APPEAL MATTERS : The Decline of character design 

Guys thanks for watching. "The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare" skl.sh/tyleredlin09241

Hyperrealism combined with "average looking characters" can also cause these characters to look uglier than they should as a result of the tech being unable to do what it needs to - lighting and shadows on faces make them look flat or deformed, facial animations twist faces in weird ways, skin and hair shaders make them look pasty and unnatural, and so on. The raw working models probably look pretty good before exported to the game. If they were to take a step back from hyperrealism and apply some stylization to the characters that works within the technical constraints, like what was done with the idealized doll-like Eastern designs shown, they would likely work better.

Artists actually speaking out against the assassination of creativity in the industry, finally breaking the silence 👍

ngl the "soup kitchen bouncer" redesign looks so good!! I love the idea that a medic/healer character does so by providing yummy food to their team mates

One thing the Concord disaster has done has taught people a lot about art design, art styles, and using visuals to communicate a character's personality or their play style. It's not just a character being "sexy" but color schemes, implementing shapes, silhouettes, line flow, contrasting sizes, etc. that make a character look interesting and appealing, that make people look at that character and think, "I want to play that" or "I want to fight that." It's not just Concord's designs are "ugly" but they also look bland and weak. Roka looks incomplete, like a generic NPC and not a major character. Daw looks like he's geared up to clean his grandmother's garage. Teo looks like he's messing around with airsoft guns. Concord characters do not look empowering. They look like a bunch of random people wearing costumes for Halloween, a bunch of losers. It's the opposite of Main Character Energy. And to make these characters turn out like this would have required such an overwhelming denial of Marketing 101, required so many people in charge to have their heads in the sand, that it is almost beyond belief.

I’ve never seen anything avoid the “rule of cool” so hard before.

I think “ugly” or average looking characters can work depending on what you’re going for, there are times when having a more average looking protagonist can fit into the setting and theme of a game. I mean even looking at the UK or Europe, they usually depict very average looking people in their media and it is still very popular there. Another good example is Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie in Sex And The City, people swore up and down that she was ugly and unappealing, yet she was extraordinarily popular in the 90s, her appearance didn’t effect that. I think generally that variety is the spice of life and that It would be equally boring if every character was super attractive or if they were all average looking or ugly. I also think that even though some characters are made unappealing for political reasons, politics isn’t always the reason, there could be many reasons for that decision

Concord was so obsessed with avoiding stereotypes to the point of forgetting that under realistic design there should be form follows function principle applied first. If it's moves via jet propulsion, there should be obvious jet propulsion unit, if it's a tank then the obvious thickness and coverage of the armor should be emphasized, etc. It was like someone was trying to design a scifi heavy tank, but it ended looking like a light recon car because they did not want to stereotype.

i miss those days in 90s where anime character designs are cool, i hope it will come back in our todays art era.

I agree with a lot of the analysis in the video except at 10:00 I think regular looking characters can be fun & interesting to play if design & appeal where actually applied skillfully It’s a games job to be interesting or engaging in some way, the industry is definitely dropping the ball on that. That being said I think we’re witnessing the growing pains of an industry trying to explore & figure out what that means without relying heavily on cultural beauty expectations. it’s an artist job to show us what we don’t know we want yet & from personal experience I’ve been surprised - character designs from disco elysium, hades 2 all characters are hot & varied in proportion. I’m sure others can mention other examples I’ve missed I’m worried that we are letting the status quo limit our imagination for what can be beautiful

I like how you kept Daws thickness in every iteration while still making his design far more appealing, I've seen too many AI redesigns that just turn him into a generic skinny guy and call it a day. (Plague Doctor one goes hard) The soup kitchen bouncer design made me smile, that is such a cool idea for a space western hero shooter medic

So I just found out the blue coat guy from Concord was not only supposed to be male but also a medic. Man talk about misdirection

