Sarah Clarity Studios

Chapter 4: Final Packages: What to Include and Label for 3D / Rigging / Animation / Narrative / Marketing

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Final Packages: What to Include and Label for 3D, Rigging, Animation, Narrative & Marketing

From Brief to Package: The Character Concept Pipeline (Ideation → Iteration → Finals → Handoff)

A final character package is the bridge between vision and implementation. It gathers the results of ideation and iteration, codifies the decisions made during approvals, and presents them in a form that every downstream team can act on without guessing. A package is not a single poster but a small, coherent set of pages and files that together establish proportion, silhouette, construction, material logic, performance intent, and brand use. When authored with both concept and production in mind, a final package reduces rework, clarifies responsibility, and preserves the design’s grammar from the first sculpt to the last marketing comp.

The package should open with a context header that restates the approved brief in measurable language. It is important to include the role, camera modes, target platforms, height in engine units, skeleton family, and the few verbs that define moment‑to‑moment play. This header is not ornamental; it tells every reader how to interpret the measurements and silhouettes that follow. If the character is expected to function across multiple game modes or marketing framings, the header should state those explicitly so readers do not infer conflicting priorities later in the build.

The central artifact is the orthographic construction sheet prepared at the end of the concept phase. This page presents front, side, and back views on a common ground plane with a visible scale bar, head count, and numeric dimensions for critical spans. It is essential to indicate shoulder width, hip width, pelvis height, leg length, head height, hand span, and foot length in engine units rather than arbitrary pixels. Landmarks for joint centers should be marked with small ticks that correspond to probable rig joints so that modelers and riggers can place bones and predict deformation. Asymmetry must be explicit in these views; if any detail will be mirrored for efficiency, the page should indicate what is mirrored and what must remain unique to protect identity and gameplay.

Complementing the orthos, the proportion and silhouette sheet should summarize the character’s value hierarchy and mass distribution. The purpose of this page is to ensure that readability survives across cameras and distances. Values need to be grouped so large masses communicate role at a glance, medium masses carry function and faction, and small masses supply craft and story without creating noise. It is critical to restate the “do not break” negative spaces that protect class reads, such as the gap between shield and hip, the daylight under a cape, or the skyline around a hat. If the project employs LOD policies that thin limbs or remove accessories, the sheet should indicate how much simplification the character can absorb while remaining identifiable.

For 3D, the package must include construction logic. This is best conveyed by exploded diagrams and sectional insets that show how armor plates nest, how straps weave through slots, and how cloth overlaps or tucks. It is wise to include a small topology philosophy note that states which edges must remain straight for rig performance, where smoothing groups should break to protect highlights, and where support loops are expected to preserve silhouette. When the design includes complex material transitions—such as rigid armor into soft undersuit—sectional views should indicate seam paths and fastening logic so that the model can be cut and UV’d in sensible islands.

Rigging consumes a specific slice of the package. It benefits from a socket map that lists attachment points with coordinates relative to the pelvis or spine rather than to screen space. The package should also include deformation guides that depict extreme poses for the shoulders, elbows, spine, hips, and knees, annotated with the silhouette shapes that must survive those ranges. If the character carries capes, skirts, tails, wings, or long hair, collision volumes should be sketched as simplified shapes with intended simulation ranges. These sketches act as a contract for cloth setup and help riggers size capsules and pins without guessing.

Animation reads performance on the page before it sees a rig. For this team, the package should present a compact pose library tied to gameplay verbs with clear weight transfer and contact patches. Each verb should be represented by a hero pose accompanied by anticipation and follow‑through poses at the same scale, so animators can feel the intended rhythm. Hands deserve special attention, with grip shapes and wrist angles drawn in a way that respects realistic ranges; an attractive drawing that requires hyperextension will cause rig pain and runtime clipping. If the design relies on a particular prop interaction, a simple primitive stand‑in for the prop should be shown so that hand placement and elbow clearance are unambiguous.

