00:00PEGI DICIOTTO
00:35We could work in a bubble, I suppose, and write what the character is, the story, and so forth, and
00:41I think it's always better when we work as a team.
00:45We start working with the writers and the designers to really get an idea of the world, get an idea
00:49of how the characters are going to react to each other, their personalities, and then we take that to the
00:53concept artists, we start sketching it up.
00:54The visual appearance of the characters takes a lot of work and, again, takes a lot of iteration, so it
00:59could be hair, or it could be the shape of the face, making all these things look realistic enough for
01:04players to be able to get attached to.
01:06It's very, very difficult, but you definitely see it, it sort of moves along and moves along, and then suddenly
01:12it's like bang, and it's unreal, and you're like, wow, that's amazing.
01:16Aren't you charming?
01:18So you have that eureka moment where the character just sort of appears?
01:21I think, you know, you really do, and it's actually quite late in development, when there's a lot of tech
01:27that's been built, and a lot of animation's been done, and the voice actors have been working, and then at
01:33some point they, it just, you look at it one day, and you're like, eh, you know, you look at
01:38the next thing, and you're like, wow, that's actually amazing.
01:39The key is to try and get inside the character, and figure out what their personality is, and how that's
01:44going to manifest itself in a physical way.
01:46We have a great new character in Dragon Age Inquisition called Iron Bull, he's a Qunari warrior, and being Qunari,
01:52he's, you know, he's huge and muscular.
01:53Iron Bull, I presume?
01:55Yeah, the horns usually give it away.
01:57And he has some wonderful lines as well, he's voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr., and he's brought a wonderful amount
02:02of personality to the character.
02:04And all these things go into the kind of iterative melting pot that the artist can work with.
02:09So for instance, Iron Bull has a, he only has one eye, he has an eye patch, so it instantly
02:13suggests that there's a backstory around Iron Bull, how did he lose it, why does he adopt the patch?
02:17And those kind of little sort of creative tweaks can really influence people's perceptions of a character, and they can
02:25go all the way through from just his physical manifestation, to the clothing that he wears, to the equipment that
02:29he carries, and of course, when you get actually into the game and playing it, the moves that he makes.
02:34They'll like put a detail on a piece of concept art, and like some part of their clothing, which they
02:39thought, that might be interesting, and then we'll see that, and we'll go, hey, that's kind of neat, and we'll
02:43sort of springboard off of that.
02:44There's a lot of stress that builds up as you make these games, and everyone's working so hard, and you
02:49want everything to be perfect, so when you see things finally come together, whether it be characters, or whether it
02:54be environments, or story, or acting, whatever that thing is that you just really want to nail, finally gets there,
03:01it's incredibly rewarding.
03:16Thank you.