I'd agree to most of this but personally don't think Aloy is a good inclusion. Aloy is a hella pretty character, she is just not dolled up like videogame characters usually are. And according to her story and the world she lives in, it makes a lot of sense. That girl has to save the world, she does not have a lot of time to be "conventionally pretty" + Characterwise, she isn't a "typical" female too. She was really refreshing in a world full of oversexualized characters. (and yes, she can later wear make up , but it resembles warpaint. Also a very clever touch imo, compared to what culture they're leaning on in the entire game!). As much as I love Loish's design (as a big Loish fan, she was the main reason why I touched that game in the first place) I was glad that they made her the way she is. Her look is incredibly iconic and unique imo. If you say Aloy, I directly have a associaton to her and her reddish hair, her braids, the type of layered clothing she is wearing. How machinery parts are implemented in her clothing, the fur, the type of Material her dress might be made of etc. etc. I'm actually annoyed that a lot of Male gamers are like "Oh yeah well...she could have been prettier" and totally miss the mark on her. Horizon Zero Dawn DOES have other pretty characters too. One that comes to mind is Petra. Or Talahna (who is this pretty architype with heavy make up and everything). Aloy does look like an average woman. And this is actually a representation that we need in vidoegames too. I think if you aim for realism in your games, this is an aspect that designers need to understand too. Not everything can be hot. Not everything should be hot. What makes Games good is not the sexyness of the characters (regardless if it 's male or female) but the gameplay and the story. Ellie might be a weird example here because I think i the first games she is a minor, but as she grow older, she looks like an average woman too. In a setting like the last of us, it's something that makes sense. They have to survive. Dolling her up wouldn't make a lot of sense. It might make male gamers happy if she were dolled up, but as a girlgamer I would just be annoyed at "Wow , yeah, and there goes another character down in the male appeal gutter!" Or at least handle it like Baldurs Gate. Karlach is hot (no pun intended) but if you look closely, she hits a similar note like Aloy. Strong, muscular. Not convential pretty but pretty in her own way. Maybe this is just my female view on this subject matter, but I'm really tired of dolled up characters.

Tyler's design critiques are usually spot-on but I disagree with that point about characters lacking beauty in Western games. A girl not being dolled up or hot enough isn't rly a critique unless it's a part of the character's identity, like a succubus archetype similar to Evelynn, Ahri or Mileena (in some games). If it's a warrior/fighter woman, I don't see why she needs to be pretty. I like looking at pretty people, but I also love seeing that unconventional variety that makes me feel more connected to the characters and world. No hate btw, I just don't like this being posed as even in the same realm as something as vital as shape language, exaggeration etc 🙂

soup Kitchen Bouncer, thats the next character i would like to see in a game.

When you brought up eastern vs western games, I agree that eastern games all look good but also they almost always look similar and have very bad same face syndrome and there outfits don’t have too much variety. But that’s just what I think but I would understand if someone thought differently

Sometimes you have to hit the bottom before going up again. Many developers are right at the bottom right now due to a focus on revenue, relying on technology, and ignoring the fan base. Good writers, artists, creative people make good art, as evident as that may be, it seems the industry has forgotten that.

Hey, really nice overview of the topic, very helpful. One thing I can’t fully agree with is the idea that artists are deliberately making their characters less appealing, at least in some of the examples you mentioned. To me, it seems more like technical or artistic issues, rather than a conscious effort to 'uglify' characters. I get that the perspective you're presenting taps into current conspiracies and drives engagement, but can you honestly imagine going through a review and having your art director say, 'This woman is too pretty, can you make her ugly?' Most of the time, stiff facial animations and poor lighting are the real culprits which is often due to corporate greed and poor planning. A lot of cutscenes are outsourced to the lowest bidder, and these teams often lack proper knowledge (and their work comes back at the very last moment leaving no time for fixes). Also, taking a screenshot at just the right moment while the character is in motion, and then presenting it as a representative example feels a bit disingenuous. It's a bit disappointing to see this narrative being supported by an actual artist. Sorry if that came off a bit harsh.

Love it or hate it, eastern companies like hoyoverse and others of the gatcha genre are making infinite money on the strength of their character design alone. These games are held up entirely by the appeal of their attractive characters with entertaining personalities. Some of these games, infamously, basically play themselves. I think any aspiring character designer should spend time looking at the community discussion around these games to get a sense of just how much appealing character design effects people.

Interesting that the topic of beauty only had female examples. Video games also set cultural standards of beauty and influence them. If a female character doesn't have a reason why she is supposed to be attractive, they should be allowed to look plain or even unattractive. There's way more elements to character design than a character's face. That one edit at 10:13 literally makes the character look empty in favor of a sultry sexy look. And there's not even an expression on her face because smiling causes lines in the face or, god forbid, makes her look unappealing.

