Hey.

I worked on a game called Derps N Dergs and I'm here to offer some thoughts on how I approached character design. Just in case you were interested in that.

By the way, if you haven't please take a moment of your time to play our game, LINK HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/derps-n-dergs-one-shot-to-save-the-world

It really helps us out d(o.o)b

Derps n Dergs is a somewhat of a collect-a-thon/roguelike/visual novel of sorts. You're tossed into the world and you're meant to convince characters to join your party in order to beat oncoming bosses.

Because part of the game itself is trying to meet and collect all these characters this meant that some rules had to be set in place. If you're familiar with fantasy, it usually boils down to certain classes and tropes that are easily recognizable and you can tell you're in a fantasy setting.

Rather than avoid them, our lead designer decided it'd be best if we embraced them. Because you only have so much time to have a player be engaged with your game and what the rules are, part of the design philosophy for character designs boiled down to this:

1. Have their class be instantly recognizable. By doing this, the player already has some idea of what the character does, what their behavior will be, and what to expect in terms of stats.

2. Flip assets around. Although asset flipping is seen as somewhat taboo, I was encouraged to bring some of my own personal work and/or previous ideas into the game itself. This wasn't exclusive to fictional characters either.

One only has a limited amount of time to make a prototype for LD, and by not dwelling in character design any more time than needs to, this allowed us to draw more characters. In doing so, that allowed us to add more characters into the game.

Because of this, you have a whopping amount of 16 characters to collect and around 10 bosses to defeat.

I didn't think we were gonna reach that goal, but I'm glad I was encouraged to do so by two lovely friends and team members.

Character design can seem daunting at first, and while I'm no expert at it, it's important to realize that as artists one is definitely influenced by a lot of things and that you can take from existing media and create something that is akin to your own voice.

So with that being said...

• I knew I wanted to reuse this character from some of my own personal projects. She's from a webcomic called 'GIGI WANTS FOOD' (which I've only have two comics so far but i will shill it anyway: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/gigi-wants-food/list?title_no=495154)

• The obvious takeaway here is that I'm a closet otaku and a big fan of Trigger Animation design. Their influences seem to be on old American media, and as such, I borrowed from them as well. Lotte from LWA being the character that I borrowed those big ol' eyes from.

• I like her eyes. Someone once told me if you're going to MESS up something in a drawing, don't let it be the eyes.

• Although she has a name in the final prototype, I've yet to name her. Whoops.

• A lot of people seem to like this character! I was unsure on their addition to the game but I'm glad people enjoy the silly bird puns (courtesy of our writers).

• I can't draw bows worth a damn. So I made sure to obscure it. The more you know.

• I actually based this off Monkey Punch's work. That man is a treasure to anime.

• When I drew them up, I kept thinking they're non-binary.

• We absolutely love Spiderverse. Peter B. Paladin is an extremely obvious reference to Peter B Parker.

• Surprisingly people thought we were riffing on World of Warcraft.

• I also can't draw armor but I gave it a shot. I think I did an okay job.

• Seriously I had both Warhammer and World of Warcraft armors up as reference ^^;

• His dialogue is a reference to some spiderverse plot points so sorry for the spoiler.

I've received some heartwarming feedback on the art, and I'm happy that people really enjoyed the art. Making video games is quite an adventure. I'll be posting some more blogs in the near future commenting on the art.

Until then, if you liked anything that you saw here, I have a twitter account here: https://twitter.com/_Kooh

Chao, Kooh

Yo.

So here's the situation, on my last blog I pretty much used the term "asset flip" interchangeably with "asset reuse". I didn't mean to make it sound like that. If anything I might have unintentionally made our work look a little bit bad. Hahaha... :(

I assure you no art was flipped from anywhere. In fact, every single art asset was done from scratch for our game DERPS N DERGS which I'll LINK HERE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/derps-n-dergs-one-shot-to-save-the-world

See what I did there? ;)

Character design can seem daunting at first, and while I’m no expert at it, it’s important to realize that as artists one is definitely influenced by a lot of things and that you can take from existing media and create something that is akin to your own voice.

So here's some more characters you might have seen while playing!

• This is Gigi, she was the first character I did for the game under the suggestion by my teammates, I'm glad people have responded well to this character.

• She's from a webcomic "GIGI WANTS FOOD" that I've been working on for the last half of the year. In away, I feel that her presence here may have proven beneficial.

• Fun fact about her! Since she's pretty much the first character you meet, you're forced to take her on your first run. This was done in order to make you want to protect this shark.

• You can read GIGI WANTS FOOD here: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/gigi-wants-food/list?title_no=495154

+ This is actually an old character of mine repurposed, she's very old at this point...

• She may be old but her outfit is partially influenced on the Terraria druid.

• Fun fact, I didn't actually envision her twist to be... that. But it was a nice little surprise when I found out. What twist you ask? Well, you're just gonna have to play and find out!

• This was one of the last characters I managed to draw.

• People who've reached this part call her deer girl. Those were meant to be tree branches. Whoops.

• Now this is neat, I knew I wanted a bard character to be included by I was drawing a blank. So I asked Miku (fellow dev and good friend) if she had any ideas.

• This is actually inspired on her FFXIV character, I think it works.

• I knew I wanted the joke to be that she uses the literal lute as her weapon so I tried to make it as huge as pos sible.

Thanks for reading!

Until then, if you liked anything that you saw here, I have a twitter account here: https://twitter.com/_Kooh

Chao, Kooh