Not so long ago I wouldn’t bet on realtime engines but they have become so powerful now, with high quality lighting, shadowing, powerful shaders, and great antialiasing. Of course this is all thanks to clever tricks, simplifications and approximations so offline rendering will still offer ‘more true’ quality for some time, but the gap between these two worlds is now small enough to seriously consider realtime engines. Would you rather render each animation frame for 30 minutes (sometimes even 30 hours) or 30 milliseconds?

Building Up the Visual Look

I focus on no more than two or three character features that should literally pour out of every pore. I build all design around that – everything should revolve around those chosen features, including facial expression, body pose, clothing etc. Often in games you see characters that are too generic. Especially women – they may be physically pretty but you can’t really say anything else about them. They are like pretty children, proportional, symmetrical and devoid of character.

Nature hates symmetry and perfection. I definitely prefer flawed and full of character.

Nature hates symmetry and perfection. I definitely prefer flawed and full of character. I love actress Lisbeth Salander in ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, in games I loved concept art of the viking woman from ‘Viking: Battle for Asgard’ designed by Michael Kutsche. These women are anything but generic. When designing clothing and accessories, I tend to be practical – nothing that makes little sense but just looks cool. Distribution of color and detail is a topic in itself but the most import_ant thing for me is not to go overboard – less is more.