Favourite Character Design?

[Dragon]

As the title briefly suggests, what are your favourite video gaming character designs overall, and why? Do you usually go for a complex design, a more simple design, or somewhere between the two, with a few quirks here and there? Feel free to share all thoughts!

 

[Hiatus]

I really love how they've designed Demise in Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. His body is extremely bulky, which does a great job at signifying all his strength and power. Plus, his are pretty vicious-looking; this helps to showcase his evilness and the like. Only thing that I don't like, though, is his hair, which are made out of flames. If it were average human hair, he would probably have looked more realistic. Besides him, I also like Captain Falcon from F-Zero. :P

 

[El Héroe Oscuro]

Gabriel Belmont from Castlevania Lords of Shadow: (minimize the size of your page to see the pic)

Spoiler:

His armor is insanely badass and I think the color of it really complements the mood of the entire game: dark, foreboding, and it matches the color of blood, which is fitting as he will later become Dracula. In the design too you can see all of the weapons that he has in his disposable which make him all the more badass: holy water, daggers, and his cross whip, which to me is by far one of the coolest weapons in video game history. Plus he's voiced by Scottish actor Robert Carlyle, who was in 28 Weeks Later.

I honestly cannot wait to buy myself Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2. The first one was really underrated in my opinion and flew under the radar. I'm just happy to see that they ended up creating a sequel to it.

 

[Grif of Hearts]

There are far, far too many characters for me to list here. However, one that has recently caught my eye is Izanagi, a Persona from Shin Megan Tensei: Persona 4. The manifestation of the protagonist's ego, through Izanagi he is able to fight through the hordes of shadows that plague the Midnight Channel.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for long coats?

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

^IZANAGI!
I like Ookami design more, though.

For me it's always been Minato.

I love his hair, like... so ♥♥♥♥ing epic =D

 

[Homura Akemi]

Yuyuko Saigyouji of the Touhou series. She's a cute ghost :D The hat basically shows how she's the princess of a spirit temple. The spirits surrounding her add a nice touch. She's adorable, too <3 A cutie with the power to impose death. nice.

 

[TY]

My theme and username says all: Nova Terra, the Dominion Ghost from StarCraft II.

She looks so amazing and I just adore her design so freaking much that it is just a massive shame you don't see her too often ;~;

 

[pompayyy]

I could put, like, a million Pokemon here

Honestly the coolest design I could think of, as copied and well known as he may be, is the king of cool: Bowser

I mean he's the bad guy all the other villains look up to. Sure he may not be very successful at what he does, be he definitely puts the effort. Plus look at those spikes! He even has spiked wristbands!

 

[Spinosaurus]

Wario's character design process just absolutely fascinates me. His design is creative, but he's really not just a bad, yellow and fat Mario, he's a representation of Nintendo R&D1.

Of course, as good as Super Mario Land was, it has been said that the team had a distaste for developing games for someone else's character, one whom they had no creative passion for. And so it was that a solution seemed to present itself as they were developing the second-such game, Super Mario Land 2. For within, they were able to create a new character, one of their very own that would "symbolize their situation."

Mario's googly-eyed, pointy-eared opposite proved to be everything he was, only not. Whereas Mario was a little portly, Wario could make the walls shake with his massive girth, and where Mario was strong, Wario was virtually Herculean. Mario's features held a friendly roundness to them, while Wario's were jagged and pointy, from their ears to their noses to their shoes, and even their signature mustaches. While Mario was seen as a kind, helpful, generous soul, Wario was mean, belligerent, and most of all, greedy. And as players would find out upon reaching the end of the final level of Super Mario Land 2, Wario was capable of using all the same powers Mario could, alongside a handful of other sneaky tricks.

In retrospect, one has to wonder if perhaps it was R&D1's distaste of being "forced into developing Mario Land games" that lead to the creation of a character whose very concept owes to being everything Nintendo's mascot was not. One might even speculate that if such resentment were to exist, that Wario might be akin to how the developers had come to view Mario. And if that were indeed the case, then there's little doubt that his creators would have allowed themselves a small chuckle as Wario's popularity took off, allowing him to effectively become to R&D1 what Mario was to Nintendo EAD.

Source

 

[MidnaMoon]

Ghirahim From Skyward Sword

Skyward Sword was -very- flawed and there was much about the game I didn't like, however Ghirahim is a very interesting design, he is creepy and effeminate, in personality and his design reflects that very well.

 

[Dragon]

Ohhh, I have a few favourites! First of all, there's Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia:

Well, partly because I'm more of a fan of more simpler character designs, so, Yuri pretty much fits the bill on that! Specifically, I like the way on how they portrayed his character to be this sorta bad-ass persona with a heart of gold, and his out-fit sort of complements that, if that makes sense. Well, he mostly wears dark attire, as you can see, which yeah, it's not really all that complex to visualize, and.. I dunno, everything from him just seems to fit together quite nicely! Then again, the characters from Tales of Vesperia are all generally well designed & dressed too, like Rita Mordio, Flynn, Patty, Raven, etc.

There's also Sylvia, Levin, and Fury from ファイアーエムブレム 聖戦の系譜 Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu (Genealogy of the Holy War):

Yeah from left to right - you have Sylvia the Dancer, Levin the Bard who is secretly a prince, and Fury who is a Pegasus Knight. Well other than the fact that they have green hair (ohoho, screw the rules, they have green hair!), their designs are pretty straight-forward and cool to look at! Sylvia's dancer outfit is pretty nice, and gods, Levin's scarf is really cool. Fury is also pretty simple, in terms of being a Pegasus Knight compared to certain Fire Emblem games, but her hair & armor is pretty gorgeous too.

 

[Raine]

There are far, far too many characters for me to list here. However, one that has recently caught my eye is Izanagi, a Persona from Shin Megan Tensei: Persona 4. The manifestation of the protagonist's ego, through Izanagi he is able to fight through the hordes of shadows that plague the Midnight Channel.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for long coats?

I second this! Although I'm not completely familiar with all the Personas from the series, some of them have the best designs :D Being the Final Fantasy fan that I am, I thought that Yuna's design in X-2 was well done, with the exception of her derriere slightly hanging out, but her outfit was nice. Cosmos from Dissidia was absolutely stunning with the colours and vibrance that she displayed. To be honest, I'm more a fan of the actual drawings/design sketches of Final Fantasy characters than the final product XP

 

[Sydian]

I'm not even going to lie, Lightning's design is part of what drew me into buying Final Fantasy XIII. Her design is great through everything XIII has spawned, as well. I think my favorite is XIII-2's though. I also really like Holly Whyte from Bravely Default. I was beyond excited to find that if you make your female characters a White Mage, they wear her garb. But it still looks best on Holly.

As far as male characters go, Guy from Tales of the Abyss looks great too. He's just so color coordinated, haha. It's great. I also really like Jak's design in Jak X. 3 is a close second, but I really like that they finally changed his outfit (even though it's not the traditional one) in X and the shorter hair suits him better. Took him a long time to get there, but it works.

 

[Talon Flare]

Waluigi

Haters Gonna Hate

Also Lysanndre, The Super Mario Princesses, Bowser, and Luigi