Timeline of things that influenced character design today
Timeline of character design
14th Century: Invention of the Canvas – People could draw, so that’s a plus in regards of getting towards character design.
​
16th Century: Chiaroscuro – Artists start to use depth in their drawings to give them more detail, though still drawing in mostly black and white, using black to represent the shadows and white where there is light. This is a technique that is found in most artworks today. This would help in certain character designs, as shading is sometimes necessary to have the character look as though they fit within the world that they have been placed in.
​
Early 1900’s: First use of Shape Language – Emile Cohl’s French films (1906) were the earliest recorded use of shape theory, which helped shape character design as we know it today.
​
1950s-1960s: Op Art – Short for “Optical Art”, op art made use of certain shapes, colours, and patterns to make it look as though drawings were moving via an optical illusion. Someone of note who made use of this technique and arguably pioneered the idea was Bridget Riley. This would have helped push character design by allowing not only worlds to be formed around the character, but using this style, artists would have been able to give the illusion of movement to their characters in things such as comics.
​
1960’s: Arte Povera (Poor Art) – Introduction of artistic supplies affordable by the poor, allowing more people to create art regardless of social status.
​
1960’s-1970’s: Conceptual Art – Surprisingly, conceptual art didn’t really become a big thing until the 1960’s – 1970’s. This introduced the idea of drawing out multiple concepts of an idea on paper to get a better idea of what was good about each iteration and take the best parts of each and put it into one.
​
Late 1960’s: Raster Graphics – Raster graphics were a big step forward in games character design, as it was the first visual format that allowed characters to have colour. The graphics allowed for basic pixelated shapes to appear and move in sequence on screens, allowing for almost expressive characters in the form of movement. However, this type of display was limited, so characters needed to have distinct features that could be created on these displays, as detail couldn’t really be displayed during gameplay with this kind of display.
​
1970’s: 3D Modelling and Rendering Software – Sketchpad was the first creation and rendering software for 3D models, however at the time, only professionals in engineering and automation could access software that worked on mathematical models. Character design was most likely not used on this software, but it did open the door for the possibility. 3D modelling software nowadays is much more accessible to people and a general audience.
​
1995 - Present day: Game Engine or hardware Limitations / Crash Bandicoot – During this time, character designs have been continuously evolving due to hardware limitations and capabilities. Crash Bandicoot was a prime example of its time of characters being designed around game engines and hardware, and this was common practice around the time, as technology was developing, but still had its limitations. So Crash was designed to be low poly, hence his triangular body shape. To this day, characters are being developed based around how powerful hardware is getting, so they are constantly evolving.
​
Bibliography
Invaluable. n.d. Art History Timeline: Western Art Movements and Their Impact. [online] Available at: <https://www.invaluable.com/blog/art-history-timeline/> [Accessed 13 January 2022].
​
Bridget Riley [Online] Available at: https://www.invaluable.com/artist/riley-bridget-abw1jhju4y/ [Accessed 13 January 2022].