Project Echo : Cast of Characters

[Kain Nobel]

Dr. Benjamin Anders

Current Progress:

Dr. Benjamin Anders was abducted by Chilkaid Revolutionary Forces due to his knowledge as a physicist and engineer.

Most prominent NPC in the whole game. Defected Chilkaid scientist, eventually becomes the de facto leader of the R&D Department. Inspired by Baldanders, or "Soon Different" from German literary mythos (Reference Link). As an engineer, he represents constant change in the game and is (usually) actively involved in the key turning points of the story.

References are included in this post, although I'm not drawing any one person in particular.

Memorable Scene (Spoilers)

Leader: "Please tell me, why are you dressed like a traffic cone?"
Dr. Anders: "Glad you asked. Just finished building the new R&D lab. The autonomous machines run on lidar, I don't want to be ran over."
Leader: "Autonomous..."
Dr. Anders: "Machines, yes! We do all our manufacturing in house, the machines only assist in the heavy lifting."
Leader: "OK, let's check it out..."

(Walks in, instantly gets attacked by robots. Defeats.)

Dr. Anders: "Quit beating up my precious instruments. Go to the utility cabinet and grab yourselves some safety vests. Remember: Safety first!"
Leader: "OK..."

2 Tone Shading

At this stage, we're defining the initial 2 Tone "Flats". A majority of the images key details are defined right here, right now.



Next step we'll be adding the 3rd tone of shading. We could also define highlights at any time, yes, but I'll probably do it closer to the end.

3 Tone Shading

We've gone from 2 tone to 3 tone. Just reinforcing the current shading, blending some things in. And a whole lotta dithered taps, contour line shading and crosshatch shading. Slowly starting to define the real shape and volume of the image, it is now established we have a top-front light source.



We'll go a couple more iterations of shading like this, introducing darker shadows in the next step and giving it even more diffused dithering. The only reason we're dithering is this is limited spec pixel art, otherwise with photoshop you can be blending with an actual brush.

4 Tone Shading

OK now we've added the 4th tone. Notice that everything is starting to really fill in now, he's almost beginning to look 3Dish. Smooth. Probably a little too smooth, now that I think about it. He'll probably look a little older once we add the next tone.



While it's clear we have a definite light source emitting from the front, we don't actually have any real highlights to speak of yet. Next round, I'm not sure if I'll be adding the highlights or adding a 5th shading tone. Maybe I'll do both. You could almost consider this done as it is, but I have to follow my own style guide and use all the shades.

Loose References

Loose Clothing Refrences

Potential references for safety vest. I probably can't legally copy this design stitch for stitch, but I'll do something similar. I don't like my current design, so we'll see if it changes much later.



If I do a helmet, I'll probably make his safety hat white to contrast with the orange vest, but I like this overall design.