Fairgound Stall man Character Development

The fairground worker is a generic character that is located within the fairground central arena. They work on the fairground stalls and interact without speaking. 

Their job is to introduce the basic elements of the mini game presented at their stall and instruct the player in what is needed to win the game and collect the silver coin. 

The stall will usually have a device/tool/interactive object that the player must use to interact with the other game objects. 

For example, the ‘Knock ‘em out’ mini game will require the player to pick up one of 3 balls and throw them effectively at one of 3 targets resembling a mouth. One hit the teeth in the mouth will fall down. The player will only have 3 chances to win the coin and then the game will be closed. 

Back to the fairground worker design…

It was important to think about the character design in terms of where the character would be viewed, T why distance, if there was to be any body animation. 

It has so far been decided that there would be no spoken interaction as the instructions would pop up in the scene in addition to a recorded voice over. The fairground worker will also not need any other animation than ‘idle’ moving backwards and forwards behind the stall wall.. meaning no complicated (and costly) leg movement. 

The design needed to fit a gothic horror genre but as the interaction was intended to be fun, a dark ‘gallows humour’ which would be part of the test interaction, the character clothing and props needed to be reflected in the character design.

Fairground worker Character concept development 

 

Initial sketches 

Silhouette tests

Work-up Sketch

Work up sketch with hand 

Line tidy sketch 

Puppeteer test concept 

Paper cut concept composition  (Early test) in Unity

As development has moved on away from the puppeteer drawn papercut aesthetic into a more simple cut-paper feel, the character design needs to follow the general style of the project. To proceed with the fairground worker character design in phase 3 development, further physical paper tests might be useful to construct a 3D paper character from which a CGI model can be created and rigged. This could lead to new ways of portraying the paper like effect the project needs but also after expression of the character. This is always challenging in papercut and my not work.. it may be that a paper mask would be the answer but it’s too soon to say.