Castle Paradox

[Leonhart]

Right now, I'm currently torn between two things: deformed or proportioned?

I know that these two styles of drawing walkabouts are both effective in their own way, though.

Lewis from Purgatory has a somewhat proportioned figure, while Adrian from Crescent Dream has a, well, a deformed look that is usual in SNES RPGs.

Examples of the "somewhat proportioned"-figured walkabouts could be found in Hikari no Senshi - Inperiaru Taisen, Genesis, Purgatory, .hack (?) and the likes.

Examples of the deformed looking walkabouts are in Crescent Dream, Boundless Ocean, and, to take things outside OHR territory, FF5.

Now, I want some more knowledge on how these walkabout looks affect the game and the player's gaming experience. Do players take games seriously when the characters are realistically proportioned? Do they prefer the deformed look rather than the other one? How can the look affect the storytelling process?

We're talking about the 20x20 sprite size of OHR, folks...
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- Robert Bloch

[Onlyoneinall]

I suppose with the deformed look, facial expression is easier to show. In Boundless Ocean, you can see a good variety of emotions from your character, but say a character like Lewis wouldn't have as strong an ability to show such emotions.

These are also two different genres, more or less. Purgatory is a horror game and Boundless Ocean is an adventure game. The deformed characters can be taken seriously enough based on the game atmosphere, yet, at the same time may not be best for a horror type game. You would at least take the scares and chills more seriously if your character looks more realistic.
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[Hades]

im working on deformed charactors at the moment ... i think with the 20 x 20 tiles realisticly isnt realisticly possible if you know what i mean .. they look elongated ... streched... but if your good you can make it happen..

[PlayerOne]

The face is the most important part of a person for communication and identification purposes. We are wired to recognise faces. With 20 pixels, or less, it makes sense to give as many of them to the face as you can.

On the other hand, though, OHR doesn't typically do a lot with the animations. It's not like the characters ever have different expressions unless you add extra code, and there are only 2 walk frames per direction, so if there's some other way of identifying the characters, like they all handily wear different colours, there's no particular need to focus in on the face.

On the other other hand, 20x20 is square, which means a tall thin character won't make very good use of the available pixel space. Unless they're really fat.

So in summary, I don't know.

I think deformed characters can undermine the seriousness of the story, if that's what you're going for, and if the player's not used to the standard tropes of RPGs. Counter to that, (FF8,) realistic proportions can make a game too earnest. It's up to you, really. It depends what you want to achieve.

[Dr. Baconman]

It's a matter of effort, skill, and hardware limitations.
For the OHR, I honestly cannot imagine full-body proportions in walkabout sprites. But hey, if you think you can manage it, I'm rooting for you.

[AdrianX]

..one of the reasons why most fantasy/japanese - themed rpgs use bigger heads in their characters is the same reason why anime use outrageous hair color and hair styles: to easily distinguish one character from another.

[Ysoft_Entertainment]

I never did like proportioned characters in a game. I would choose deformed any time of day(I am a sucker for cute characters, and SD makes the characters look cute).
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OHRGFX
Striving to become better pixel artist then Fenrir Lunaris. Unfortunately the laziness gets in the way of my goals.