At the beginning of this year I made my first
video essay titled “How Much Work Goes Into Creating a Genshin Impact Character?” Since then the channel has grown… a lot. So I figured what better way to celebrate
hitting a crazy milestone like 50 thousand subscribers than to revisit this topic. Not only has my video production improved
a bit, but I also now know much more about the game and its development processes. What things must be considered when making
a new character? Why does the development cycle for them seem
so long? In this video, I hope to provide some insight
by looking into character design from a development standpoint. So without further adieu, let's try and answer
the question one more time. As with anything really, a Genshin character
begins with an idea. This is arguably the most important phase
because the groundwork laid out here directly influences every other part of the character’s
development. This is when they establish the character’s
core, or basically what sets them apart from the rest of the expansive cast. This can take on many different forms, such
as an occupation, their role within Teyvat, or even just their outlook on life. This is also when cultural inspirations are
decided on, which are most directly depicted through the character’s constellation. The next early stage would be visual design. A good place to start would probably be choosing
one of the 5 body types that are currently in the game: medium sized male and female,
taller male and female, or little girl. Regarding the actual details of the design,
there’s a lot to take into account. Hair, eyes, clothing, accessories, and even
overall color scheme are made to fit the character themes. The goal is to show basic information about
the character purely through visual storytelling. For example, Bennett has a bag and goggles,
showing that he’s an adventurer, while his many scars show that he tends to get into
a lot of accidents. Good character design highlights individuality
by emphasizing the character’s most distinctive traits, which is often not easy to accomplish. Two different arts are made for each character,
one full body portrait and another which depicts them using some kind of ability. These artworks are especially important because
they are what is most directly associated with the idea of the character. When you think of them, you think of how they
are portrayed here. So even subtle things like their posing and
facial expression leave a strong lasting impression. Once the visual design has been established,
that allows a 3D model representation to be created. But it is relatively easy to make a character
look good from one angle in a 2 dimensional space, as opposed to every angle in a 3 dimensional
space. This is why when people say Diluc and Albedo’s
hair in drawings looks better than in-game, it’s not really a fair comparison. Another thing that needs to be taken into
consideration which isn’t related to pure looks, is the polygon count. This refers to the amount of unique triangles
which make up the entirety of the model. It’s easy to forget that the multiple platforms
on which Genshin is available all need to be taken into account when it comes to rendering
visuals. Sometimes you have to sacrifice quality, in
this case polygon count, to ensure the game can run as smoothly as possible. One sort of workaround to this, is creating
the illusion of depth through the flat textures that are mapped to the model. Higher fidelity models are commonly used in
pre rendered footage, but for real time gameplay it is much more reasonable to strike a balance. The natural progression from there would be
animating that model. This requires attaching it to a skeleton so
that they can move individual pieces independent of each other. Basic movements like walking, running, jumping,
sprinting, pivoting, landing, sitting, gliding, climbing, diving, and even dying, are determined
by the character’s body type, but every outfit flows in a unique way and necessitates
special fine tuning. Each character has a basic attack string,
with a couple of examples of 4 star pairs who share some animations for it, but generally
each character has their own fighting style. Abilities on the other hand, are always unique
per character. Each attack also has a “wind down” animation,
which shows them resetting to a neutral stance, though In actual combat they tend to get cancelled
by inputting other actions. Sometimes they are just as simple as they
sound, and sometimes a little bit of extra flair is thrown in. Within all these animations, some parts which
need to be considered are the character’s movements, the weapon they’re holding, their
clothing, and facial expressions. It is likely that a majority of this is done
by hand, with some in between frames interpolated by the computer. Ability animations also entail VFX to convey
the impact of the move being used as well as to act as visual indicators. For 5 stars specifically, their elemental
burst also includes some kind of dynamic camera angle with special background elements. Last but not least, each character has up
to 2 idle animations, which emphasize the main qualities of the character, often in
funny or interesting ways. At the same time, gameplay must also be developed. Of course you have your standard 6 elements
and 5 weapon types to choose from, but that is far from what actually makes a character
feel unique to play. First is probably deciding between the character’s
general role in a team comp: a main DPS where they need to be on the field to be effective,
or a sub dps/support where they can be useful off the field. Then comes more questions to define a unique
style, like does the character rely on normal attacks or charged attacks? Do they have a burst that should have setup? Do they provide stat bonuses? Although some characters will inevitably end
up having similarities, even small differences in kit ensures that each one fulfills their
own niche within the team composition. And even after the mechanics are established,
there are a lot of specific values to adjust like the cool downs, energy cost of the burst,
and scalings per talent level. Then there’s constellations, 4 of which
alter gameplay in some kind of unique way. Here’s one that’s criminally overlooked:
sound design. You don’t often think about it, but sound
gives meaning and weight to every action. From the sound of a claymore slamming the
ground, to the rustling of clothes as you run, sound adds that extra bit of life. This often entails foley artists experimenting
with a variety of materials to try and capture that perfect sound. And then of course there’s the voice acting,
another way to directly convey the character’s personality. For each of the game’s 4 voiceover languages,
English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, a voice actor needs to be casted. Probably amongst many different candidates,
one person is chosen who is best able to portray the personality of that character. Then working with a voice director, the voice
actor is responsible for all of the voicelines in combat, when idle, reacting to the weather,
talking about other characters, and of course whatever in-game event the character might
be involved in. But all this work is more than worthwhile
because of how much voice acting fleshes out the identity of a character. I can’t imagine Venti without his playful
tone or Zhongli without his deep voice, because that’s a big part of what makes the characters
who they are. You might think that writing the lore is the
easiest part of making a character since it doesn’t require as much technical skill,
but I can tell after reading each one that it is not so simple. Starting with the 8 pieces of text which make
up the character’s story section, they are much more than just writing that happens to
have the character in it. They always give deep insight into the character’s
backstory, explaining the reasoning for many of their current personality traits and motivations. Oftentimes these stories may include other
playable characters. These, along with the voice lines about other
characters, are always great to see because it makes the world feel much more believable. Just like how in real life you often meet
people and form relationships in unexpected ways, so do the characters of this game. Creating an interconnected web of stories
consisting of over 30 characters with more on the way, is certainly not an easy thing
to accomplish. There’s a few more things that don’t fit
into any previous category. They don’t need any further explanation,
but they are: the name card, specialty dish, ascension materials, and promotional material,
the last of which entails a demo and showcase, as well as an animated teaser for 5 stars. And if it wasn’t hard enough to do all of
these things one time, each part goes through multiple revisions. As a character becomes more and more defined,
sometimes ideas that seemed good at one point may be scrapped entirely. After beta testing, the final version of the
character which gets pushed out for release is the culmination of tons of work by multiple
different teams. When you take into account all of the things
which I have discussed and other stuff which I might have missed, you realize that like
with many things, creating a Genshin Impact character is nowhere as simple as it may seem. With the most recent update livestream, the
developers of the game were directly showing us just how passionate they are about what
they do. I am very much looking forward to new characters
and just the future of Genshin Impact, knowing that miHoYo puts so much care into everything. As always, thank you for watching.
