Silhouette Boy

ElithX

Hey guys,

I am still at the character design stage with this project, but was hoping to get some feedback on the design.

The world of character animation is very new to me, but I figured spine was the tool I have been looking for to make the process as straightforward as possible.

The aesthetic style of the game is purely black and white, so that places some design constraints, but I am hoping to create a character that looks somewhat generic, while still having his own style.

All feedback is welcome. 🙂

Cheers,
ElithX

Søren

Hello ElithX welcome to the forum! 🙂

I'm a big fan of the silhouette style and I gotta say Limbo is one of my favorite games both due to the gameplay but also the style. One thing you will find when working with silhouette style art assets, is that its far easier to make sure the individual elements blend over well, so you got that going for you. The hard part of it, is to make your animations read well. Make sure the silhouette stands out and you will likely need to exaggerate some of your animations to make it look good.

I think in this case, the silhouette could be better. Giving him some more interesting hair and maybe some items to create some secondary motion with would be great.

Good luck with it! 🙂

ElithX

Thanks for the excellent feedback Shiu. I'm going to try a few different hair styles and post them up soon. The gameplay will be puzzle-platformer, so the actual character will only be 128px by 128px on the highest DPI device. Because of that I see what you mean with exadurating the animation to compensate for the single color style.

I want to try something a little different with the walk cycle, basically moving the shoulders and arms left and right slightly along with swinging them, to give the illusion of the character rotating in 3D space. Because he is a silhouette, I think I'll be able to get away with it.