Concord has achieved all its goals. It subverted the expectations of both studio and publisher.

I disagree with the whole "characters are ugly these days". I personally am so tired of characters in games, tv shows, and films looking so "perfect" and "beautiful" by what media has deemed to be "beautiful". Everyone ends up looking like plastic, photoshopped carbon copies of everyone else (especially with female designs). It's always a breath of fresh air when there's a character who looks either average or is "flawed", or just has a different or unique look. They always stand out a lot more to me. In your examples, I much preferred the West to the East. The Eastern side just looks so... boring. They also look like they have zero personality. In that "fixed" version, she went from someone who looks fun and filled with life to a robot who takes themselves way too seriously. 😂

I don't know, the Concord characters had their flaws, but I don't think that specific example took himself too seriously. I mean he looks jovial and happy. The "beating with an ugly stick" example LOL...Yeah they uh...they kinda messed Mary Jane Watson up just a bit.

The "Token Diversity / Excessive Political Correctness" point is so shaky as an argument, and it's only brought up when a game does badly like Concord. Everyone is so quick to forget that Overwatch was lambasted as "w0ke" when it was first revealed because most of the characters were literally designed as stereotypes first. Other games like Hades, Apex, Valorant, Life is Strange, have all been accused of being "w0ke" but the whole "go w0ke go broke" argument is never challenged when a game does well. Maybe think about as to why games with good character design/art direction/gameplay are allowed to fail or underperform just because, but a "w0ke" game failing is suddenly a deep reflection of our societal decline.

Honestly this and the video dissecting Concord's visual design (or lack thereof) are genuinelu invaluable, professional takes on why the character designs of that game just left NO impact on people at large. It was honestly kind of baffling how the characters did such a poor job of being *charismatic* in a genre that's all about the characters' appeal! That being said, i do somewhat disagree that the 'pandering' part of Concord, dustborn, and other games is necessarily why they weren't as successful as they could have been (or at all, in Concord's case). Representation isn't inherently a bad thing; the problem really comes where representation overrides all other basic aspects of a character design. It's just another tool to be used to generate appeal in characters, because audience members WILL appreciate a character if they 'represent' a non-normative group and but are first and foremost overall appealing.

The East vs West panel is weight because the Aloy's model/Aloy part is flipped compared to the other entries.

One of the most bittersweet parts about Concord is following artists like Adrian Bush on Twitter and seeing the absolutely AWESOME classic sci-fi designs for environments and spaceships. The suits at the top of Sony completely mismanaged this project from top to bottom, and the rumoured cost of the development is classic scope creep, inability to iterate, refusal to look at feedback because the bossman says things are great. Anthem was exactly like this, too - cool promise, good start in terms of designs, then dropping the ball in every part of the design because they were forbidden to even mention their main competitor - Destiny. It's completely unprofessional - yet that's how the corporate world works. Money talks, but sometimes the wrong kind of money is doing the talking...

When i play rpg's or any game that lets you choose a character (be it fighting games) i always pick the monster looking class. Because they are honestly just the coolest looking one most of the time, and i want to look cool in a video game. Yes, i like the ugly characters but concord has a different kind of "ugly" in it.

Wow, what a master class in character design. Thank you for making art education accessible.

I agree sexuality should play a bigger role in "fanservicey" female characters' actual personalities instead of being an autopilot thing, but if we're gonna say "Lara's old design is impractical & would get in the way" that opens a gigantic can of worms if we're actually gonna be consistent. Link starts out in basically his pajamas in A Link to the Past & immediately faces off against highly armored guards, yet no one cares (remember, he was gonna go to sleep in that tunic). In Wind Waker & its spinoffs, not to mention the first half of Ocarina of Time, he's a small child pulling off things a small child absolutely couldn't. Also gauging how "ok" a sexualized design is based on character assertiveness honestly feels like a red herring & ends up artistically limiting in the long run. The real answers are "make sure a sexual design makes sense given the tone & context" & "sexualize male characters too", but Japan's been doing the latter for eons (some Tales male protagonists wear less than the women!) so the recent trend of Japanese creators "being careful about representation" based on western anglophone standards is a step back.

Always a good thing to learn and practice fundamentals then breaking them over time.

I'm not sure why you guys that keep redesigning these characters just make them into overwatch knockoffs visually instead of looking at the influences they were trying for and doing that more successfully. Like man, they are all clearly meant to be riffs on Moebius.

