Final Project: The Experiential Whole

From this project I have managed to incorporate many aspects of character design that I have explored throughout the year.
There are a number of things that I would like point out and summarize.
For each character, I tried to keep in mind each of the key words I mentioned at the beginning of the project. And upon completion of each character design I gave these key words to my participants to review whether my characters fulfilled these categories I established for creating cohesive and engaging characters. I managed to engage over thirty people to take part in this review.
Firstly, was I successful in creating strong silhouettes? 75% of people said yes over all. Garrett and Aaron had the weakest silhouettes, apparently, although Aaron was still interesting enough due to his build and Garrett, as the plumper of the group was noticeable for his rounder stature.
The strongest silhouettes was Isolde, for her dynamic body language. On the whole, however, all of my characters provided an interesting silhouette. The next key word was Essence.

Did I achieve this?
By essence I mean what is it about the character that makes them who they are, gives them a particular uniqueness. Immediately, the most obvious choice for a lot of people was Weiss for his albino appearance. The Saoirse (Caleb, Logan and Riina) were noted for having a strong
essence for the colour of their eyes in particular and their clothing and its 'wrapping'
like style.

As for Significance, this was the hardest key word to achieve.
Perhaps I designed too large a group of characters that would be able to play a significant enough role in a potential game, however the structure of the Maroon Panthers was appreciated, since as a group of allies all with unique skills that could all be a boon to the Aura Sage's journey, especially those with strong connections toAura. 67% of my participants were satisfied that most of these characters would be prominent in the proposed game space.

Coherence and Intrigue.
When each of my characters were given to my participants I was looking for this in particular: did the characters and their backgrounds/backstories suit the nature of the space I created? Did their alliance as the Panthers make sense? Could my participants view this scenario as believable?
The bottom line was yes. Fortunately. While some were skeptical about where a couple of characters might not be as intriguing as they could have been, most characters had something that made them individual enough and strong enough to exist within the given space.
It was largely when I provided the characters' backgrounds that the majority of
participants immediately said that the characters were coherent and intriguing,
leading me to draw a conclusion that it is not simply the visual design of the character that matters. That should be obvious anyway, but here it is re-iterated.
All of these aspects, coupled with the visual environment designs and the explanation of Aura to ground believability in some of the characters in particular, helped to create an experience as a whole. From looking at how people reacted to characters alone, versus characters with grounding and personalities, I could say fervently that characters are an integral part of an experience.
This was true as far as my feedback suggested, for 3rd person character with whom the player is intended to build a relationship. However my approach of creating a journal was to demonstrate my exploration into what makes people 'role-play'. The prompt for designing the Aura Sage had been this,
and the notes I had made from that point of exploration was that characters should have balance. They shouldn't be overconvoluted, nor should they be completely bland that the player isn't bothered about filling their shoes.
As such I had designed and developed the Aura Sage. The feedback I received for her was quite positive on the whole. Participants agreed that she was an ideal player character (well, about 85%) strongly agreed and so I can say with some certainty that my theory towards player characters has good ground.

I can safely conclude, from consistent feedback, designing and discussions, that an game experience is best served as a whole. Character designs can't reach their full potential approached as an isolated form of design. They are integral. The player must become integral with the game space as well, and by creating a character that offers intrigue and enough openness for the player to want to take their role, we can potentially do this. My characters were successful because they were intriguing and blurred the archetype, and strong in their visual design as well. My participants felt like they could become a part of those characters' world through having an appealing avatar, and I enhanced this engagement to this fictitious space by offering details about the world through the eyes of this particular 'player-character'