Making the characters and narrative ideas

When it comes to writing character, particularly female, I came across a few articles talking about the phrase 'Strong female character'

Article here: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters


I remember watching Shrek with my mother.

“The Princess knew kung-fu! That was nice,” I said. And yet I had a vague sense of unease, a sense that I was saying it because it was what I was supposed to say.

She rolled her eyes. “All the princesses know kung-fu now.”

No one ever asks if a male character is “strong”. Nor if he’s “feisty,” or “kick-ass” come to that.

''What happens when one tries to fit other iconic male heroes into an imaginary “Strong Male Character” box? A few fit reasonably well, but many look cramped and bewildered in there.''

''Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They're still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same.''

''Badass gunslingers and martial artists sure, but also interesting women who are shy and quiet and do, sometimes, put up with others’ shit because in real life there’s often no practical alternative. And besides heroines, I want to see women in as many and varied secondary and character roles as men: female sidekicks, mentors, comic relief, rivals, villains.''
So the characters have to have more than just there few traits.


A great site that almost makes a check list on how to make a good character helps think about how to create one.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/DevelopCharacterPersonality


''In order to understand how a character’s personality will be affected by gender roles, you need to take into account the 3 things we spoke of before.

(Environment) The rules and expectations the society where your character resides has for each gender.
(Free-will) How much does your character follow the rules of that society? Does your character defy or follow what society expects of him/her? And how much to they follow/defy them?''

I have used multiple questions they asked ion this web page for 2 of my characters.



So I can have my female character Tetra with my male character Coats, On the screen at the same time. working off each other in this narrative.

Now I have to think of what sort of character I want to show through body language and interaction with one another. And not just rely on one or two roles such as 'woman is strong, boy is weak' or vice versa.

I like using this list to start off making the characters.

Tetra
The more energetic of the 2 main characters, physically stronger than Coats and talkative, confident, but not a lot of charm, often comes off just loud and obnoxious. Very adventurous, however she will drag poor coats a long with her and become quite thoughtless when it comes to things she can do, but coats clearly can't, so she may end up climbing over an obstacle and forgetting coats can't do it. Walking for a few minutes before realizing what she's done.

How is your character when alone?
She is not alone to often, she is out of the house a lot, she likes to keep active. Climbing tree's a lot. But when at home she spend a lot of the time on the internet socializing with others.

Does your character treat everyone the same?
She acts similar to everyone, it just depends if people will stick around her loud pushy personality. Coats is her closest friend, she is as nice as she can be to him, however doesn't think about his feelings unless he's clearly upset.

Skill flaws.
She may be physically skilled, quite limber due to her ape features. But she doesn't think very logically.

Moral flaws.
She will often put her own needs in front of others, if she wants to go somewhere, she will drag others no matter what they think. She will often try to be the center of attention either through sheer volume or showing off.

Extraversion/Introversion.
Extrovert, Tetra gets uneasy on her own for to long, she gets bored quite easily. Possibly because she doesn't feel like what she does matters if no one can see her doing it.




Coats
A rather timid skittish camp guy. Who would soon rather run away rather than face what he's afraid of of intimidates him. He often relies on Tetra for emotional support.
He feels at ease when talking to women because he has had a history of being ridiculed mostly by men, being told to 'man up' being asked if he was gay.

How is your character when alone?
He is quite happy to be alone, he doesn't feel judged for his love of clothes. He spends a lot of time in suit shops almost drooling over the clothes, trying to come up with the perfect outfit for whenever he has the money.

Does your character treat everyone the same?
He is usually quiet around people. With Tetra he feels more comfortable so openly talks about cool clothes he saw that say or has seen on the internet.
Where as with his father and other males he deems wouldn't understand him he stays silent unless spoken to, ashamed of his desires.

Skill flaws.
He is very physically weak with very little stamina, It is almost impossible for him to be sneaky to, on hard floors anyway because of his hooves.

Moral flaws.
He often over reacts and freaks out if embarrassed, especially in public. He will also lie to others if it makes life easier for him.

Extraversion/Introversion.
More of an introvert, he will judge people based on appearance and if he feels like someone is not going to understand his life style he won't talk to them, being alone or with Tetra is just easier on his nerves.



So when it comes to story, possibly something revolving around Tetra doing things, dragging coats along Tetra getting across obstacles fairly well, able to balance and walk over a log above a stream, where as coats is having trouble and has to crawl across. Coats needing to yell for tetra to slow down, maybe seem exhausted leaning against a wall.
But when it comes to some sort of puzzle, Tetra will try to solve it with physical skills without thinking about it. But because Coats is so tired he just looks at the puzzle and realizes it needs thought.