Thanks so much for this video. I've been studying character design for the last year and this eloquently summarized so much of what I have been learning in a very clear and succint manner that helped me clarify a lot of core ideas. You are a great teacher.

Nah I'm pretty sure design shown in east vs west is due to a lack of technical know how on the west side, looks junior's first pass at sculpting 3d capture mandated by manager as a crutch to replace talent, hence uncanny Valley effects. That's not challenging beauty standard when it's plain bad, and the east has non traditional beauty well done, like aside from alloy, these are crummy direct photogrammetry with lens distortion still baked in and bad texture shader 😢 on the east side the way they pushed ashley and the re3 girl is not the typical oval head smooth jaws beady eyes, nor is the traditional bimbo aside from tifa, but technical execution is absolutly flawless. It's sad that something nobidy is commenting on, which tells me we no longer havemthe expertise despite being in photo realism era, that's scary for the future of the art.

okay idk if you're trying to do a rage bait or smth but Aloy is unrightfully bashed here and she looks hella pretty in both games like are you crazy

Maybe they are just thinking too much about the designs? "Over thinking, over analyzing, separates the body from the mind"

Spot on. I think you did a good job of keeping the topic about character design without delving into the politics.

I don't think there's a decline in character design, there's more games and characters than ever before so you're naturally going to see more wins and duds, and ideas can saturate much more quickly. Dwelling on the duds is kinda pointless. I'm sure the creators of Concord realize they missed the mark so they'll either do better or get left behind. What's more worrying to me is when something badly designed or annoying is part of a successful game so it proliferates. Like how "Ubisoft" towers and empty open worlds have flooded the industry. The worst part about Horizon wasn't Aloy's face... it's climbing Ubisoft towers and running around in empty spaces. It's the same problem with Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, FF7 Rebirth, and Eldin Ring... among many other problematic similarities those four have. I think Aloy looked great in the first game, her hair is really cool. But the second game looks... idk if its the graphic improvements or what, but her face looks like dirty and puffy there's a weird uncanniness to it that reminds me of those creepy Japanese robots. And it's not like they can't design, Horizon's costumes, creatures, and key locations are pretty cool. When it comes to videogames and animation, I don't think the characters should use the likeness of their voice-actors especially if its a celebrity... something about it just feels uncreative.

When you do commercial character art but don't do the design part, you're likely to run into the problem where it seems your character doesn't belong. Character design isn't art and it isn't about making the character look "pretty" it's about making every inch of said character tell their story without me having to look for lore.

you know what i noticed is that the entire roster has no "evil" characters. like, for multiplayer genres like this usually there's a good faction and an evil faction but in this game, everyone seems to be the good guy. like they can't even make their characters evil for some reason.

It might’ve not been your intention, but with the examples chosen for male and female characters for this video, it felt like the message is to move back to a time where female characters’ appeal is almost always tied to their physical attractiveness, and male characters’ appeal to action and personality despite how they look. We can have both, and both ways, but that’s not the message I’m getting with this video in regards to good character design. The examples used in the video paints a picture that conventionally non-attractive male characters can still be super cool, and have far more exaggerated proportions, but that it doesn’t apply for female characters.

oh, the eastern beauty standard basically is just white skin, we have colorism here as a culture (?) , basically the lower in social caste did hard labour hence they were always under the sun (dark skinned) , and richer ruling caste had a comfortable life outside hard labour- and asian culture is dominantly still conservative , as a lot of gay people are still being killed in provinces and dark skinned people getting bullied or made fun of (even online) source : asian who had experiences to such things p.s. sorry if the English is of wrong grammar and a bit on the ramble side, its not my first language. thanks for reading.

WHAT. The redesign of the Prince in The Warrior Within was a genious move and Warrior Within is arguably the best PoP game ever made.

As someone learning art and also wanting to illustrate characters they write about, this was eye opening and same time, kind of discouraging - but not in a bad way. Just got a lot to learn before I even design a character.

Some of the "beat with ugly stick" women look fine in game tbh. The comparison is unfortunately very close to being those people who complain about DEI and chins.

I took a few character design classes with Kevin Chen years back and I remember him mentioning that each element of the design is an opportunity to re-enforce the: backstory, personality, or world. The Concord characters don't look like they belong in the same world and I have no information at all about who they are through their designs. I'm really surprised that they got approved and made it into the finished product.

