Study on the design of game Horror character : Focused on the graft design Method of creatures

1-1 Research Background and Objective

The object named as horror has always been haunting us since the day human civilization originated. For reasons like incomprehension of the unknown and myths like beasts, ghosts and gods, things that could be barely comprehended or were beyond human’s circle of competence stood out as key factors of horror. Along with changes of times, the literal-formed element of horror came into our sight and developed a series of Monster Culture, among which, the Cthulhu Mythos created by American author Howard Phillips Lovecraft were the most renowned. This Culture saw its sphere of influence being continuously enlarged as accelerated by rapid advancement of science and technology, and, just like other entertainment activities, gained people’s attention[1]. Then horror stories gradually appeared in front of the public in forms like movie. In the 1980s, in combination with emerging electronic games, the horror movies received explosive development, which was coupled with increasing numbers of researches on horror themes.

Horror works arouse horrific sense mainly from sensory stimulation, which is interwoven with horrific ambience, and therefore researches on horrific ambience count a majority of those on horror movies or games while the number of researches on horrific characters is still very poor.

Character existence is a must in the make-up of stories, not least those horrific ones that differ from general characters quite a lot. Such characters not only facilitate the proceeding of story but also serve as the most crucial part in building the horrific atmosphere, and hence quality of horrific characters creates sufficient influence on the level of horror-themed works. Nevertheless, studies in such respect are scanty, and formulation of current design approaches of certain horrific characters are further crippling the sensation of horror delivered by the characters. For this reason, the author carries out research and analysis on the design approaches of current horrific characters, and, integrated with theories relevant to character design and psychology, comes up with advices on how to strengthen the charter’s horrific sense through design.

1-2 Research methods

Case Analysis Method: a scientific analysis method that conducts in-depth and scrupulous studies on representative objects (phenomena) so as to gain the general cognition. It applies to a wide range of studies, with features of representativeness, systematicness, profundity and concreteness, etc[2].

This article sets character design as the basis and implements researches on how the horrific characters in games convey the horrific sense. Multiple do there exist manners of horror arousal, none of them are achieved through a method other than sensory stimulation, wherein the visual stimulation are mainly employed in artistic design to trigger horrific sense. The appearance of a character is the very first thing observed by the audience, and it determines the design orientation of characters as well, so the author at first analyzes the appearance of horrific characters and sums up corresponding design rules, finding out the fundamental relation between the horrific sense and appearance. Secondly, the appearance and the color complement each other, and color aesthetics can be studied from perspectives of impression (vision), expression (emotion) and structure (symbol), namely the stimulation and influence on human caused by the color in terms of vision, psychological response and cognition[3]. Therefore, color plays an indispensable part in the research on design of horrific characters. Finally, horror is closely connected with the human’s psychological activities as one of the sentiments, with different sentiments revealing varied experiences of the human, so the analysis and research on human’s horror psychology could best discern what would bring horror to human, for which the author sorts out these messages and analyzes their application in design.

2-1 Definition of Horror and scientific analysis

Horrific characters like spirits, zombies and various kinds of monsters must have crossed your minds once horror works are referred to. The generalized feature of all horror works is to arouse the people’s sense of horror, and horrific character shall be one of the most important parts in transmission of such sense. In other words, researches on horrific characters are equivalent to those on sense of horror. So what the sense of horror is and how this sense is caused matter extraordinarily. Horror is defined in the dictionary as follows: the panic and urgent state of human or animal caused due to confrontation of actual or imaginary hazard or aversive objects. Experiments like “Little Albert Experiment” carried out in 1920 have furnished theoretical bases for the point that “horror comes from cognitive styles of objects”[4]. Therefore, it can be seen that the horror sense is associated with objects in reality and cognitive experience of such objects.

Research on horror sense is classified as psychological and aesthetic in the meantime. Aesthetic is a discipline that studies the relation of aesthetic appreciation between the human and the world and regards aesthetic activity as research object, a kind of life experience considering imagery as object and a spiritual culture of human. That constitutes the reason why the horror sense is categorized as a research issue in both psychology and aesthetics domains. However, generally speaking, those studied in aesthetics are mostly beautiful and glamorous. The sense of horror, a kind of negative sentiment, has not drawn too much attention in this domain so far.