Not sure on the environment yet, possibly use the game idea i originally had, inside another characters subconscious, as there could be all kinda of objects and shapes in the way.

I'd also like dialog in the scene, but I don't want there to be voice acting and lip sync. Probably have text boxes and the characters faces can just show the feelings of the character.

At the Mo-cap studio!

The studio itself is quite large, a lot of space to work with.

There's a small station where I put my FBX files on a laptop which had a cable connecting to the computer beside it, Which is where they set up the actual mo-cap rig.

Having the computers connected allowed the actor to move the model as he moved, live streamed the mo-cap data straight to the model. 

They had a lot of camera's surrounding the room to pick up on the mo-cap sensors.

 

And to calibrate those camera's they would use this stick with 5 of the sensors. They would wave it around the whole room ever inch for all camera's to pick it up, starting from the center to know where the center of the scene is.

With in the mo-cap studio They can in fact act out multiple characters at the same time.

They do this by having a specific 'cluster' on there suit, This lets the camera distinguish which suit is controlling which character.

This cluster must be places in an unusual place so the computer does not mistake it for a part of the skeleton.

To calibrate the Character the person in the suit has to start in a T-pose, and move every joints, arms, bend the elbow, crouch, bring each leg up etc.

And this is what the outcome was during the first mo-cap session.

Tetra's arms seem to move oddly, I am unsure why because mo-cap data i have downloaded from websites seem to work fine when i attach them to the skeleton.

The next session will involve drama students, so they want me to come up with something they can work with such as a story or some form of narrative and be directed. And i think a better narative will happen if i were to use more than one character and make use of that 'cluster' feature in the mo-cap suits.

Motion builder works!

This site was pretty interesting saying how over sexualized images of women is a less important area of 'women objectification'

http://cratesandribbons.com/2013/06/08/the-objectification-of-women-it-goes-much-further-than-sexy-pictures/

''Because it is all too obvious and difficult to ignore, we tend to focus on sexual objectification. ''

''After all, being presented in a sexual way doesn't always mean objectification. Sexy pictures of men, in contrast to sexy pictures of women, frequently portray them as sexual subjects, actors exercising their sexuality, instead of objects meant to gratify someone else’s sexuality.''

''Now in an ideal world, we would find ourselves randomly cast as either subject or object at different times, depending on the situation, with no problems. However, in society’s dominant narrative, subject and object status is heavily gendered''


So maybe games should be less stressed out about how there female character looks or how sexualized she is and more bothered about creating a more even gender ratio of this subject and object situation. Sometimes a woman and come to a mans aid and vice versa.



The article later refers to the new tomb raider game and another article about players not feeling they they are playing AS lara croft but there to help her and protect her.

http://kotaku.com/5917400/youll-want-to-protect-the-new-less-curvy-lara-croft

"When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character,"

"She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper," he said. "When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character."

Now I personally have never really felt like i was helping a main protagonist, i have always just seem a game as me playing AS the character. So i am not quite sure how that mind set is done, nor how it is created. Is it just for female characters? Do those feelings jump into action as soon as you see a female in a situation where she is portrayed as weak? Even if they have clearly shown there ability to look after themselves.

Or is it something coded into peoples genes? Man looks after women and children while women look after children and themselves.


I'd say this goes hand in hand with the 'subject and object' thing. Women aid men, men aid women. No gender in particular needing assistance and the player can be told through the story and actions of the characters which one's need to be helped.

More work


I fixed The motion capture issues.

They seemed to be all in the wrists, as whenever i linked the wrist skeleton to the rig inside motion builder it was the wrist that turns parts of it orange. And MB seems to use green > orange > red colours to show errors. Highlighting the dot in the upper right corner will tell you what is wrong with your rig.

My issue was ''left arm does not seem parallel to the x'' Meaning the wrist or elbow was a little skewed.

I wasn't sure exactly what did this but i just re-did the whole arm area. making sure to hole shift when making the arm so it was flat, even the fingers.
Like this image: http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/motionbuilder2014/en-us/images/GUID-0C39FAFA-474D-4F57-A794-8C765BDF0A86-low.png

And now look at her! She can slip up and use the motion capture data!

Free motion capture animation here:
http://www.motioncapturedata.com/

So i moved onto getting another ready as i do want multiple characters to be able to animate like this!

The same issue pop'ed up with Tetra but was easily fixed now that i know the issue is due to the arm.

Re-doing the arm skeleton seems to be the best way to make sure it works.

I'm unsure how much rotations in the arm MB can handle. But to be on the safe side i make the arm perfectly straight. the fingers don't have to be it seems. 