The "dismantle traditional beauty standards" part is kinda non sense. Aloy does not look ugly, at all. The others have a 3D model that approaches the uncaney valley, and even if they were fine it is ok to have people that are not in the society standards of beauty, the majority of people are not, or else you will have things just like league of legends characters, all have the same face syndrome. If you crop the face out of 10 different splash arts of feminine characters you would not be able to discern who is that character. And that is very poor

I don't think it's strictly making characters "uglier". It's making characters mediocre. Games are less so an idealized reality than they are an exaggerated reality. An ugly character who is exaggerated and has the ugliness cranked up is still interesting. A character that looks like some guy you'd see at Walmart...isn't. Overwatch has its fair share of ugly characters, for example. And they're nothing like people you would see in real life. And that makes them interesting. That makes them appealing.

This is the first time I have seen a fellow artist state my exact posture towards style. I have had so many arguments with other artists and non artists about the importance of style in the development of both the art and the artist. I believe that style is so overvalued at the moment that, to me, it feels like a potential pitfall for artist. I have seen time and time again artist justifying poor construction, somewhat shacky line art, or even color theory with the excuse of saying it's "their artstyle". Now I am not saying that art should be done in a particular way or that you as an artist should behave in a particular way either. But to me, style is just another tool in favor of the intention of the project. Basically the artist should be in control of the style, not vice versa. I don't believe that you need to enjoy drawing everything, in fact there are styles and even sometimes scenes that I won't draw just for lack of interest. But whenever your style limits you to something, then you should probably consider studying a little more that subject in which you are shaky just so your style can be improved and encompass an even wider range. Many times people ask me what my style is and I will tell them that I change it in accordance to the project. Of course there are some things and habits that will point you as the artist, but I feel like many times artist confuse style with visual motif. Having a way of drawing noses, or eyelashes, is not really a style imo. It's merely a comfort zone. Now none of this comes with any hate or criticism towards any artist nor its habits.

Bro actually made the soup kitchen bouncer real

Normally I very much enjoy your videos but this one comes across as weirdly critical of inclusivity for some reason. I wonder if the treatment of women in game development has anything to do with the monotonous ‘sexy’ female character designs, as men as usually the one deciding on the final character designs, and sexism is alive and well in many game development teams. Now that some companies are starting to be more inclusive, I think we can give them some time to come up with iconic and good character decisions without falling into oppressive tropes. And personally I’d rather have a ‘bad’ character design than a racist or misogynistic one, but maybe that’s just me.

While I disagree with some of the commentary on eastern vs western designs, I do appreciate the structure you're teaching with these redesigns! It is important that we iterate or infuse a template, rather than attempting to disengage from all visual language/shorthands overall :')

0:46 "doo-doo"

Love all the points made. I like how technical limitations in old games helped shape their art & design

Doesnt all this end up being a little bit generic? I mean yeah all those other games set a foundation on this but when we talking about players perspective i think that the audience can be trained to explore new things and aesthetics. Personally i see all those remakes you guys did to those characters and i got to say this: Yeah its more clear now but lacks in freshness and authenticity. From artist perspective i wouldnt like to produce based on a formula when there are plenty of new things to explore. The conclusion: Is Concord design so great? Maybe not a 10/10 but does suggest something fresh and new? Absolutely yes. So maybe in the future this new kind of aesthetic or problem solving will set the foundation better ( like the older games set the foundation and now can be compared and studied). Note: i didnt hate your or others remakes but i feel we turn around the same things sometimes :)

I like potion c looks like a doctor/butcher and a character that has both jobs sounds interesting. Gameplay wise a medic that can heal you and hurt you in equal measur sound legit too. Imo of course.

Both this and your last character design videos are great, honestly. You made an excellent point how trope subversion can make character designs more interesting, but also how subversion for the sake of it or for trying to "make a Serious Point" can result in a design that just misses the mark. Its definitely way more interesting than all of the dumb videos that just go "game bad Cuz Woke" without articulating what made the designs in games like Concord fall flat compared to their more successful contemporaries, that's for sure! Also, really love the Battleborn shout-out in this one lol. I enjoyed that game a lot when it was still online.

Im drawing my own version of all the concord characters. Its a very good exercise!

