Carmen Sandiego

"Carmen Sandiego"

The original game in the series, ‘Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?’, established a formula that was followed very faithfully in all Carmen Sandiego games during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This formula involves a series of missions in which the user tracks and apprehends each of Carmen's underlings. Each case begins with the user being alerted that a spectacular theft has been committed. Immediately transported to the scene of the crime, the user must find clues to infer the suspect's next destination and to create an arrest warrant describing the guilty party's attributes.

The culprit travels through a series of different destinations in an attempt to shake off any pursuers, so the user will have to continue tracking the thief for some time. The game continues in this manner until the user catches up with culprit, at which point the thief is arrested, and if the warrant is correct, the user puts the thief in ACME prison. As more and more thieves are arrested, the user rises up through ACME's ranks, and the later cases assigned to the user will become more difficult. On the final case, the perpetrator turns out to be Carmen herself, and after the user successfully captures her, the game is completed.

After Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company in 1998,

TLC released Carmen Sandiego's ThinkQuick Challenge in 1999, a quiz game.

Then in 2001, TLC released Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?,

fully titled Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Treasures of Knowledge.

The art images below are from work on the product released in 2001. You guessed it – we start with the sketches.

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Regardless of the size that the character will be in the game, sketches are usually drawn larger. I preferred drawing with a 100B or HB pencil on 9” x 12” Strathmore Drawing paper. When sketches were approved and we needed the character animated, we moved on to standard animation paper.

We used USAnimation, a high-end software package designed to facilitate the traditional animation process using digital technologies.The output from USAnimation was character animation whatever size the game needed.

The next step was shading. How a character appeared was so dependent on light. In the art world, it is referred to as chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark). It is the strong contrast of light and shade in a painting, drawing or print, which creates the illusion of three-dimensional forms. Notice the shadows of Carmen’s arm on her coat.

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Carmen Sandiego was almost always portrayed as a woman with a red trench coat, a matching fedora and long brown hair, although her hair color was given to be "auburn" or "black" in some of the earliest games. Her fedora is often shown leaving her face in shadow and obscuring her eyes. When her eyes are visible, they are usually brown, although they were blue in Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?

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The light source for most scenes are upper left or upper right, and the characters should generally follow that rule. Secondary light sources like flashlights and reflected light are a couple of exceptions. We wanted Carmen to have exceptional highlights and shadows.

The warm yellow highlights definitely allowed her trenchcoat and hat to stand out against the cool purple shadows. While we used oversaturated color for the clothing, Carmen’s face was always rendered in a clean, not overdone style.

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There are a number of things to observe in Carmen’s color and shading. Her face has more natural skin tones and are not as saturated as her hair and clothing. The highlights are more fabricated than real. While the general direction of the light source has not been altered, artistic license has been taken for the light patterns.

Below is a good example of artistic highlights and shadows.

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In many appearances Carmen wore gray or black leather gloves. In the original Brøderbund games and in all the TV shows, she wore a yellow or orange dress under her trench coat, with a matching stripe on her fedora, and red high-heeled shoes. She also seemed to have a flair for elegance, often wearing jewelry.
However, in the games created under The Learning Company, her appearance was changed so that she wore a grayish black catsuit under her trench coat, with the stripe on her fedora changed to match, and more practical footwear (boots).

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