Elements bringing the horror sense, such as persons and monsters emerging in the scenario of horror works, differ from each other, and the one and only unchangeable point is death. Plots of most horror works usually center on which way the leading character dies in. Death of leading character is not for delivery of sadness but triggering of horror sense, and thus a great many horror works have designed death: the more closely it relates to human’s daily life, the easier it draws resonance and maximizes sense of horror.

2-2 Types of Horror Sense

Chinese scholar Wang Ying divides horror movies into three types: movie of spirits, that of psychological horror and that of bloody horror[5]. Despite the fact that such classification cannot fully summarize horror movies, we can discover that the sense of horror can be further classified. Its classification will help us understand this emotion in a more detailed way and get hold of characteristics of each type, through which the desired horror that we would like to transmit to the human would be designed.

All things in the world are bi-natured, such as fair or foul, good or evil, etc. So is horror, with “known” and “unknown” natures. The “known” horror means the psychological state resulting from the fact that the human is aware of the hazard that clearly exists, fears about and would like to protect him or her from the upcoming hazard. This horror sense would be cut down because of possession of guarding consciousness; the “unknown” horror, on the other hand, is defined as the state with neither awareness of hazard nor perception of whether there is hazard or when the hazard will arrive, with absolutely no horrific feelings. The Unknown-typed Horror described herein is an integration of the “known” and the “unknown”, that is, the human is conscious of hazard while has no clue about it, which loses the sense of security and has the sense of horror multiplied. This is the Unknown-typed Horror.

Hence the objects in horror works always furnish “fuzziness”, which is exactly the characteristic of Unknown-typed Horror. There are mainly two types of such “fuzzified” designs. First, Spirits and specters, things imagined based on cultures and religions and never exist in reality. Second, Zombies and various kinds of monsters, which derive from existent prototypes while differ a lot from them. For things that we cannot be more familiar with, a failure of getting hold of them with normal minds achieved by designing methods would generate the unknown feeling.

Traumatic-typed Horror is mainly set in the psychological aspect. The Psychological Trauma is defined in psychiatry as events that go beyond the experience of common people[6], and is usually incurred by physical injury or mental events. Soldiers surviving the warfare shall be the most typical instance, who still feel like they are on the battleground and recall the battle scenes even after demobilization. This is the Psychological Trauma or, by another kind of comprehension, the Traumatic-typed Horror. Each of us has psychological trauma of varied extents with diverse modes of expression. Therefore, if the horror works contain anything associated with the psychological trauma, that would for certain strike a chord.

The Traumatic-typed Horror relates to individual unconsciousness. As considered by Carl Gustav Jung, unconsciousness interrelates with emotion, thought and memory, and this is named as “complex”, which would draw significant influence on our thought and behavior[7]. Individual unconsciousness lays more emphasis on the individual, and special experiences or memories are not owned innately but gained postnatally. Furthermore, such experience of individual unconsciousness would be constantly accumulated in and closely linked to our day-to-day life. To give an example, when we are watching horror movies or playing horror games, our heart beats would be accelerated and tension stirred up in response to the hearing of weird sounds, which applies to the real life as well, and those images in games would be associated.

3-1 Form

Game, called as a visual culture, has substantivity as one of its most typical characteristics. It employs graph and mage as medium to enhance substantivity of information and understandability of image[8]. Hence the appearance would always be the start for knowing a character, that is, relevant information would be learnt from the vision, and this in particular applies to those horrific characters with strong intentionality as most information of such characters would be acquired directly from their looks.

“All matters existing in this university may be adopted as materials for creation,” which was elaborated by Japanese manga artist Tsukamoto Hiroyoshi in his work Character Matrix as Matrix Design Method. This Method recombines different things together by following the formula of “A+B=C” so as “C” to determine the character appearance.

The graft design Method of creatures is made after sorting out the matrix design, and the quantity of characters to be designed hereby is, theoretically speaking, almost infinite. The designed character renders familiar and unfamiliar feelings simultaneously as the materials adopted wholly come from reality, which is in line with the thought of designing horrific characters. What’s more, design of all other types of character are associated with this table to a certain extent.