I'm designing some characters of my own since I'm trying to make a manga of sorts. I always thought design was definitely easy and then i realized how wrong i was. There is so much to take into consideration like shape language, region, species, personality, role, silhouette, and status. I have been having lots of fun experimenting though. Thanks for the great video, it gave me so many ideas.

I didn't realize soup kitchen bouncer was supposed to be male in the original design.

I miss seeing weird and unique art styles

I will say POP: Warrior Within was overhated because I still like that design of the Prince the best considering the atmosphere

I find that icluding what you should do and what you should avoid to be very informative, I loved this video!!

I really love these breakdowns, as a character artist, really love how you broke this down. Nice one Tyler!

Many developers nowsaday I think they are forgetting that they are making a Product not an essay. A product need to be appealing, good function and at the right price. However, many of these aspects are lost or turned into some kind of cause. I'm myself an Asian dude, so I don't care about the need of white male lead, I don't care if the game only have female characters or non-white or gays, just give me "character", lemme see their struggle and growth or distinctive appearance, not some generic shapes and then try to put into that shell some kind of message that I have to care about, f no. The failures is the reminder of what the devs should get back to.

My goal is to learn to draw/paint/3D model! And hopefully kids able to learn it too.

Quiet breathes through her skin! lol come on Tyler, makes sense to me! haha anyway great some points made. we really do have to be careful when making more realistic games, but at the same time, characters like Aloy,Kratos,Joel etc work for those worlds because the realism in unorthodox situations is part of the appeal. a bit confused on why Alloy is part of the subverting beauty standards and calling assassins creed token is a confusing take that makes me think we've changed the definition of token characters

Haven't watched the video yet and I don't doubt it's great, but these thumbnails are getting really obnoxious imo..

I mean appeal in a way does depend on the person some people enjoy playing hot or sexy characters while others may gravitate more to silly characters, or scary/edgy characters, or even just cute characters. But very few people like bland characters, so I think its fine to rely on the tropes a little bit, particularly if they sell your games, or other media.

Art departmenr must be happy that people are making justice to the desings corporate wanted

for me: fungsional, then shape languange, then story

simplification is the way😁

woman no cute anymore. me mad.

You are praising battleborn, but totally go over the middle design where the character has a comically small head. It was one of the first thing that struck me when i saw this designs. It almost feels like different art styles with this head to body ration for a gunner man.

Subscribed for the Battleborn love. You got it; I played it while the overwatch ads were going crazy, and the narrative turned into “overwatch clone”

Great talk, I always thought of style as a method to tie the story to related inspiration from art history. When they were designing the characters and environments for Mulan, they were referring to Chinese brush paintings, history, and culture. Dexter's laboratory, which was made for tv, has a very UPA feel to it while keeping the lab coat and environment in the early 50s. When I was creating my Anansi Design, I started by researching Jamaican and West African Art and Culture even though I am Jamaican and grew up with the stories. Style isn't an arbitrary thing. It must serve the story and medium. Your character's for a TV show with limited animation budget might need to be simpler because of budget constraints. There are a tonne of art movements that we can also refer to along with things that define a brand. From the perspective of an industrial designer, the lines, stance, and face of a Ford Mustang are going to differ greatly from a Porsche Carrera. So when styling anything you also have to consider your audience as you stated in addition to its history, where is it coming from, where is it going, how has it changed, what does it mean now? I agree that much of the designs we have been seeing lack visual appeal, too often, and ugly for ugly sake. Style is just the start, character's need to function, a character designed for 3d animation will have a different set of constraints than a character designed for 2d animation, a 2d animated rig, or illustration.

The only game that counts as a "realistic hero shooter" in my opinion is Rainbow six siege.

Soup kitchen bouncer, gets me every time 🤣🤣

Thank you Tyler!

Im not the best artist, definitely not a professional (freelance at best), but I knew at glance that Concords characters were off to say the least. As i ran through my favorite character test. If I completely black out the characters and put them side by side can i still easily tell them apart? Y/N. Are they telegraphing any sort of personality with body language? Y/N. My rule of thumb is stereotypes and tropes exist for a reason, because they work ppl like these type of characters or in case of stereotypes hold some inkling of truth and can be fun as long as its not malicious. Honestly the only good thing concords characters have done is make good redesign and character design practice as a lot of the characters are outside my comfort zone, (robots, armor, and guns). Oddly has been fun practice.

im already ugly irl, i dont want to be ugly in videogames

Great points man, keep it up!

like, I feel like if the voice actor is comfortable with it, i feel like it be REALLY cool for voice actors to actually get a visual role in the game itself! Sort of like how Keanu Reeves is in Cyber punk, why can't other voice actors likeness be in the game? would make characters feel more human, and voice actors will not be as " invisible" to the average audience.

Was actually watching your last video when i saw this

When I was younger, when I played games that you could customize your character, I never once made them look like me. I always made them look like a made up character. A great physique, Awsome clothing (mostly like ninja designs) and glowing weapons. I always made them idealistic, not realistic. I dunno why the AAA industry is so hell bent on representation. Like I couldn't care less. I miss the days where things where more idealistic then trying to be realistic all the time.

Very insightful video! I’m not an artist myself, but I have commissioned a lot of art on Fiverr and unfortunately I made a lot of bad experiences there. I always try to be very specific with my ideas and provide reference fotos of what I have in mind - at the end I often receive something completely different or art that just blindly follows my ideas without any cohesion… Could you share some ideas of how to commission art the right way? What is the best design process to get at the end a good result? I hope you read my comment and can help me out. Thanks :)

Where would you suggest individual clients go to find people skilled at character design?

My boi dante in DMC looked fricking amazing haha. Teenage emo edgelord went hard :D Loved lightnings design actually. It looked badass. Cosplayers had a ton of fun making it.

It might be because of the aggressive focus for certain Western titles to be excessively realistic in their styles. Even some Eastern characters try to follow a type that tries to make them still fit conventional norms of what is attractive. When it comes to Western ones it seems more inconsistent with some characters looking fine and others not being as good because their design might translate well on paper, but with all of the added details and animations, it looks worse. I don't figure it's also the issue with diversity, as there are plenty of games that have good characters that are diverse and inclusive even, but still flow well with in their implementation. Examples are more like Overwatch or Apex Legends. Hopefully game companies pull away more from heavy realistic styles, otherwise the spectacle they bring with detail is going to be very boring in every newer title. This is what made Concord even less appealing in my eyes.

i heard this games characters were designed by committee. So i think a lot of these things are known by the artists who worked on the game - and i dont think subversion or ideology was a leading philosophy for the designs. It was probably more like trying to turn a bunch of pre-schoolers character designs into hyper realistic characters .

5:50 That original character designs for Alloy is superb. Guerrilla certainly lost a lot by focusing on hyper-realism.

You look like Kendal Roy

Over design or design-creep also plagues the film industry visuals. I think of many MCU costumes.

Roka's design is literally so bad that you, along with everyone else in the universe, failed to catch that the rocket launcher is held by a robot arm attached to her back. BTW literally every video I see talks about "silhouette" and it's something that I've heard many times before as far as character design going back years. How exactly did the Concord designers miss this lesson?

Thank you very much, very nice video! even I'm not a character designer and my characters literally sucks, I learned helpful facts! Just a little thing, could you please make your videos little louder?

saying lightning isnt interesting is just straight up misogyny

I disagree with western character designs like Aloy being "average" like everyday people. She really isn't. The western characters like her are not only worsened versions of initial scanned people (like no make up despite intricate hairstyle), but they are possess a very high degree of androgyny, (which is really rare this age group) which makes them uncanny outliers. Western characters like Aloy aren't average, nor ugly nor beautiful, but kind of rare type of androgynous face & body which makes them look very strange uncanny. Oh and a fat face on a rather slim body adds another layer of absurdity. I would really like to have just a plain average looking people instead of all of this. Also about curviness \ e.g. high sex appeal. Personally i can ignore excessive sex appeal just fine, in the long run there really isn't much difference for me if the chrarachter has a skimpy outfit, but ugliness is much harder to ignore. With mary sue player tool character like Aloy it was fine, but with someone you'd need to constantly interact...

Top tier video, one thing I want to say is the design for Quiet is very sexual but at the same time they made it work by having her breath through her skin. Its almost rage bait lol "yeah she she's half naked, do you want her to die!?" 😂😂😂

Feel like there was a missed opportunity to add Mai Shiranui to that over-sexualized slide when mentioning that there might be a legit reason they're dressed that way--distraction.

Yall are really triggered by characters actually looking attractive in video games, God forbid. If you're tired of seeing it shield your virgin eyes and let other people enjoy life.