Opinions on Chibi Character Design? (poll)

Just wondering, is chibi art style lame at this point due to anime fan-base? Because I always thought it was a good way to design characters for easy understanding of spacial relations for players. A character who is one unit wide and two units tall makes it very clear where they can fit and so on.

Oh, and for the record chibi is when characters are deformed to have larger heads and husky bodies.
Sort of like this:


I like my chibi between 50/50 and 40/60 head/body ratios.

You can see an example of one of my work in progress here:

I use this approach in Thora, actually. And while there are aesthetic reasons it matters as well as practical ones…the art style is also probably not quite as critical as other parts of the experience.

If I do my job right, you stop caring what the characters look like, and care more what their relationships look like. You see the questions unfold at the start of each act, characters of vastly different backgrounds pursue, and ultimately find these answers for themselves. And in the nick of time, too - this is a JRPG. The Big Bads aren’t sitting idle, after all…

You can say my art is an in-roads to making my game immediately accessible in those critical first fifteen minutes that determine whether someone’s going to continue playing my game or not. The rest is on the other disciplines that I have to draw on in order to provide a complete experience at all.

Is that?
Is… Is that an orange platypus holding two sharks with lasers on their heads???

And I think that is about the same proportions I’m looking for in a 2d platformer like with Mario:
1080994--40456--$mariosprite.jpg

But maybe 1/3rd head with a top down game like with FF Tactics:
1080994--40457--$final-fantasy-tactics-the-war-of-the-lions-20070708081505836-000.jpg

I can’t say that the 1/2 head would work with this.

You mean that [you] actually have frickin’ sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads?

Hand-mounted laser sharks are always necessary. Always!

Ah, that thread. Shame it never actually took off. Would have been a hilarious game.

cough (I been VERY slow at work on it, been battling some… issues)

Oh yeah, that’s right! It did take off…about 5 feet. Well, hopefully those “issues” can be taken care of, and we’ll eventually get our platypus-shark-laser-kraken game.

On another note, I sense this thread is being derailed almost as rapidly as the original was. Maybe orange platypuses have special thread-derailing properties?

10 feet. :stuck_out_tongue: Once I have some solid stuff to show I’ll resurect the thread :slight_smile:

Can we call it thread-bumping instead so the OP gets more votes on his survey? :wink:

Ok. We want the OP’s survey to get results!

Besides, Final Fantasy III for PSP/DS uses a Chibi style. It has an official backer!

Chibi / Toon style is likable.

i get tired of that chibi stuff quickly, aping the art of another culture doesnt often come off well if not immersed in it, much a problem with east-west movement in many media, but that platypus is goddamn amazing, id buy that game just for the platypus