My Approach to Metal Character Designs - Shredding With The Devil (2020)

Shredding With The Devil is a game inspired by my passion for all things about Metal music and all of its subgenres. Naturally the first thing I did was slap on some headphones and get a good playlist going on, and started a brush-test and feel out the visual direction I want.

This led to this piece right here:

I think this is a good abstract depiction of what Shredding With The Devil should be about. Also this might be the best hand I've ever drawn, its all downhill from here folks.

With this piece I have defined what brushes, strokes, tones, and shapes I want to incorporate into the characters.

The next thing I did was reference back to my Design Document and look for important features to include in the character designs.

In this game, the Horsemen of The Apocalypse essentially act as boss battles, and teach a new subgenre (mechanics) to the player. As such, each Rider has a designated subgenre(s) that they use during the battle.

This is so players can understand how to beat them and can adapt to the battle. It also makes it easier for me to give them a sort of personality based on what subgenres they use.

Lets take a look at the first design, Pestilence (v1.0):

Pestilence mainly uses old school Thrash Metal.

I'm also gonna allow myself to be super loose with the definition of each subgenre to avoid getting stuck on semantics.

Thrash Metal is all about aggression, speed, distortion, mud. I had already created a music playlist with these subgenres and themes in mind, so after clicking play and turning up the volume I searched up images of the bands present in the playlist to get inspired by how they visually present themselves.

To really get an idea of what I'm referring about I highly recommend watching the first few minutes of Metallica's live performance, The Four Horsemen.

Main tracks that inspired/guided Pestilence's design:

From the get go I knew I wanted this character to be heavily accessorized, I specifically wanted them to have a bullet belt, as made iconic by James Hetfield from Metallica.

With this in mind I created this mood board:

At some point during the work session a song by the band Arch Enemy sneaked through, and even though Arch Enemy is not Thrash Metal I think their overall presentation, specially by their frontwoman Alissa White-Gluz, encapsulates very well my perception of Thrash attitude. This really concreted the idea to make the character female, additionally I wanted to incorporate an aspect about the Horseman Pestilence from the original mythology:

While not depicted in the illustration, Pestilence will use a violin bow to play certain melodies in her white guitar, as a reference to Pestilence in Christian mythology who carries a bow and rides a white horse.

And so I started the first sketch:

I was going for a pose that felt more menacing and powerful, but I wasn't quite feeling that. So I increased her muscle volume, made her face sharper, and added a hairstyle that complemented these traits. Personally, I think that just seeing how she holds the guitar like that goes a long way too.

Then I added clothing and more accessories. I was at odds about what to use for her top; A leather jacket, battle vest, and a leather corset were in my mind. In the end I went with a teared up crop top because that was the easiest for me to draw. Although I do want to incorporate a battle vest in her in-game design.

Now came the part to add color. With the exception of the white guitar, I don't have any specific choices for the colors I used. They just made sense to me:

But the piece still feels pretty lackluster. So to make it more visually appealing I thought of adding some sort of "energy" effect. My intent was to make the Riders look like ethereal beings in the shape of humans, rather than just cool looking humans:

I picked red because that was a prominent color in the albums' cover art from her subgenre. However I had to change it up later because I realized the color red is much more fitting and associated with the Horseman War. And so we finally have the image I promised earlier:

With the first character designed I now discovered and applied this process to create the rest of the Riders.

Famine

Famine uses Power Metal and New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). These subgenres care much less for aggression and heaviness, focusing more in upbeat anthems and lyrical affinity. Theatrics and spectacle is second to none in these categories. For demonstration I recommend watching Iron Maiden's live performance of The Trooper.

War

War uses Metalcore and other extreme subgenres. For the purposes of Shredding With The Devil the main aspect of Metalcore featured are breakdowns; which are slow, intense passages at the climax of the song.

For demonstration I recommend watching this live performance by Avenged Sevenfold, where they interact with the crowd and incite a moshpit.