BMX Dev S2W6 - character design 1

By considering character design I have opened up a new avenue of promotion for my app.

Creating a character design for my app involves consideration of:

Personality
Location
Colour
Form

Brainstorm

To begin exploring these factors I began with a brainstorm which eventually produced a novel way of integrating a character within the story of the app.

Location

Whilst examining the location aspect of character design, it occurred to me that I could draw parallels between the character and the track itself. In it’s current state, the track is “dead”, so there is an opportunity to present the “spirit of the track” in the form of a ghostly character with an agenda to return the track to it’s former glory.

Is he a local resident, with an intricate knowledge of the town? This would enable him to connect with other developments in the park. He might be a former BMX pro rider from abroad who helped usher BMX into the UK for the very first time.

Personality

The spirit is truly stuck in the 80’s; that is where his existence ended, so he is an embodiment of everything stereotypical of BMX in that decade - showing similar traits to the surfing community, his language would be era-specific with a positive outlook on life.

Colour

As a spirit the character would have to fit his ghostly presence in with the bright colour palette of the app, yet as a live entity (which may be realised upon restoration of the pump track in real life) would be dressed in typical 80’s BMX attire.

The Rose of Temperaments

We can examine Goethe and Schiller’s 200 year old Rose of Temperaments to understand common links between colours and personality types:

colours: red/orange/yellow
temperament: choleric
personality: independent, decisive, goal oriented
character traits: tyrants, heroes, adventurers

colours: yellow/green/cyan
temperament: sanguine
personality: enthusiastic, active, and social
character traits: hedonists, lovers, poets

colours: cyan/blue/violet
temperament: phlegmatic
personality: relaxed, peaceful, quiet
character public speakers, historians, teachers

colours: violet/magenta/red
temperament: melancholic
personality: analytical, detail oriented, deep thinker and feeler
character traits: philosophers, pedants, rulers

Following this theory would suggest a colour scheme hinted towards the choleric temperament of warm red oranges and yellows as our spirit is a hero trying to help resurrect the track. He is also adventurous in his interests of BMX riding.

However, in his spirit form he may also exhibit shades of one of the other temperaments depending upon the final decision of his mood - a sad spirit, or an active spirit.

Sonny, pretending to be ferocious. Notice the simplicity and lack of limbs for ease of animation.

Interestingly, a previous character creation project I worked on resulted in my character “Sonny”, a vampire who was afraid of the dark. His cape is a rich purple, demonstrably linking him with the phlegmatic temperament as he plays out his days in the loneliness of his castle, unable to go out into the dangerous sunlight nor the frightening darkness.

Form

Immediately a teenage form springs to mind, a human character that would have enjoyed using the track in it’s heyday. However, being a spirit, there exists some opportunity for time-saving creation techniques such as missing limbs (as exhibited famously by Rayman) and the constant presence of a helmet to simplify drawing of the head and facial features. This could also add a sense of mystery similar to Top Gear’s The Stig.