So, this was a fairly fun project to do, since I could try to utilize what I already knew through my previous projects, and deliberately negate some things for the purpose of this particular investigation.
I think I may have had a bit too much fun with it though. Instead of designing just three characters as I'd intended, I ended up creating eight fairly well-developed characters. So i figured there was no harm in including them all in the study.
The entire process began with making character profiles for them, before even thinking about their physical appearances, profile templates based off those given as examples in the book The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. These characters needed to be fairly well developed so that I could provide potentially misleading visual information to the participants. In other words, the intention was always to purposefully try to make them assume the wrong things about these characters' true personalities, traits and behaviours.
Although I did keep in mind the conclusion I'd drawn regarding consistency and cohesiveness, and the main aspects which make the essence of a character, not forgetting visual family and the basic fundamentals of course.
So, minding all of this, I created a basis for the whole group: a group of misfit, mismatched individuals who grouped together as vigilantes as a way to protect their own hides from the trouble they all seem to have got themselves into.
They go by the name of the Red Panthers, indicated by the small garments of red that each of them wear. (Visual family, woo!). Anyway, these are the character designs I came up with:
I think I may have had a bit too much fun with it though. Instead of designing just three characters as I'd intended, I ended up creating eight fairly well-developed characters. So i figured there was no harm in including them all in the study.
The entire process began with making character profiles for them, before even thinking about their physical appearances, profile templates based off those given as examples in the book The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. These characters needed to be fairly well developed so that I could provide potentially misleading visual information to the participants. In other words, the intention was always to purposefully try to make them assume the wrong things about these characters' true personalities, traits and behaviours.
Although I did keep in mind the conclusion I'd drawn regarding consistency and cohesiveness, and the main aspects which make the essence of a character, not forgetting visual family and the basic fundamentals of course.
So, minding all of this, I created a basis for the whole group: a group of misfit, mismatched individuals who grouped together as vigilantes as a way to protect their own hides from the trouble they all seem to have got themselves into.
They go by the name of the Red Panthers, indicated by the small garments of red that each of them wear. (Visual family, woo!). Anyway, these are the character designs I came up with:
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| Isolde, Trystan, Caleb and Aaron |
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| Amber, Lilith, Meric and Daniel |
I won't upload their full profiles yet, since I'm still waiting on participants to return the worksheet I provided them regarding these characters. Been waiting over a week for some of them -_-. The worksheet I distributed contained a number of random facts and statements about the backgrounds, traits and characteristics of some, all or none of these characters, and the intention is to see how how people interpret each character.
While I can't draw a full conclusion as of yet, it seems to be that I successfully managed to mislead a number of participants through pure physicality, and that they didn't feel cheated by it (those that I asked about it afterwards, at any rate).
I may compile an entry with the results thus far, perhaps, and later update it with the full conclusion based on participants.
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