Hero design: look first, life second

Players pick a hero by how they look before they read a word. This skill is the method. Your project's answers (roster, roles, art rules, past decisions) live in your design docs; read them fresh each time. Lines marked (own view) have no outside source; tune them when play or the project owner says otherwise.

Read first

• Your design pillars: logline, core emotions, the verbs the player repeats.
• Your character docs: hero roles, sheet fields, naming rules, any decisions on resemblance to famous heroes or on capes.
• Your art bible in full: hero colour rules, battle hero height and camera, the reject list, reference images.
• Every approved hero's sheet and battle capture: the lineup you must not collide with.
• If the art bible and a newer decision disagree, the newer decision wins; flag the stale line to whoever owns the bible.

1. The slot

• Which role, and which gap in the roster? Name the job in one word, the way Dave Cockrum pitched "our muscle guy".
• What does the team lack as a picture? Body size, silhouette family, colour family, a centre figure. Lay the roster's battle-size silhouettes side by side and look for the empty space.

2. Pick the proven cliché

Start from a hero type that has worked for decades, not from a period object or a job.

• Write the fantasy as one sentence a player would buy: "nothing can hurt him", "he throws the shield", "the monster who is the good guy".
• Name two or three famous heroes that prove it (Superman, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Storm, Hellboy, Spider-Man). How close you may get to them is a project decision; check it.
• Choose the path:
  • Beautiful path. Idealised body, striking face and hair, costume and emblem (Superman, Storm, Captain Marvel).
  • Power-body path. The body is the power and the costume (Hulk, the Thing, Hellboy). Use it only when the power can't be shown any other way.
• Can a stranger say the power in three words from the picture? Is this type already on the roster?

3. Twist it: one change

Keep the bones familiar and change one thing that sends the hero somewhere new (Alan Moore: familiar enough, then freedom).

Pick one lever:

• Source. Where the power comes from (something native to your setting instead of a lab or an alien).
• Cost. What the power takes from them (scars, memory, age, fear of being seen).
• Person. Stan Lee's "feet of clay": the one ordinary problem under the costume.
• Inversion. Age, sex, body type or temperament flipped against the type.
• Gap. Something the cliché never explained (Edna Mode: who makes the suits?).
• World. How the world treats them (Hulk hunted up the hill).

Tests:

• Swap test (Kurt Busiek). Drop the hero into the original's story. If nothing would change, the twist is too small.
• Reason test (Joe Zee). Is it different for a reason the player will feel, or different for different's sake?
• Keep the costume. Dropping costumes was Marvel's own failed twist (Lee, 1968). Twist the person; don't twist away the genre.
• (own view) Your setting's period colours materials and cut. It is a finish on the costume, not the source of the concept.

4. Appearance first

Write and sketch the look before any story. Fill these in order.

1. Three tone words. What the hero must feel like at a glance, most important first (Zee's tonality stack), e.g. proud, warm, unstoppable.
2. Silhouette. Body type says the role (big = tank, slim = mobile). Start from black silhouettes: 15 to 30 thumbnails, keep 3 to 5. Check the silhouette in the attack pose too, not only idle.
3. One big power on the body. One feature or object that shows the power from across the board: the shield, the hammer, the stone hand, glowing eyes, the stretched arm. Marvel Rivals' rule: "if you just look at them, you can tell what their powers are." Exactly one; a second feature competes.
4. Costume. The genre marker. Decide each with a reason:
   • Emblem: a heraldic sign tied to the power, big enough to read at battle size (Joe Shuster's S kept growing).
   • Cape or none: a cape adds motion and drama. Check it doesn't hide the power feature or the silhouette, and that it survives rigging.
   • Mask or face: a full mask lets anyone be under it (Spider-Man); an open face sells beauty and personality.
   • Built for action (Jack Kirby): nothing that would stop them fighting.
5. Colour. Two or three colours, each with a meaning, inside the bible's palette. Flip or borrow a famous scheme on purpose if it helps (Jamie McKelvie flipped the 1970s Captain Marvel).
6. Beauty and appeal. Say what makes them beautiful or cool and defend it (Cockrum's white hair for Storm). Power-body heroes should be "not all that ugly" (Lee): readable eyes, an upright or protective posture, one humane detail.
7. Simple enough to rebuild. McKelvie's "drawn over and over" means, for a 3D game, rebuilt, rigged and read at battle size. A shape smaller than a hand at battle size becomes one colour spot or goes.
8. Concept image before detail. Once 1 to 5 are rough, make a quick concept image: one figure alone, your style anchor, a plain ground. The prompt must show the face (or a designed mask with visible eyes), one emblem, a diagonal pose with something moving (cape, hair, skirt), and one strong colour as the largest field. Never write "nothing else on the costume", which yields a bare suit. If you use a style reference, it should be a hero with a real costume, and the prompt should list what of it must not be copied. Check the image at battle size beside existing heroes. 🔴 Paid image generation needs the human's approval with a count and cost estimate. Only a hero the human finds appealing goes on to section 5 and the full sheet. This is not a 3D source sheet.

5. The hidden life, after the look

The everyday self is the disguise (Jules Feiffer). Write it only after the human has seen the concept and liked it, and never let it redesign the costume.

• Opposite. Which everyday self is furthest from the costume? (Mild reporter vs invulnerable alien; rich idler vs dark avenger.)
• Why hide. What would happen if the world saw the power? Power-body heroes can't hide in plain sight; they hide away.
• Job. A real life in your setting that gives cover, a recruit scene and one ordinary problem. Two lines at most.
• Echo. One small thread from the life into the costume is allowed (a badge, a colour). The life must not supply the costume.
• Fill the rest of your sheet fields. Get name candidates and let the human pick.

6. Checks before showing anyone

A fail goes back to the step named. If the candidate is words only, judge against existing heroes' battle captures, label it as agent observation, and rerun the checks once images exist.

• Battle size. Shrink the silhouette to battle hero height at the battle camera angle. Can you tell who it is and what the power is in about one second? (→ 4)
• Black-out lineup. Fill it black beside every current hero. No two alike (Marvel Rivals dropped Red Hulk for sharing Hulk's shape). (→ 4.2)
• Value and colour. In greyscale the hero still separates from the ground; colours don't repeat another hero's family or the enemy colour. (→ 4.5)
• Genre read. Cover the caption: does a stranger say "superhero", not "worker" or "soldier"? (→ 2, 4.4)
• Twist. Passes the swap and reason tests. (→ 3)
• Team. The roster now spreads body types, sizes and colours, one job per member. (→ 1)
• Pillars. The hero makes your core emotion visible and fits the logline. (→ 5)
• Reject list. Checked against the current bible and newer decisions.

7. Presenting candidates

Per candidate, in this order:

1. Look. Two or three lines: silhouette, the power on the body, costume and colours, why they're beautiful or cool.
2. Cliché → twist. One line: "Superman's invulnerable strongman, but…".
3. Hidden life. One or two lines.
4. Role. One word plus one line on their job in the team.

• One candidate per card or image, never a grid. Same size and camera for every image.
• Let the human keep several when that's a real answer.
• State images used and their cost. Turnarounds, 3D generation and final art each need their own approval and estimate.
• No names in candidates; naming comes later.

Tuning this skill

Log what the human kept or rejected and why. When two answers point the same way, change the step here. Replace (own view) lines once evidence arrives.