* Designer Interview: Designing the Player Characters

Hey, Yours Truly here.

Today we’ll take a break from the game itself, with a guest post by the designers of the game’s characters, Fujita and Hara from Premium Agency!

Here goes!

The main character of DBC is “LEO” the robot.

The design concept for our little friend is

Cyclops + Matryoshka doll (from Russia).

It’s a simple design, but it took us a while to decide on it.

We had many heated discussions with the game’s Director until we finally came up with its current design.

As reference, we suggested a certain robot that appears in a classic science fiction movie.

The design for that robot is excellent. The impression it gives, its limited number of parts and motion arcs all add up to a splendid retro feel.

Retro, certainly, but the robot has a very unique pathos to it and leaves a lasting impression.

Our goal, while drawing up those numerous drafts, was to reproduce this robot’s feel.

Here’s a step-by-step on the process of deciding on the final design for “LEO”.

Once we had a good number of possible designs on the drawing board,

we went back to the basic design concept and simplified its shape as much as possible.

The robot is seen on the game screen from an overhead view. So the minimum requirement for the design is that players realize it’s a humanoid robot when they see it from anoverhead view.

At this point, we discussed many possibilities with the Director on adding something to the character that would function as a somewhat out-of-place, subtle trademark.

During the game, the robot is often shown with its back to the player. So, we decided to put the trademark on its back.

We started off by putting a bell on it. Ting-a-ling. Pretty cute, huh?

Next, we have the robot’s head. Its face is somewhat hard to see during the actual game, but the face is the most important element of a character.

Aiming for a subtle, minimum feature, we added a horizontal line here.

Interestingly, this single line just might work as the character’s expression.

Adding the line gave us ideas. We could divide the face into upper and lower halves. ...And hup!