the type of clothing they will wear. To create realistic style AAA characters, Zbrush may not suffice; we may sometimes need to use Marvelous Designer or similar third-party programs. This tool allows stitching any outfit, and even stimulates its properties on the body of the character – like the flow, fit, or fall of the fabric.

Once done with clothes manipulations, all the parts are reassembled in Zbrush and every complicated and unclear part of the 3D model is fixed and remedied. Buttons, zippers, drawstrings, patches, pockets – no detail is left untouched.

For stylized characters, the hair is created right in Zbrush, but for realistic characters, our team uses Fibershop, Houdini, Xgen, or similar third-party software or plugins.

4. Retopology

This is the optimization stage of the AAA game character design. Here, we minimize the weight and number of polygons, as using a high polygonal model will eat into the computing power of the device. Character designers make a low-poly copy from the high-poly model, which is way smaller and lighter than the original.

We use a variety of tools like Blender, Maya, and 3DS Max to achieve this effect. Here, we also consider how to determine the character’s knees, elbows, finger, and other mobile areas to facilitate animation in the future.

5. UV Scan

In this phase of AAA game character design, we transfer the detailing in the high-poly model to its low-poly copy. Think of the UV scan like making an origami figure: you fold paper to make a three-dimensional figure from a plane. Here, the components of the ready-made volumetric body of the low-poly copy are laid out on a plane.

6. Baking

This process is a complex one, when developing character art for game studios. This is where the transfer of detail from high-poly to low-poly actually happens. It requires patience and skill, and specific programs and resources, like Substance Painter or Marmoset Toolbag.

You need to remember that when we transfer volumes from true high-poly geometry, we are basically putting 2D information on a flat texture map. The detailing illusion is created with the physical lighting in 3D scenery, which renders an acceptable 3D model, despite the few polygons present.

7. Texturing

Now we come to the final stage of AAA game character design. This is where character designers paint and create materials. We choose the appropriate program for this phase based on the pipeline and the needs of the model – 3D Coat, Substance Painter, or similar. For future materials, our technical approach varies according to style and genre, though PBR texturing and Handpaint, are popular choices in general.

The 3D model texturing process is quite like the Photoshop layer-by-layer drawing process. However, here, a lot of it is implemented through procedural generation and filling in addition to manual drawing. This is where the character gets the finishing touches.

Once this process is done, all the materials of the character are saved in the required formats, based on where and how the character will be used.

We use different engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, or similar. Each engine has specific requirements with regard to texture, and this is taken care of at the last stage of exporting, once texturing is complete.

After the development is complete, the character is usually animated. AI and machine learning is also often used in AAA game character design to create even more stunning and engaging characters, and enhance gameplay.

Juego Studios has a proven track record when it comes to AAA game character design. When you hire character designers from our team, you not only get an immersive game that players will want to play over and over, but also characters that will be remembered. Talk to us now to know more.