How Games Are Made: Character Design

TL;DR

Torbie's indie studio walks through every stage of character creation — from ugly prototypes to polished 3D models — revealing why skilled human artists are irreplaceable.

Key Points

• 1.Scale must be established with a prototype before any real art begins. Torbie's founder Riley built an ugly temp character first to test proportions; in Astroneer, a wrong 2-meter height was fixed by scaling to 1.5x in Unreal, which then cascaded into physics, audio attenuation, and procedural generation issues.
• 2.Outsourcing concept art without a clear internal vision led to costly restarts. The team's first outsourced character didn't match Riley's mental image, forcing them to pause and hire full-time artists — lead artist Alysson was cold-emailed after being found on ArtStation.
• 3.Character design went through a structured pipeline from concept to 3D model. Concept artist Bruna refined small details like fur curvature, coloring stages produced four fox variants for player customization, and the approved design then moves into Maya for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, and finally animation.
• 4.Custom-built shaders and separate lighting channels make stylized characters readable. Unreal Engine's material system lets the team clamp reflectivity for a softer feel, add subsurface scattering for fur, and use an artificial Fresnel-based rim light so characters pop from vibrant backgrounds without a literal follow-light.
• 5.Animation required custom work because standard library rigs don't fit non-human proportions. The characters' longer torsos, different arm lengths, tails, and shorter stature make generic six-foot motion-capture cycles look wrong; animator Cesar (recommended by Alysson) was brought in to create bespoke animations.
• 6.Customization is a core design pillar, with a material system built to support many animal types. Players can change eye shape, eye color, fur patterns, clothing, and species — fox was the base, with cat, dog, cow, sheep, bear, lizard, frog, and goat all requested by the community after the game's announcement.