You also CANNOT have other joints, i had some in her tail and tie, did not go well. 

So those sections of Tetra will have to be animated pose-mo-cap.

Some MB tips: http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-69562.html

Mo-cap and motion builder (And a lil bit of fairy)

A few months ago I was told that I could collaborate with drama students creating animations using motion capture. All i needed to have was a model and have that character rigged.

The opportunity to work with motion capture is going to be so valuable as manual animation takes up far to much time and it is something i am not particularly interested in. Where as motion capture there is only post edits after the actor has done there contribution. 

Motion captures animations look more fluid and and just generally better to me, So i really hope this works out! Animation would really put the life i want into my characters.

On July 5th I met the drama tutor to discuss our work He spoke of wanting to have his student act and use mo-cap as it's something new and little drama students are able to do this sort of practice.

Where as i just want some form of life an animation for the characters as still shots are okay and get across a character but animation does so much more. 

So I have been looking into motion builder as by September they would like me to have a character rigged in the software.

I have had to re-rig the characters are you NEED a T-pose instead of the more natural gesture i had her in.

She will also need to be weight mapped again but i will do so later. This is a test to get a character into the new software successfully and be able to move her within.

To figure out this software i looked at a lot of tutorials but most of them seemed to talk as though you knew the software etc.

This video talks about exporting FBX's into motion builder.

At about 10:00 is where it starts to show you how to 'characterize' a rigged character.

As in motion builder to set up a rig to move with mo-cap you need to rig it using motion builders tools.

This video shows you how to use those tools and set up a character for the motion capture.

This guy has done a whole set of video's going from modeling, UV mapping, rigging and then using the character in motion builder. I will be going through his tutorials.

This is also a handy list of things you need to do before you export from maya to an FBX

http://mocappys.com/?p=90

Putting character into motion builder

I have not set up her weight paints yet but tried to import her to understand how you set up these rigs.

Her skeleton moves in the same way it would in maya.

To make motion builder know what joints are arms legs etc. there is a drop down list that appears with body parts. Where you drag your joints into the correct labels such as your thigh bode would go in 'leftupleg.'

(although something is not right with her shoulders. In the area with the human body on the right, if the skeletons are green that means they're fine, where as orange means there's some form of error.)

The next step was to 'charactertize' her. This is the part where IK handles come in.

Her legs seem to work fine, the IK handles work.

As do her hips.

Although everything above her hips do not move at all, even when i try to rotate.

So i will need to find out what's causing the problem by re-watching videos on how other people set up there rigs.

Fairy model

Her whole body has been modeled now and UV mapping is almost done! 

Unsure how to go about her wings, either just a flat plane or add poly's to them so they can curve slightly. I don't think butterfly wings curve much of at all though.

Sexy characters

An interesting video talking about the 'male gaze'.
A concept in film where because most films are made by heterosexual men they are shot from the perspective of a straight man and force that perspective on the audience.

He went into talking about how the camera is used in media to demonstrate this, long lingering shots of a females body and close up shots tell the audience that this women is attractive.

from a story telling perspective it is useful as it tells the viewer that this character is the love interest or a character to be desired. Yet it is used often in games and other mediums as some form of fan service.

Even if the audience is male and female and on occasion mostly female the audience is forced to look through a straight male perspective.
Being shown this straight male perspective time and time again leads to that perspective of a straight male being the view that is more normalized and held above all other sexuality and gender roles.

There is such a thing as 'female gaze' although that tends to be only explored in media aimed towards those interested in men.

there are shots of men with there clothes removed in the mainstream media although those shots tend to be further away, showing the whole character or at least involving there head, they are never considered to be just something to look at. Often an image of power and strength of the character.

The question the video asked at the end was how to go about this for a more varies society?
Should we objectify men more for the female/LGBT audiences?
Or make all character equal and no one will be objectified.

He also mentioned that we are a society that likes sex and to me that should not be something we repress and ignore.
On the other hand it is not be the main focus of a character. There body should not be there only feature. I think games should be able to have characters of all gender who express or explore there sexuality, audiences should not be afraid of it or deem it wrong something to keep behind closed doors.

If we were to just pretend sexuality and sexual urges don't exist that would just lead people to a closed minded state. Possibly deeming there own urges wrong or weird.

To me if a game is labeled as a 15/18 game then the audience is mature enough to understand sexuality and sexual characters. So long as the character has other traits and roles besides there sexuality. I'm aware there are genre's such as beat-em-up's where you can't really add to characters other than a fighting style and there appearance.
When it comes to those sort of games i could say it's okay to have one or 2 female characters who dress scantily clad but you must also be aware not your whole audience is straight and male, having the male equivalent and having and even ratio of female characters most of which who are not scantily clad would make a more diverse audience while still maintaining the awareness of a sexual society.

