Art Corner - Tiger Shen Character Concept

By Matt Goldman, Art Director at BioWare

Tiger Shen is one of the six selectable Player Character (PC) models in Jade Empire. Each of our pre-generated PCs was designed to appeal to a role-playing style and to give both male and female choices. Tiger Shen obviously represents a role-playing style that is about diving right in and powering through your opponents with a touch less concern for finesse.

Tiger Shen was designed to look big, tough and more than able to handle himself in combat, whether it be barehanded or with heavy weapons. Tiger Shen is not as agile as the other pregenerated characters, but as the ultimate brawler, he deals out huge damage. The player who wants to play through Jade Empire with a strong focus on physical combat and strong, overpowering strikes will most likely want to choose Tiger Shen. It's important to note, however, that you have the option of customizing these characters' abilities, fighting styles, and name however you'd like; you're not limited to the default attributes.

Tiger went through a fair amount of revision before the final version was decided upon. The inspiration for Tiger Shen came initially from the Outlaws of the Marsh stories. He is a combination of the "Star of Death," Li Kui the Black Whirlwind, and the northern barbarian look. We drew up concepts and built, painted, posed, and rendered an early prototype model to use in focus testing. Our test audience didn't find believable the idea of this savage incarnation solving the challenges in Jade Empire, so we decided to take the character in a more refined direction to put a bit more emphasis on his intellect.

We wanted to communicate an abundance of raw physical power combined with a degree of intelligence and sophistication. At this point, we did more drawings to develop the new direction of the character. We built, textured, and focus tested a new model that better conveyed the combination of power, strength, and intelligence. Because the character was closer to being finalized, we built it with a much higher poly mesh than the first version, as well as a more detailed texture map. BioWare hired a model whose chiseled features were perfect for the role and sent a photographer to get images of every aspect of his face. From this new reference we built and textured a new head. Aside from a few minor adjustments to the mesh so that the animation and cloth movement would work better, that became the final Tiger Shen game model.

Want to comment on this article or read what others have to say about it? Join the official discussion!