Narrative requires a different lens. The final package should contain a concise lore capsule that clarifies voice, motivation, and social role without dictating cinematics. The capsule should focus on how story informs silhouette and costume logic. It is helpful to include two or three performance beats that suggest posture, tempo, and gesture vocabulary, because these guide both animation and voice direction. If the character has faction marks, heirloom wear, or ritual damage, a small panel should explain what the marks mean so that localization and community teams can speak about them consistently in text and marketing.

Marketing needs a page that translates the design into brand assets. This page should include a clean, high‑contrast three‑quarter hero view on neutral, a small set of camera‑aware crops that will survive thumbnails and storefront banners, and a short note on color usage that reflects the approved value hierarchy. It is helpful to indicate background do’s and don’ts, such as value bands to avoid that would erase the silhouette. If the character will ship with skins, a sliver of the palette range should be shown to demonstrate how identity survives hue shifts.

File architecture is the spine of a readable package. Pages should be numbered and named predictably so that searching and versioning remain sane. A sensible structure places the context header first, followed by orthos, proportion and silhouette, construction diagrams, rig‑animation notes, narrative capsule, and marketing kit. Each page should contain a slim annotation layer group reserved for comments and callouts, separate from painted pixels. If a change is made between versions, the package should carry a plain‑language change log that lists what moved and why, so that a downstream artist can judge impact without opening older files.

Because game assets rarely live in isolation, a neighbor lineup is valuable. A small strip that shows the character alongside allies and foes at gameplay scale confirms contrast and calls attention to any collision between silhouettes or role reads. The lineup should use the same ground plane and eye level as the orthos so that comparisons are honest. If the project supports multiple cameras, duplicating the strip for those views prevents camera‑specific read failures later in the pipeline.

A package becomes truly production‑grade when it includes implementation notes that translate aesthetics into constraints. This can be as simple as a short paragraph stating which areas are cloth‑sim versus rigid, which parts must support tinting or material swaps, and which areas are reserved for VFX anchors and UI trackers. Providing these notes in the concept package helps technical artists plan shader setups and helps UI avoid occluding critical reads with markers and overlays.

The handoff itself should be framed as a moment in a conversation rather than the end of one. A cover note naming the concept owner for intent and the production owner for implementation establishes a clear path for questions. When both names appear on the first page, teams avoid long detours through email chains. The act of exporting layered PSDs and flattened reference PNGs should be accompanied by a quick sanity check that every page includes a scale bar, engine units, and the fixed ground plane; packages without these signals are the ones that produce the most expensive misunderstandings.

Across studios, the same failure modes repeat and are best addressed with disciplined packaging. Over‑rendered concept pages obscure edge clarity and slow modeling. Orthos that drift from turnarounds erode trust and force teams to choose a truth arbitrarily. Pose pages that impress at poster size but collapse at gameplay scale leave animation with avoidable iteration. Narrative notes that explain away design choices instead of grounding them in world logic confuse marketing. Marketing comps that change value hierarchy train the audience to recognize a character in a way the game cannot reproduce. Each of these failures can be prevented by returning to the package’s core promise: to encode decisions in a form that downstream teams can verify in their context before they spend a sprint.

For both concept and production, a shared definition of done keeps packages reliable. For exploration‑side concept artists, done means that every page has passed distance and camera checks, that silhouettes and proportions match approvals, and that intent is annotated where ambiguity might arise. For production‑side artists, done means that measurements, socket maps, deformation and collision expectations, and material transitions are all present in engine units, and that the package maps cleanly to a skeleton family without surprise. For the project as a whole, done means that modeling can block in, rigging can bind, animation can stage a verb set, narrative can write copy, and marketing can compose a hero crop—all without reinterpreting the design. When packages hit this mark, the character that ships is the character that was approved, and the studio spends its time elevating quality instead of reconciling documents.