I present you the book Character design for mobile devices written by NFGMan, and published by Rotovision. This is a great and unique resource about game character design.

Book Info

• Character design for mobile devices

• Written by NFGMan, published by RotoVision
  ISBN-10: 2940361126 ISBN-13: 978-2940361120. 192 pages
• Order? From RotoVision

Summary

Including you get a entire historical overview of portable game devices from the last decades (since the 1980s!) like Nintendo, GameBoy, Playstation, Atari and the more obscure and forgotten ones. This book is in the first place a tribute to all these memorable game characters that came into the lives of millions of gamers. Does anyone remember Mario Bros jumping up and down, Sonic from Sega running at full speed? You will find the complete history of these characters right in this book. Since these characters needed to fight, run, or find treasures — sprites where developed for these animated characters.

You see a lot of attention to what happened behind the scenes. In amazing detail you learn about how technology advanced and pixel artists constantly faced new design challenges for all these different portable games (and arcade games). If I look back at the time I played Donkey Kong on Nintendo or Streetfighter as a kid — I cannot help to feel a little nostalgic.

Critique

This book reads like a real documentary. Sometimes I felt being in a time capsule when looking at all these odd portable devices and game characters from the past. From the very first primitive steps of game development, commentary on game design, and showcases of the best pixel artists in the world to getting introduced to ancient game characters (that actually look very refined and alive) and how games were ported to cellphones, I can just say this book is unique and seldom seen. It makes you want to start designing your own game characters. Actually it is mentioned in the book that a hard fanbase of game designers still create games for old consoles.

I did contact the author of the book to congratulate him with this interesting book. He replied that he was not happy about the editing.That is the greatest pitfall of this book: deadlines can make a poor book concerning lay-out and erratalists. After all, there is so much game history told here.

Who should read the book

Being a webdesigner, I more than once designed a favicon, or little contextual icons for a website. Icon design when done good … these miniature images look very inviting.The header image in this CSS Zen Garden submission uses faux lego to make a nice piece of isometric pixelart. So anyone loving games, pushing pixels would love this book.

Sidenote

A very long time ago (we speak 1981), Donkey Kong, one of the first iconic game characters to hit arcades. With the continuous improvement of features in mobile devices — we see pixel art resurfacing again in mobile games! Game characters like Donkey Kong build with mere pixels are not part of a nostalgic distant memory but are very now (and here to stay). The future of pixel artists is ensured and thanks to the retro looking games being developed for all these mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs. And the whole craze of mobile phone users that download and share these retro-looking games among their peers. Just like in the old days — the restriction of screen estate, limited memory and processing power makes the artists that create or re-create these fun games are again creating pixel art in full glory!

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