Character Development - Week 1 - Ideas Generation

In this module we will explore the process of character development, design and movement. By the end of the module I have to design a believable animated character and document the process.

In this weeks lesson we looked at generating ideas, this can from: listening to music, watching people and listening to their conversations and reading books. We firstly listened to the song "A Well Respected Man" by the Kinks. We listened to this as it shows hows people interpret things differently. People may have similar ideas but they are not going to have the exact same one. When i heard this song i thought the man might be a tall man that always wore a suit no matter what the event/occasion and was a very confident man. Other people had other ideas like: a serial killer when he is at home or being smart outside of his house and being really messy once he was home.

When then looked at how people watching and character hunting can help you with ideas.

Just watching/listening people in the street, on the
We looked at Humans of New York a photographer named Brandon takes pictures people wouldn't normally notice of people in the street. He blogs about the photos he takes and has a quote or story from the person the picture is of. He blog is s good way to find real like characters and stories.

Human the movie is another way at finding ideas. It's videos of different people talking about different parts of their life and is again a good way to find real stories and ideas for characters.

Classwork:

For our task in class we were split into pairs, Bethany and I chose to work together. Using the photo given to use we had to come up with 3 initial character ideas and the expand more on our favorite one and develop the character and answer questions about the character.

This is the picture we were given:

 The idea we came up with are

Idea 1:

Mowgli was raised in the wild by bears and so cannot communicate with humans. She is a mute and s communicates with the bears with grunting and animal like ways. Found by scientists they put her in a room with one of the bears and watch her as part of an experiment to see what she is like with the bear. We chose this one to look at develop first but after speaking to Emily we realised she was a secondary character and wasn't exciting enough to be a main character so we chose to develop a different character.
Idea 2:

A girl is isolated from society because of her family. She becomes awkward because of this and doesn't know how to communicate with people. We decided it was in a time period where it was acceptable to lock up the mentally ill and keep them hidden so she imagines herself away and free from where she is being kept. She has her own adventures in her mind while she trapped him her room.

Idea 3 - Chosen one to develop
Joe (because he is an average Joe) is a polite accountant and is very plain looking, in a way that if you past him in the street you wouldn't look twice. He is small physically and doesn't have anything really going for him. Since he was little he has loved everything to do with bears. He even wears bear themed clothing to work like: ties, socks, underwear. One day he bought a bear costume and ever since then whenever he puts it on he has confidence and feels like he can be himself and o anything.
 Being raised by his very over protective mother is a major reason to why he has a shy demeanor. The photo we were given above is when he told his girlfriend about the bear costume and about wanting to wear it more so he is confident all the time. As you can see it is a lot to take in and she doesn't seem to be taking it well. He doesn't regret telling he and is extremely happy he did, he can be himself truly now and be free and confident.

Above were the questions we were asked to think about.
      

Above are the answers the questions on Joe. When we got feedback from the class and Emily our idea had legs, however was seen to be a mockumentary based on the people who like to dress up in animal costumes on a daily basis.

This exercise was good as it showed me how you could make up a character at any time about anything but unless they have a good personality, good background story, have enough depth and are believable to the audience they aren't developed enough and the audience wont believe them. Which as this exercise has show is very difficult to do.

For homework we have to start researching ourselves for our assignment brief. I will use the research ideas from this lesson to do so.