Research and Planning

Early notes on general ideas:

Planning:

I decided to plan by using a traditional notebook instead on Trello or other planning software, as I attempted to use online software for other modules and ended up setting it up but not using it beyond that. I find this to be the best way to track what I have left to do and get my ideas out.

This is the plan I came up with that allows me to reach the deadline, along with extra time at the end for if my schedule falls behind.

Ethical Issues

Within the Games Industry, there is a trend of sexualising female characters (Flamma 2015). I directed my dissertation towards this issue, specifically costume design, in the essay For Frock's Sake: The Importance of Effective Women's Costume Design. (Nicol, K, 2025). Women are costumed in outfits not fit their personality or their professions. I am hoping to tackle this with my designs, I am trying got prove this is not a necessary issue to have. For the amount of female characters in the gaming world now, it is hard to believe so many are put in skin-tight outfits and high heels, a perfect example being Widowmaker from Overwatch (Blizzard, 2016).

Image from Blizzard's Reference Guide of Widowmaker

By the end, I would like to feel like I did the characters justice, having their personalities shine through and not putting them in an oversexualised outfit that they naturally would not wear. This is a big issue for the gaming industry and and although having plenty of research into it, it hasn't changed a ton throughout the years. We have had some improvements, but not enough that it is still not in the way and is still actively talked about.

World Building:

Although there will not be environmental art within my project, I want to be able to conceptualise where my characters would exist to get a better grasp of their personalities and inform how their design will interact with their surroundings.

My biggest game benchmark when it comes to how I would want the game to play is The Borderlands Series (2K Games, 2025). 

Image from Borderlands 4

A loot n' shoot where you pick between four or so characters and play through the main mission and side missions either on your own or as a group. The story remains the same, no matter which character you pick, the only thing that changes is the skill set you have. You also use a skill tree to level up. I would imagine that this concept game would be similar, except your character's visuals evolve with it, similar to Pokémon (Tajiri, 1996).

A screenshot from the Pokémon database showing the evolution of a Pokémon

So, you start in a normal world, and each character has a normal job at the beginning. They each start in their place of work and get called out in some way. A slightly fantasy creature, i.e a horned rabbit or a mouse with antlers, leads them to a place that is slightly off, slightly fantasy. Sort of like the start of Alice in Wonderland (Carroll 2025), where Alice follows the white rabbit down the hole. They have to go through trials and tribulations in an open world where they gain skills and evolve, becoming more and more fantastical as they go along with the world around them. 

I also did some research looking at what professionals say about costume design. This video by Proko (Proko n.d.), focuses on talking about the elements of the character that make up their personality. What are the key elements? face, pose, outfit or hair? I am focusing on costume, accessories and hair - therefore I should not be focusing so deeply on their body and face.

Bibliography:

Blizzard, Blizzard.com. Available at: http://media.blizzard.com/overwatch/media/reference/widowmaker_reference.pdf [Accessed 1 June 2025].

Blizzard Entertainment, 2016. Overwatch.

2K Games, 2025. Borderlands.

2K Games., 2024. Borderlands [online]. Borderlands.2k.com. Available at: https://borderlands.2k.com/en-GB/ [Accessed 1 June 2025].

Carroll, L., 2025. Alice’s adventures in wonderland. London: Puffin Classics.

Flamma, A., 2015. Sexuality as a temporary identity of female characters in video games. In: PanEroticism. Leiden, Netherlands: BRILL, 2015, pp. 129–138.

Nicol, K., 2025. For Frock's Sake: The Importance of Effective Women's Costume Design.

Pokemon, Pokémon evolution charts [online]. Pokemondb.net. Available at: https://pokemondb.net/evolution [Accessed 1 June 2025 a].

Pokemon, The official Pokémon website [online]. Pokemon.com. Available at: https://www.pokemon.com/uk [Accessed 1 June 2025 b].

Proko, - YouTube [online]. Youtu.be. Available at: https://youtu.be/zUATd5Lbo-w?si=nJ-xOlBh8PT8jLR2&t=567 [Accessed 1 June 2025].

Tajiri, S., 1996. Pokemon.