Whats the next step?

Added some more images to my sketchbook last night. Got a hold of the fashion magazine Dazed and Confused and took some good inspiration from this. This was mainly just inspiration for my actual character designs but I should really start looking at some character editors. I've had trouble finding some pictures of character editors as of yet so I'm just going to have to take the few games I have with them in and take screenshots, won't have that many though. Still have to work out how far I can actually take the making of a character editor because I don't want to plan a fully made one if I know I can only make something very basic, anyway I want most of the emphasis to be on the character and the subtle changes, not the actually interface of the editor. Came across and article talking about spore and its character editing process so will have to write something about that up here when I get chance.

Managed to find a youtube video of the fallout character editor, might be better posting videos up here rather than trying to find seperate images:



Spore has a very unlimited customisation process, but it is link in extremely well to the game. But in my own opinion it would be better that the creature evolved not how you choose it to, but depending on your actions during its life. This again would put the character artist in the driving seat and let people play a game instead of a simulator:



APB is the most recent character editor and one I should probably refer to a lot, it is very powerful and gives the users endless control over their characters, at the moment I don't want to give my users endless control, I just want to give them control over my final ideas which I feel fits into the gameplay. A video worth watching on it:



This video of Skate shows a bit from the character editor, a lot of sports games tend to have them I guess intending the users to create themselves, does anyone want to be themselves to an exact match though?



Yesterday I was talking to the Pre-Production tutor Mark and he made an interesting point about how game developers today allow players to customize their characters to generate income, buying things like armors and hats etc for real money. What are these people who spend their hard earned money getting in trade for it? Does it really add that much to the gameplay? Or just make them a bit more original than the people who don't spend their money.

From the post Craig made before I'll add the image here, it makes a good point about how all the suits of armor are basically the same but allows the player to make subtle differences to stand out.

Started a discussion on http://www.polycount.com/ to see if I could get some comments from some professional artists, didn't get a massive discussion but got some good input. Here's the link anyway just to check it out: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=67003

Not sure if I quoted this before, but I came accross this again and beleive it sums up one arguement of my project very well:

"the more input a player has, the less character there is for them to beleive in".