Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Putting It Together

In any character design effort, some technical considerations need to be taken into account. For example, the player's avatar needs to have the largest number of animations, and they must be the smoothest animations of all because this is the character being watched all the time.

The avatar's movements must be attractive, not clumsy, unless that's part of the avatar's character. The player should be able to see the avatar easily: The avatar should be a distinct color that stands out from the background (at least, in action games) and should not be able to be mistaken for an enemy or a sidekick. When designing a group of human characters, consider useful ways of differentiating them: sex, hair color, general body shape, clothing, ...