Just majority of games seem to go down the Fan-service route where a character is simply dressed in scantily clad clothes and having close up shots of there body.
It would be nice to know why that character dresses and acts that way rather than the character just being a selling point of the game.

I think having a 'sex symbol' of a game isn't a bad thing, just don't treat them souly as the love interest or sex symbol in the story. Although that being said there are games where there should not be scantily clad characters, for example women who are fighting off zombies or in a general fighting for there life scenario then showing skin is just unnecessary. Especially if it's a realistic style and setting as it just makes the character look as though they are unaware of what is going on right now.

Fairies

So for my next project i am trying to create character that look like humans

I usually prefer to work with other species of animals due to there variety of shape, sizes, patters and habits.

But a nice medium between humans and animals would be fairies.

As they have majority of human characteristics combined with the markings and wing shapes of butterflies/moths.

So i gathered a little mood board of fairies looking as more child like and cartoon fairies with the more realistic and nature-themes fairies.

While also looking at general human cartoon characters looking at what features make that character have a visual personality.

Does what they wear change anything?

Does there hairstyle give an impression?

Does there head and face shapes matter?

So my next strep was to design a lot of face shapes and fairies until i had come across something i liked enough to model. trying different face shapes, body shapes, different kinds of clothe etc.

I didn't particular like any of those enough to want to move onto the modeling stage. So i tried doing it in stages such as sketch different head shapes and eye shapes.

Try different proportions on the body.

And try adding a character to that.

For clothes i decided to take inspiration from a more Victoria era a mix of feminine yet practical.

And doing multiple colour palettes based around 

spring (green leaf hat)
autumn (orange leaf hat)
and winter (silver leaf hat)

Then adding the final touch of a fairy, the wings. there is still possibility she won't be a fairy as her genera appearance is a lot less dainty and sweet than the usual representation of fairies.

And now i have started to model her.

Still unsure what colour scheme to choose from.

Personally i think i will want to use either spring (green and blue) or autumn (orange) colour scheme.

Story time

Been trying to figure out a story for the little group of characters. 

And trying to figure out how these characters would work in a game.

Social based games seem to work better for my characters. As they don't involve combat.

Influences being the heavy amounts of dialog from the Phoenix write franchise.

And the social link's form persona 3

So the basics of the game i would create with these character

The basic story line i have right now is:

* The 4 teenage character's parents are acting strange.

* They all find out that it's not just there parents who are acting up.

* They spy on one of there parents.

*Uncover why there parents are acting so strange.

(Okay this is the part i'm still working on.)

 Something to go with ghosts/demons that posses and control there host. 

Not sure what there big goal is.

But they feed on emotions, they try to make there host they are possessing worry and feel terrible about how the demon/ghost is making them act.

So at the start of the story Tetra's mother is currently possessed. 

Tetra's storms out to go meet coats before going to school.

Tetra and Weathercoat's parents.

Tanisha is usually a kind and caring mother who likes to think she's ''down with the kids'' very lenient.

Maroon is a harsh and ignorant father. He isn't proud of weathercoats and his passion's.

Tory on the other hand got weathercoats into clothes and only encouraged him. Although somewhat regrets it thinking she has babied him to much.

Tutorial after the introductory scene.

After this piece of story would be some form of tutorial on how the socializing works.

In the tutorial Weathercoats would be used. 

The goal in the tutorial is to act friendly or mean to weathercoats. 

The player may ask questions to weathercoats about how his parents are acting.

Eventually he will then open up to you because he and Tetra are already friends.

You can either make fun of him for opening up and talking about his feelings or sympathize and be supportive.

Making fun of him will stop him from opening up and not wanting to talk about his parental issues.

being supportive will make the conversation last longer and possibly getting a little more information out of him.

I am unsure how the socializing parts will look. I created some layout for the DS. But most system are a one screen system so i will have to make some layouts for single screens.

After the tutorial Chris and Bex would be introduced.

Chris being a sort of bully calling weathercoats names.

This would give the player another chance to gain weathercoat's friendship if they made fun of him the first time.

The player could also talk to Chris.

Either supporting the choice to bully Weathercoats.

Or tell him off for doing so.

Then the game would skip to a cut scene being held once school has finished.

This would be where the children stumble upon the ghosts for the first time.

After this Tetra now has the ability to go into her friends subconscious at night time when they are asleep.

This would be the main mechanic to the game.

In the day time you can talk to the characters.

And at night time you can use the information you got form them.

You will get little to no information if you are cruel or make fun of them if they open up.