15 TIPS TO CREATE TOON-SHADED CHARACTER ART

Heart Machine's character specialist John DeRiggi highlights the style pillars of the studio's upcoming roguelite adventure game

- John DeRiggi

The character art style of Hyper Light Breaker combines the retro vibes of eastern and western 2D cel animation. It’s inspired by 80s and 90s properties like Studio Ghibli films, Evangelion, Masters of the Universe and more. In this series of tips, I’ll show you how the anime-esque angular shapes in concepts and models allow the toon-shaded characters to pop with minimal detail.

Similar to 2D animation, shape, line and silhouette are most important here. I feel this is a really fun challenge in 3D. It requires an artist to focus on a less is more approach. I’ve worked on a range of 3D character styles over the years from realistic humans to toony creations, and began my art journey drawing and animating in 2D. For me, the Hyper Light Breaker style is a beautiful playground in the middle of this range that I really enjoy.

01 PROPORTIONS FOR THE CATWALK

Fashion models are often tall and toned, with long, elegant limbs to guide the viewer’s eye as clothing flows along or around them. Various Breaker characters are inspired by these idealised proportions. Some player characters, bosses and nonplayer characters are therefore a more heroic 8.5-heads tall, with slightly smaller head sizes, and longer, toned limbs to evoke the fashion vibe. For player characters, the level of muscle tone depends on body type, as there’s a goal of variety.

02 FIND THE SPECIES IN SILHOUETTE

Being able to recognise a character’s silhouette from a distance in any game is super important. In fast-paced action games with many characters on screen at once, this importance increases. When the characters are also toon shaded with flat colours and little to no gradients like in 2D animation, a strong silhouette plays a vital role. Large, bold shapes provide the cues to recognise species and archetypes, from a lithe player character to a lanky, skulking wolf, to a heavier, bipedal tanuki with a bushy tail.