5 creative pillars for designing Brawlers in Supercell’s Brawl Stars

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“If you start with character, you probably will end up with good drawings.”

This quote from animator Chuck Jones, who worked at Warner Bros. on Looney Tunes cartoons with characters like Bugs Bunny, and Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, sums up Supercell’s approach to creating Brawlers in Brawl Stars.

Speaking during the developer’s Games First Helsinki show, Supercell game artist Fernanda Oliveira discussed the key pillars of how the team creates its Brawlers.

Oliveira explained that when making characters, she tries to understand: who are they? Will people get excited about them? What’s the connection? What fan fiction will people write?

Humour creates connection

One pillar that the Brawl Stars team uses to create Brawlers is humour. As the presentation noted:

• Ignite your brain creating constant connections and dopamine.
• Open space for collaboration, inspiration and connection during the creative process, making it easy for each discipline to understand and add their own takes into the process.
• Allows for more possibilities to guide the logic behind the Brawler, and can get you to break rules by creating new rules.

Oliveira said when she has an idea for a Brawler, “I try to explain it almost as a joke”.

“I have a setup, so they have some expectations about this character, then I twist to something else,” she said.

An example of putting this into practice is the character Shade, pictured below.

The concept of the Brawler is that he’s supposed to be a ghost, but in Brawl Stars, there is no magic, so the team can’t rely on fantasy for the design.

Oliveira said she started to think how she could come up with an idea for a ghost that’s not actually a ghost. The idea for the character then came from the “classic pile of clothes that we all have in a corner of a room”, which can appear quite scary at night.

The idea evolved into the character having a hoodie, a hat and shades, which the team laughed at.

“To me this is like a great sign that I’m at least thinking in the right directions and people are thinking about more ideas when they at least know something about the character,” explained Oliveira.

“This has a real influence on mechanics, on how we can create the animation for those characters, how we can write the stories about those characters. 

“Just a few concepts about the character, they can create so much more when people are really passionate, invested or at least curious about that character.

“So humour is always like my first spark when I’m creating a character.”

Nostalgia

The second pillar for designs is inspiration from nostalgia.

• Creativity is collaborative. We can’t create anything from scratch, but we can always lean into references when creating something new – and this is great.
• The magical feeling of nostalgia + novelty that creates a strong connecting at first sight with something new.

“To me it’s really magical when we can create a unique character that somehow feels familiar because of the reference but it doesn’t feel like a copy,” said Oliveira, using the example of the Goodfeathers in Animaniacs, which parodies Goodfellas and The Godfather.

An example of this in Brawl Stars is the character Gray, which you can see below.

The Brawler is meant as a tribute to the Hollywood golden era and silent movies. Taking influence from silent film actor Buster Keaton, the character’s design became black and white, with physical gags used as game mechanics.

When creating an animation, the reference of silent movies became an interesting way to convey the character’s portal mechanic. This, Oliveira said, added “so much more depth than just saying this character has portals, which would be boring”.

Diversity

Another pillar for creating Brawlers is how to tackle diversity.

• Each character’s cultural background or unique features, combined with playful quirks, gives them depth and personality.
• Diversity is powerful and part of the play. So we should use it with intention.
• Diverse team is a reflection of that statement. Input from different backgrounds are not only important but highly valuable to get us to explore outside our comfort zones.
• We create games for the whole world.
  

Oliveira said that true diversity, in the context of Brawl Stars, is being able to be more playful with every and all characteristics of a Brawler. 

“Diversity is super powerful, but to me, we really have to use it with intention,” she explained.

“You cannot just say, okay, we need a black character or okay we need a blind character. No it’s not like that. On Brawl Stars I try to apply the same rules that I have for Brawlers, about their background, their traumas, who they are, what they like, what they hate. I have to have everything together and use the same logic of twisting that thing. 

“And to me when this is really connected with who they are, and those personality traits in all levels, if this can tell a little bit more about those Brawlers, then I know I’m going in a good direction.”

An example of this is shown in the character Angelo, half cupid, half fly, as seen below.

Angelo fell into a swamp and became a hybrid creature, “but since he’s so confident and amazing, he doesn’t care about being something in-between”. The Brawler developed into a non-binary character.

“To me that felt true,” said Oliveira. “Now I’m creating everything together. It’s not only about bringing diversity. I have to have like a real intention. It has to be in his DNA, his cultural background, who he is, how he wants to identify, and so on.”

Iconic simplicity

The next pillar is “iconic simplicity” and a less is more approach.

• A simple and strong design should inspire new possibilities, such as customisation.
• Learn to explain your idea (or character) through your design.
• “The whole essence of good drawing – and good thinking – is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be.” – Chuck Jones

“It’s a real challenge when you’re creating a character, and you have so many ideas in your brain, but you cannot just throw everything on top of that character,” said Oliveira.

For the character Spike, the aim of the character was to be cute and creepy.

“The challenge and the trick to do that is less is more,” explained Oliveira. She added that for Spike, she chose something that is cute, and a little bit dubious, like a cactus. At the same time, he constantly has a smile on his face, with his eyes and face just showing dark holes.

“I’m kind of against those designs that you have to put like hundreds of props and stuff hanging to tell the whole story of this character,” said Oliveira. “To me it’s like, no, what is this character? You need to pick one thing and go with that thing. It’s hard to do it, but I prefer characters that try to follow that rule.”

Timeless tribute

Finally, the last pillar Oliveira discussed was ‘timeless tribute’.

• Capture the Saturday Morning Magic 

  • Infuse every feature, character skin, animation with the energy and fun of classic Saturday morning Cartoons.

• Honour your Influences

  • Every creation stands on the shoulders of inspiration. Respect those who came before, and let your work be a tribute to their legacy.

• Create with Legacy in Mind

  • Each project has the power to inspire future creators. Treat it as both an honour and a responsibility – leave something unforgettable.

“What is the legacy we’re trying to leave behind when we’re trying to create something?” asked Oliveira. For Brawl Stars, she said, it was capturing the Saturday morning magic.

She noted that it’s important when having influences on designs, to honour those references.

“It’s not about copying,” she explained. “It’s about okay, I understand this idea, I want to bring a little bit of the soul of this idea, but I have to twist it with my own thing. I think this is super important, otherwise we’re just copying what everybody already did. And your intention has to be very clear when you’re creating something. You’re paying homage to something, but there is your own take, and your own take has to be clear.

“And that’s why, this is an exercise I like to do working with games. I noticed that there’s a lot of games copying from games and drinking from games, and gamers making games and looking into games, and everything is about games. And I’m like, the world is so big, we could be reading more, checking comics, checking weird stuff, underground stuff.

“There’s so much more that people are creating and this could literally feed your imagination to try something new and I think it’s so important when you can create something for games that was completely based on something else.”

She added: “So to me, to honour your reference is about knowing how to use them.

“Creating with legacy in mind is precisely that. When we’re creating we’re almost leaving this bible for the next generation that will for sure inspire them in everything they will create.”

You can watch the full video of the talk below.