Character Growth

After spending the past week thinking about the character I feel I am ready to give him a final personality. The character is a man in his late years, with an unknown age of 70+. The man lives alone, with only a cat as a companion. He spends most of his time plotting and trying on/adjusting his new gadgets.

Gadgets are his main hobby, they keep him entertained as well as fuel his ambitions on world domination. He feels he could seize the world as his own in five minutes if he wanted... but without looking cool while doing so, what would be the point? He has a soft spot when it comes to animals and children and there so usually finds his plans fail due to this reason. Apart from the other 99% of the time when his gadgets fail him or run a mock. However the man never gives up on his passion, and each new plot involves a whole new array of gadgets, set to fail in each in-devour. He believes that every time a gadget fails him, another (bigger better one) is necessary.

Most of the time the man is very cold, and slow moving. His past is unknown and his family are never spoken of. The man lives in a tall building, but spends most of his time in the basement or on the roof, testing his gadgets.

As a note:

• I played with the idea of a photo frame with an image of a woman, but I believe that as the audience is much younger, there would be no need in a reason behind his evil likeness, as this could just confuse the audience. 

• I don't want the character to be evil without a reason, as these reasons give great strength to a characters personality. For example Jafar from Disney's Aladdin wanted power. On the other hand some evil characters have no reason behind there logic, and can come across more psychotic, like my character. For example the Joker in Batman was evil "Just to see the world burn".

Understanding the audience I have scaled back my ideas so that the character is more child-friendly. I will continue to build upon this, however I regret not being able to follow all of my ideas as some of these bring to much darkness and even heroism to the character.

Updated Character Design

An updated look for my character.

New Ideas

After looking at some of the other character designs, I have started to see my character as being to "serious". There appears to be nothing fun about him and although he might work quiet well with an older audience, 7 - 11 year old children will not appreciate him as much. Because of this I have decided to turn my old man into a "Gadget Freak". I feel that if I kit him out with modern and futuristic technology, he may become a little more fun to look at.

For example, my plan is to now have him walk onto stage, talk and then have a jet pack and roller wheels animate out of his coat. He then tries to launch, but the rockets don't fire. This leads him to loose his "cool" posterior and becomes annoyed and angry. The scene then cuts to him at the bus stop, annoyed and moody. This is when a few more of his human animations will come into play.


I still don't feel that the story or character is completely finished, but I feel it is heading in a more child friendly area.

Character Design

In the past week I have looked at several animation clips of other characters and people, as well as starting on my characters artwork.

My artwork on the character is is going well, but proving difficult as I only have a limited ability to draw. To combat this I have taken to drawing in Flash CS4/5 with the paintbrush. This allows me to draw artistically but gives me the ability to undo mistakes easily. Below is a screenshot of the artwork so far. I plan on finishing the image off with a second, front angle drawing of the character, as well as shading and even colouring the design.

Screenshot of artwork so far

To try and get a sense of the characters movement I have tried to find clips of old characters and men, as well as characters who use a cane of walking stick to get a feel for the movement.

Looking at Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, from 00:12 - 1:10 you can see the "Host" of the show. The character is an old and creepy man. You can see from his exterior that he is very thin, has a thin face with sharp chin. The animations are very helpful when working with hand animations and facial expressions, however this character moves to fast and unaided to give me a sense of my characters movement speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmYF_YzrvGo

Maleficent starts with a dark entrance, having the lightning and loud strikes already give the user an idea of evil. Once she appears on the screen she is immediately met by a vulture, which swoops in from the side. Her look already gives her and evil appearence, and her actions accompany this. She moves very slowly, to give the appearence that she is relaxed and in control. This sense of control is found in many evil characters and is represented differently to the hero. The character gives you the idea that she has planned everything she talks about and the actions of those around her.

When she speaks you can also see that her head is mostly tillted upwards, to give the appearence of looking down on those around her. This adds to the sense of control. Sometimes you will notice evil characters monologing while looking at the floor. I always see this as the characters being "bored"with the advisary, and gives the character a feel of confidence and control, in this scene you can see her looking away from the other characters while talking. This shows that she is not worried about them, and feels un-threatened by them, as apposed to the other characters who's eyes are fixed on Maleficent.

Evil characters (enless made purposly grumpy) can usually be found with a simle on there face. This is because the character is following there plan and unsuprised. The times when evil characters and angry or upset are most commonly when there plans are changed or effected by the other characters. This can be seen here, as Maleficent is smiling most of the time, but when her control is lost her emotions turn to anger.

At one point she raises her arms, her cloak around her

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl8RY7Bm-Ew

While searching through animations I also thought to look up Nosferatu, which is very helpful in designing the look of my character as they share the same body style and age. Another I decided to look at was the professor in the intro for Robot Chicken. The character is clearly insane, although you get this through only seeing him for around 15 seconds. This is a great example of how his personality is clear just through the characters model and expression.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=patgT_qG65U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDwJArADO9o