Game Dev Blog #7: Tech-Witch: Part 1

Tech-Witch: Part 1

     This week I'll be going over the Tech witch in the concept stages, and going over the process of how I concept out characters in general.

     The first thing to consider is the most obvious: what is the concept, the idea of this character. For the Tech-Witch we started with a gameplay concept; a character who's abilities are not so much for dealing damage as they are for disrupting the enemy. She would deal her damage primarily from close range (but not melee), high DPS (Damage Per Second) standard attacks.

     After deciding on this we moved on to narrative themes: What kind of characters might fit into this style of play? The team wanted a female character, so that helped narrow things down a little, but there was still a world of possibilities. Our initial name for the character was the Battle Mage, which sort of seemed to fit the bill but was much too generic. Ideas for this version of the class matched the name: kind of boring, and expected.

     Fortunately while still in the brainstorm portion of the concepting phase, I came up with the idea of a Tech-Witch. To explain how I came to this, I'll explain some of the background for the narrative setting of the game. basically, it's a sci-fi western wrapped in superstition and magic. The characters derive their powers from these pieces of technology, the Canisters, which store pure magic essence. This can be collected in one of two ways. Either by a magician (typically working in a factory) who draws the magic from the aether and channels it into mechanical receptors, or by trapping a soul in a canister using black magic or voodoo and drawing power from that. The latter method is easier, and therefor cheaper, but it is not as safe. It is not unheard of for users of these to become haunted or even possessed by the spirits they sought to store.

     So the idea of a combination of technology and witchcraft was an appealing one, and one I don't think is excessively used. it fits the theme of the game, and meets the criteria of the character (uses spells but still deals damage with physical weapon, female).

The Art

     So now we come to the actual art. To begin, I start by drawing out some basic silhouettes. This is to come up with a character that will read well at glance and won't be mistakable for other characters.

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     The idea was to have ten or more unique silhouettes (this is also sort of the industry standard) but due to time constraints I was only able to produce five. Based off of these, the team the picked the parts from the designs the liked, and I created a value study based off the feedback:

This was okayed, and I the proceeded to do a colour study,

     Here was my initial pass which is essentially what we went with. I changed the colour of the trim on the corset to a more orange-brown colour, which helps both tie it in more with the design and take focus away from it, so the viewer can pay more attention to what's important: her gear and face.

For part two of this, I'll go over the process of turning this character into a fully realized 3d player model. This will more than likely NOT be the next post, however.