Today’s characters should be able to extend across media. Think in terms of film, TV, home video and DVD, the Internet, wireless, books, games, toys, and other merchandise.
Layer details, gestures, speech, imperfections, behaviors, original reactions, and ap- proaches to action. Layering makes your character more interesting and attracts different demographic groups for different reasons.
If this character is for a series or a game, is your character interesting and unique enough to not eventually become boring? Is there some mystery there, a feeling that there’s more to find out, more we want to know? Can your character grow? How? Is she strong enough to sustain conflict and be funny week after week? Characters must have enough history to allow the audience to continually be discovering something fresh. Two or more characters who have known each other in the past can keep tapping into this history.
Figures 5.1 and 5.2 The Powerpuff Girls contemplate their current threats and opportunities before filling out their own Character Profile! Notice the basic shapes and the over all simplicity of design. The Powerpuff Girls and all related characters and elements are trademarks of Cartoon Network © 2004. A Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.
In a series characters probably change a little over the course of each story, but if they change too much, then their relationships have changed, and you no longer have that same series. You have to watch out for that.
For television keep your characters simple, something you can establish (without detail) in a speech or a half page of script. Your characters should have only two or three major attributes. Keep them visually simple as well (see figures 5.1 and 5.2). A simple character makes a better stuffed toy. The character animates more easily and ends up looking nicer in a TV series because the artists can draw or model him better and quicker. Every detail and extra color adds pencil time or modeling time during the animation process, adding up to increased animation expenses. When designing, think three-dimensionally for toys and for animation because the character must be drawn or modeled and seen from every angle as she moves.
As you’re designing these characters, you’ll want to show what they look like from all angles (front, back, and side, and possibly from a low angle and a high angle as well). You’ll want them drawn in action and flaunting an attitude, showcasing their personality. You’ll want them posed so that we can see easily what they’re doing if we can only see a silhou- ette. We want to also see them in relationships with one or more of the other characters, preferably in typical backgrounds of the series or film.
Okay—now you’ve developed your characters. Is a character missing . . . someone to set off the other characters, set sparks flying, take the plot off in another direction? Try creat- ing a situation in which your characters have to react. The way they react is the way you get to know them and test their relationships.
Any character who is similar to another character shouldn’t be there. Remember that characters should be as different from each other as possible to keep interest, provide con- flict, and comment on the theme. Their traits and visual appearances should be different; they should contrast in values, attitudes, lifestyles, and experience. A comedy, especially, requires that each character contrast sharply with each other character to provide the humor.
Let your characters evolve as you work with them. Changing one part of the puzzle usually means adjusting others. This is a process; do some research of your own. Try out your characters on your own kids, on your nieces and nephews, on a youth group. You might test them at children’s wards in hospitals or as mascots. Make up a story about them to tell your kids at bedtime. Watch reactions, ask questions, and make developmental changes accordingly.
Keep your characters consistent. They must remain true to their core traits and to what has made them who they are. Keep their choices consistent with their values.
Put your best character in the right concept for him. The concept and the character should be a tight fit. Stories should stem from the personalities of the main characters.
Your Character in a Story
If you’re creating characters for a feature or a short as opposed to a series, then you want to develop your characters to best tell your specific story. Characters have conflicts in dramas and do funny things in comedy because they are so different. So their values in life must be different. Your characters must be created with personalities that best express a conflict in
their values.Values indicate a theme.The theme centers on the core values that are expressed in a story, the basic message, or lesson that the protagonist learns. You may want your main character to reveal something about the theme to us but probably not in words. Maybe he represents one point of view about your theme and the villain who opposes him represents the opposing view. Maybe the other characters all represent differing points of view. One character could even express the point of view of the audience. But each character should have his own good motivations for feeling the way he does.
Your audience needs to be able to identify right away who the major characters are and be able to tell them apart easily by name, sight, and personality. We should recognize, too, which characters are minor and unimportant. Use height, weight, ethnic type, voice, hair- style, clothing style and color, attitudes, and movement to help identify characters.
The hero or heroine must be the most interesting character in the story. If he’s not, then you might want to consider centering the story around the colorful character instead, making him the protagonist. Supporting characters don’t have the burden of driving the story forward, and so they may become more interesting and colorful. Don’t let them take over! If your characters get too pushy, stand up to them, and threaten to erase them from your hard drive!
You may want your less important characters to help in defining the role of the hero. Is your hero a leader, a father figure, the class clown? Minor characters can help us to under- stand the star’s role in his peer group and in the story.
All characters need a story function, or they shouldn’t be there. What’s the essence of this character—the core or nub? What is the one dominant characteristic that most affects the plot? If a character doesn’t affect the plot, then remove him. A character should always be motivated by this essential characteristic, and every other trait should ideally come out of this one or support it. What event or circumstance or decision in the past made him this way?
Character information is sprinkled throughout the script, not crammed into the begin- ning. Use only the essence, and be concise. Use conflicts, contrasts, reactions, gags, or visual symbols to convey information and define character.
Consider your protagonist or hero. What plans does he make, and what does he do to attain this goal? What decisions does she make along the way? How do they affect her? How do they affect others? What terrible thing is at stake if our hero doesn’t reach this goal? Animation protagonists invariably do reach their goals at the end.
What are each character’s goals? What do they want? Do we care? What are their hidden agendas? What do they reallywant? (If this is animation for kids, what drove you
personally as a kid?) What does each character promise? You should only set up traits and circumstances that apply to this story and the goal. But if a character is playing with matches, we need to see the inferno, the payoff. Don’t cheat your audience out of the juiciest parts of your story.
Think in terms of scenes. What are your characters’ goals in each scene? Which char- acter is driving each scene? What are your characters’ feelings in each scene?
Is there a broad range of emotions throughout your story? What are the conflicts your characters go through to reach their goals? The goals of different characters should conflict to set off sparks. We need to see the effects of conflict on the main characters. Characters should confront difficult choices, and they must make those choices themselves. The more difficult the choice, the more interesting the story. Because of difficult choices we get to know Developing Characters 71
the characters better, and we come to admire them more. What’s hidden along the way from your characters or from the audience? What things do some characters hide from them- selves? As all this information comes to light, the choices become ever more difficult, leading to the most difficult choice of all, the critical choice, near the end of the story. These choices make your characters drop their masks. They react instinctively, revealing what’s been hidden. What do we learn about a character then? What does that character learn about himself? How does he change because of it? Characters change each other. Does your char- acter always stay in character, acting and reacting in ways that only he would do?
In the end, this is what’s important: What event/circumstance/decision in the past is still affecting your hero today, making him who he is and driving the plot of the story you’re writing today? Anything that you discovered about your character in developing him that doesn’t relate to this is unimportant and doesn’t belong in your story.