风神小度

Nostalgia can be very powerful, but historical limitations don’t need to curb your creativity. Vox Game Studio shares their experience of designing a 16-bit character that references classic 1990s platformers while also taking advantage of all the tools and options today’s developers have at their disposal.

怀旧可能非常有力，但是历史限制并不需要限制您的创造力。 Vox Game Studio分享了他们设计16位角色的经验，这些角色引用了1990年代的经典平台游戏，同时还利用了当今开发人员可以使用的所有工具和选项。

When the studio decided to develop a down-to-earth and straightforward side-scrolling game, they knew they needed an original character that would be more interesting than a standard walking-jumping hero.

当工作室决定开发一款简单易用的横向卷轴游戏时，他们知道他们需要一个比标准的步行跳跃英雄还要有趣的原创角色。

After some initial research, they settled on a female hare with long and powerful ears that help her glide, attack, throw and more. They named her Kaze.

经过一些初步研究，他们选择了一只雌性野兔，耳朵长而有力，可以帮助她滑行，攻击，掷球等等。 他们给她起名叫Kaze。

“Of course, we did a lot of exploration before we created the final character, so we want to share our design process to help other game developers with their decision-making,” says Rodrigo Spilimbergo of Vox Game Studio.

“当然，在创建最终角色之前，我们做了很多探索，因此我们希望分享我们的设计过程，以帮助其他游戏开发人员做出决策，” Vox Game Studio的Rodrigo Spilimbergo说。

演示地址

确定像素大小和颜色 (Determining pixel size and colors)

While 1990s TVs and computers supported far fewer pixels and colors than today’s technology, the team didn’t want to be limited by these restrictions while they created their retro art style. Instead, they wanted to raise the vintage platformer bar a little by introducing a few modern elements to the classic pixel-art rulebook.

尽管1990年代电视和计算机支持的像素和颜色远远少于当今的技术，但该团队在创建复古艺术风格时并不想受到这些限制的限制。 相反，他们希望通过向经典的像素艺术规则手册中引入一些现代元素来稍微提高老式平台游戏的标准。

Studying their 90s references, they noticed most games used an average 40×40 pixel canvas for the characters. On today’s hardware, that would result in oversized pixels on the screen. Therefore, the game creators decided to use an 80×80 pixel canvas for Kaze.

研究了90年代的参考文献后，他们发现大多数游戏使用的角色平均使用40×40像素的画布。 在当今的硬件上，这将导致屏幕上的像素过大。 因此，游戏创作者决定为Kaze使用80×80像素的画布。

Most of the classic 1990s pixel-art platformers use just 16 different colors for their characters. For Kaze, the team chose a broader color palette. The end result hits a balance between classic and modern, without losing the essence of the perfect pixel style.

1990年代大多数经典的像素艺术平台游戏人物仅使用16种不同的颜色。 对于Kaze，团队选择了更广泛的调色板。 最终结果达到了经典与现代之间的平衡，同时又不失完美像素风格的精髓。

轮廓的重要性 (The importance of silhouettes)

If you look at classic platformers, you’ll notice that even if you remove the color of a character, you can still identify it by its shape. This technique helps develop a character’s identity.

如果您查看经典的平台游戏，您会注意到，即使删除了字符的颜色，您仍然可以通过其形状来识别它。 此技术有助于发展角色的身份。

“You know Sonic by the spikes on his back, Donkey Kong by his broad and curly shape, and Mega Man because his plasma arm is always pointing forward. With Kaze, we wanted her ears to stand out, as they are super relevant to the gameplay,” says Spilimbergo. This is the first draft of Kaze’s run cycle and the pixel-art prototype:

“您知道Sonic的背尖钉，Donkey Kong的宽而卷曲的形状以及Mega Man，因为他的等离子臂始终指向前方。 有了Kaze，我们希望她的耳朵脱颖而出，因为它们与游戏玩法息息相关。” Spilimbergo说。 这是Kaze的运行周期和像素艺术原型的初稿：

塑造角色 (Shaping the character)

The team always starts by creating the character without any color, and then the team checks every position in the animation to see if it still matches the character style.

团队始终从创建没有任何颜色的角色开始，然后团队检查动画中的每个位置以查看其是否仍与角色样式匹配。

The team also wanted to ensure the silhouette first to check the geometrical shapes evoked by the animation and the character actions.

团队还希望首先确保轮廓能够检查动画和角色动作所引起的几何形状。

“Generally speaking, rounded shapes tend to make us think of fragile objects, while triangular shapes make us relate to aggressive and powerful ones. We took this into consideration while creating Kaze’s animations. That’s why we made her body look a bit rounded, while the ears, the source of her power, look a bit pointed,” says Spilimbergo.

“一般来说，圆形会使我们联想到易碎的物体，而三角形使我们与侵略性强的物体有关。 在制作Kaze的动画时，我们考虑了这一点。 这就是为什么我们让她的身体看起来有些圆，而耳朵(她的力量之源)看起来有点尖，” Spilimbergo说。

She looks like a triangle while spinning/attacking.

旋转/攻击时，她看起来像三角形。

She has a rounded shape while bouncing.

弹跳时她的身体呈圆形。

Other animations in the game use the same logic:

游戏中的其他动画使用相同的逻辑：

让Kaze在她的环境中流行 (Making Kaze pop in her environment)

The levels in Kaze and the Wild Masks are colorful, multi-layered worlds. The individual layers are also pixel art, but the team added a blur effect on the third layer to heighten the illusion of depth. The environment also uses a wider color palette than the character.

《风神与荒野面具》中的关卡是丰富多彩的多层世界。 各个图层也是像素图，但是团队在第三图层上添加了模糊效果以增强深度的幻觉。 该环境还使用比角色更宽的调色板。

调整她的面部表情 (Fine-tuning her facial expressions)

A lot of Kaze’s personality is in her ears, but the game’s cutscenes also include different facial expressions. Here are a few concept sketches of Kaze’s face in different situations.

Kaze的许多个性都在她的耳边，但是游戏的过场动画也包括不同的面部表情。 以下是在不同情况下Kaze脸部的一些概念草图。

即将推出：Vox如何建立Unity以导入Kaze的艺术和设计水平 (Coming soon: How Vox set up Unity for importing Kaze’s art and designs levels)

In the next post about the Vox Game Studio team, we’re going to explore their process for creating levels and setting up the animations, art and environments for the game. The team is also updating to a newer Unity version so that they can benefit from our new Pixel Perfect for 2D tool. We’ll talk about that too.

在有关Vox Game Studio团队的下一篇文章中，我们将探讨他们为游戏创建关卡以及设置动画，艺术和环境的过程。 该团队还将更新到一个新的Unity版本，以便他们可以从我们的新Pixel Perfect for 2D工具中受益。 我们也将讨论。

Finally, check out the game’s Steam page for regular updates on Kaze and the Wild Masks currently available on Early Access.

最后，查看游戏的Steam页面，以获取有关Kaze和“ 抢先体验”上当前可用的Wild Masks的定期更新。

翻译自: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/01/16/kaze-and-the-wild-masks-designing-a-great-pixel-art-character/

风神小度