It’s important to have diverse characters in games, but making that happen sometimes requires developers to step outside their comfort zone when it comes designing and animating those characters. 

At the GDC 2015 Animation Bootcamp this year a panel of game industry experts gathered to cheerfully debunk the specific misconception that women characters are “too hard to animate” or too expensive to include in games alongside male counterparts.

The discussion drew on the animation expertise of Lab Zero animator Mariel Cartwright and Naughty Dog animator Jonathan Cooper, as well as the game production and technical expertise of Giant Spacekat co-founder Brianna Wu. 

The resulting discussion offered a good overview of how developers large and small can efficiently incorporate more diverse characters and imagery into their games, and is worth your time to watch for free over on the GDC Vault.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech