Most character creators have traditionally been based around the mechanical process of creating models. Grab a control point, and move it around. Select a patch of skin, and recolor it. Eventually you give the file a name and save it. Lame.

We've been trying to go in another direction for some time. How does a writer create a character? First they figure out a list of adjectives and aspects representing the person, "A tense man with dark hands pulled a cigarette out of a wrinkled Galliano overcoat." This is why the first step of character creation here is naming your person, then filling in their hometown, attitude, size, etc. Rather than controlling the model, we try to give control over the characterization.

You'll notice that once you've created your character, they are still sporting default duds. Your character isn't the clothes: they can put on any outfit they feel like in the morning. But try as they might, they can't wake up in the morning and suddenly make themselves taller or less Canadian. That humanizing distinction helps give characters more "meat," and helps keep them from feeling disposable or cookie-cutter like so many games before.

One of the overarching themes we try to promote is teaching the unwashed masses about rock. To that end, (and because the list would be otherwise really, really long) we broke the clothing out by genre. You can mix and match, of course, but if you stick with one genre your outfit probably won't look awful.

We also try to make character creation as fast as possible. When you've got 4 people all arguing about whether lime PVC pants match an Aqua-tipped mohawk, it takes some time. We tried to pull out any of the stuff that might detract from that like loading different shops, or saving every few seconds, or making players pick out clothing before their band is formed. You can still annoy your band mates and waste a ton of time here, but at least most of that should be the fun stuff.

Finding the right color isn't always easy. We found on previous systems that colors never quite matched, or that there just weren't enough options. Have you ever put on a shirt and pants, only to find that they weren't the same shade of black? Well, I'm glad to tell you, we put in a TON of color options here. We've got some solid tech under the hood to let us recolor stuff, and the outfits show this nicely. Most pieces have between five and fifty colors associated with them. Even with this overwhelming sea of colors, we still hand-pick each one to make sure they're all rock. Or kind of rock... The teal and pink got in through glam.

Then there is the art maker stuff. A lot of the clothes will let you throw on a band logo once you've bought them, like leather jackets or blank t-shirts. We wanted to get this in as many places as possible, to really give some expression to players.

Throw on some shades, maybe a couple of wrist spikes, and you're done.

One more thing. A lot of other character creators / customization shops are about buying and owning everything. Not here. Most things are cheap enough that you can change your outfit around every few songs. You could collect every clothing piece in the game if you're obsessive, but that's not the point. The point is splurging on the drum set that best fits your musician, rather than buying every single one in the store. Certain other things like hairstyles cost you every time you want to change them. What, a stylist is going to do your hair again for free just because you had it that way two weeks ago?

And more or less that's it. Here are a couple of you guys quickly made in-game, at the other end of the character creation process. I'll let you all figure out who they are supposed to be.