Table 1.

‘Grey Child’ Character[10]

Table 2.

‘Face hugger’ Character[11]

Table 3.

'Medusa' Character[12]

Large number of objects in reality could be perceived from appearances of foregoing characters, and audiences could succeed in precisely grasping messages relevant to the character the moment it turns up because of its connection to real world. Horrific characters convey the horror sense mainly in this way, which cannot come out of nowhere but be related to the common sense and experience of our life[13]. Therefore, in the author’s opinion, design of horrific character must contain elements that are able to arouse horror in life.

3-2 Color

Color serves as a language for two reasons. First, there has been a relation of wide recognition between the color and the conception. Second, same as the literal language, the color one complies with Paradigmatic Relation and Syntagmatic Relation when conveying ideas and feelings as well[14]. Hence the color is capable of information and sentiment conveyance. As a special language, color features, which differs from the general one, simulation code and presentation code[15]. The simulation code, same as image, objectively depicts and infinitely gets close to things in real life. For instance, by referring the colors in our life, blue reminds you of the ocean and white the cloud. However, color is also an approach to mirror emotions or psychological states like happiness and gloominess, at which moment it serves as presentation code with ideographic and emblematic characteristics. Based on these theories, it could be seen from current horrific characters that dark colors for purpose of delivering oppressive feelings or bright colors in sharp contract aiming at visual impact are frequently employed to better convey the sense of horror. This corresponds to the color’s presentation code theory while its simulation code counterpart, compared with the pattern of character, loses ground a little bit in conveyance of horror sense. Therefore, the main role of color in design of horrific character shall be transmitting varied sentiments through psychological suggestion and thus trigger the horror sense. There are a variety of sentiments that could be transmitted by colors, and all colors are able to trigger the horror sense once the colors coincide with the experience in everyday life. In other words, negative significance shall be given to all colors used in the design of horrific character.

Table 4.

‘Alien’ Character[16]

Table 5.

'Joker' Character[17]

Table 6.

‘Vampire’ Character[18]

It could be evidenced from above that any color could be horrific so long as it is utilized in a correct manner. Below is a compilation of the author in terms of frequently-used colors with the aim to unveil negative sentiments to be expressed by color as much as possible.

Red, color of the strongest visual shock, draws attention easily, and this is why red is adopted extensively in warning labels. It is the color of blood and fire, and renders a sense of warning and danger. In medical science, the shiny red is mostly seen in acute and painful diseases while the dark red is common in chronic diseases with longer phase of recovery. Characters in horror works are the same: shiny-red horrific characters are those with dangerousness and strong intention of aggression, and dark-red ones, also horrific, renders more latent explosive power in comparison with the former.

Yellow, the brightest color, has the same attention-drawing function as red does. As this color happens to be that of sun, it is usually used as a token of intelligence, property and power, and thus favored by emperors, nobilities and religions. People adopt it for positive objects in many occasions as well. Yellow loses its conspicuity when white becomes the background, and dark colors fit it more. A number of poisonous creatures in reality warn rivals through the yellow color, and the brighter the color looks, the more hazardous it means.

Green, the most pleasing color, makes people think of the Mother Nature and plants, and meanwhile it renders healthy and safe feelings. In Medieval Times, green represented devil, and hence this color features negative meaning as well. Besides, it is in contrast to red, which is the color of blood. A ruddy-cheeked person would be regarded as healthy, and he or she would be regarded as sick or poisoned if the face is of green color. Green can also be seen in the nature, such as creatures like poisonous frogs and vipers as well as radioactive minerals. That’s why green is adopted to present toxic substances in movies or games.

Blue features the coldest hue among colors. It is also the color of ocean, sky and glacier, reminding people of abstracted matters like vastness and mystery. In the meantime, it gives hesitant, indifferent and ice-cold feelings, for which it is adopted in the game to show illusory objects like souls and monsters.

Black and white are indispensable in colors relevant to horror. They are the purest ones and feature no tendency at all. Meanwhile, they are the two extremes: black would be the final color of a mixture of all colored pigments, and white the final one of a mixture of colors in the spectrum. So to speak, everything in the world lives in black and white, and these two colors could partner with any other color. As mentioned above, color serves as a conveyor of various kinds of emotions, wherein, black and white render negative psychological suggestion like loneliness, indifference and impassiveness. On such basis, their integration with other colors would lead these sentiments to other negative feelings a well. For this reason, black and white are mostly seen in horror works.

Table 7.

Keyword of color negative emotions

The negative sentiments directly conveyed by color are not that apparent while its combination with pattern of the character would strengthen the effect of emotional conveyance or psychological suggestion.

3-3 Psychology of Mentality in horror

Carl Gustav Jung said in the Theory of the Complex that “Complexes operate in an instinct-like way”. The reason for “instinct-likeness” is that they would trigger immediate, direct and targeted responses to particular scenes or figures. Unlike instinct, complex is not inherent but a product of experience like psychological trauma, family communication and cultural disparity, which incorporates primitive elements of collective unconsciousness to breed the complex[19]. For instance, people of primitive society made every endeavor to fight against the nature for survival, and this prompted their horror “complexes” to cliffs and beasts deep inside, which were handed down to one generation after another by all means[20]. Such horror “complexes” have been altered along with development of times and changes of objects, manifested through an array of phobias in modern society.

Hematophobia means fear of blood or blood-like things. Its serious symptoms include dizziness and even coma at the sight of blood. Blood usually renders jitter and anxiety. This is connected to our common sense as catching sight of blood, usually circulating in human body, would be reminded of injury and thus the instinctive horror. The more the blood volume is, the stronger this feeling would be.

Molluscophobia is defined as fear of flexible-bodied spineless animals like snakes and octopus. The definition of this phobia is not strictly scientific as the animals mentioned herein are determined as soft merely from the appearance. The author sums up the following reasons. First, these animals usually dwell in filthy and humid environment, and people rebel at filthiness. Second, many of these animals are apt to hurt people, and as the human’s emotional system reacts faster than cognitive system, people would have run away from these animals subconsciously even though they haven’t made out their kinds. Third, there are more rectangular objects in human society, which differ from these animals a lot as well and thus a strange feeling would be aroused when seeing them, which causes horror further.

Trypophobia means people will turn sick and scared at the sight of close-packed arrays of irregular patterns or shapes. Scientific studies show that Trypophobia relates to parasite and contagion. Some fatal contagions would leave irregular shapes like red rash on the patient’s skin and produces effect of psychological horror, which is distributed through a variety of ways.

Chilopodophobia means fear of animals like spiders and centipede. Most of them are poisonous and thus fatal to human, which has been lasted till now since ancient times.

The author considers that the most fundamental part of Blennophobia makes no difference from other phobias. It originated from human’s cognition towards matters. Many fauna and flora secrete mucus for self-protection, which does harm to human to some extent. Human would reject anything outside his or her body by instinct while the mucus is never the thing easy to be wiped off, and this renders unpleasant feelings which, in combination with other factors, make some people fear of the mucus.

Belonephobia means fear towards all spiny articles. Despite the fact that not all people have phobias, those having got one or more could scarcely be healed. Phobia barely has influence on ordinary life, but would exert enormous impact on human’s mentality once attacked. Therefore, design of horrific character in pattern or color is always for the sake of awakening the similar horrific memories in real life, which may not be dreadful but able to arouse negative emotions like repression and uneasiness, based on which the horror sense is triggered.

The character design contains nothing that is figured out without reference to any object. In other words, it would be extremely difficult to implement creation while having all objects within the cognitive domain bypassed. There exists no horrific character that is created without any reference, or such character would go against the human’s cognition. Psychology considers that any object possible to do harm to human would arouse sense of horror, and human’s brain would amplify such sense to keep him or her away from this object for safety. Therefore, a portion of character design shall be characterized of horrific objects acquainted by people or similar to those in reality so that the resonance would be induced and horror sense amplified. Horror is regarded as the most time-honored emotion, and the most archaic and intense horror stems from the unknown[21], which is the cause of imagination. Therefore, for the design of horrific character, the horror sense conveyed by the character alone shall be 30% and the rest would be achieved through imagination, and this 30% visual horror, in the author’s eyes, shall be the key point of horrific character design in triggering the 100% psychological horror.