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This week we kick off a new feature: Fridays With Farzad. It won’t be EVERY Friday — the guy has work to do, and despite what our banner may lead you to believe, he is only one man. But I will attempt to wrestle him to the ground every once in awhile to talk art and contribute some pictures to the blog.

Our subject for today is Appy — as in “the scrappy devil character in the masthead.” That’s Appy, corporate mascot and namesake for Appy Entertainment. He didn’t just spring unbidden through the vault door from Hell. He had to come from somewhere, and in this case he came out of Farzad’s brain, with a bit of badgering from the rest of us.

“Chris Ulm came up with the Appy name, from a list of hundreds,” Farzad said. “One of the thing we always as a group seem to gravitate toward is imagery that tells a little bit of a story, and has some kind of personality. We wanted a clear symbol that could be animated. Our character had to be easy to remember, with a distinctive silhouette.”

Like many of Farzad’s designs, Appy started with a series of loose thumbnail sketches. The above sheet, from very early in the process, shows Farzad started with abstract ideas, like portals, windows, and doors, but quickly moved to characters. “The iPhone is a new environment for entertainment,” Farzad said, “so I tried something that showed we’re cowboys in this new frontier. Also, I’ve always liked little space dudes, space ships, and H.P. Lovecraft-style little one-eyed creatures, so I played with some of them, too.”

The above images draw from the iPhone for inspiration. Farzad really starts to work with rounded corners and other elements taken from Apple’s design. “These are a little softer. I played with ideas that showed Appy’s harmony with nature. I even thought about building a button around the iconic ‘Smiley Face,’” Farzad continued. “Chris suggested I think of Appy as a gift, and asked if I could capture some of the feelings you get when you open a present.”

“I started exploring bringing the button shape itself to life,” Farzad said. “A lot of designs revolved around extruding an App button into a 3D object. Chris’ ‘present’ idea led to thinking of the character as a hatchling coming out of an egg.” A personality was starting to emerge, but to ensure the character would read well on the smaller iPhone display, Farzad decided to return to 2D designs.

Above, we see Appy’s shape coming into focus. Farzad has adopted the personality unlocked in the extruded 3D designs. “These two images were the first that started to connect the button shape with minimalistic elements conveying character and personality,” Farzad said.

The above images show Appy’s evolution into his final form. “One the things Chris said was that Appy shouldn’t be too cute. This isn’t a character for little kids,” Farzad said. “Appy needed to have a little edge. He had to be something a college student would wear on a shirt. We also wanted a shape that was simple enough for anyone to draw.” Above we can see how the character was simplified and aged up. “Chris suggested making the legs into sharp points, and Paul said to give him a black eye,” Farzad says. The personality of a mischievous devil emerged, leading to horns and a point for the tail.

The rest was basic character design, Farzad said. “Small eyes high up on the head make the character less intelligent-looking. It suggests a small brain. Making the eyes bigger and bringing them down on the head shows more forehead and intelligence. The last step was adding a smile to convey Appy’s sense of fun.”

The color scheme was selected both to fit with the character and to ensure the design would work well for business cards and banners. “Appy lives on the iPhone and the Web. He has to read well as a small shape and pop out from his surroundings,” Farzad said. “The font involved a lot of back-and-forth. We wanted something we could own so we created an original four-letter font. OA Studios were critical in the later stages of the design, especially in the final touches making Appy into a real corporate ID.”

I asked Farzad how this process differed from his past character creations for companies like Oddworld and High Moon Studios. Aside from the size of the work, he saw little difference. “Constraints are good — they set boundaries for the artist and demand creative solutions. But no matter the size of the canvas, you’re still aiming for the same thing — to make a personality come to life through your character.”

[digg=http://digg.com/gaming_news/Evolution_of_an_Icon]

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Fridays With Farzad. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.