Out of Your Element, Donnie!

A well-constructed character has some sort of talent, ability, or general quality that sets them apart from the crowd. Even the 'average joe' types need to have something about them that makes them more interesting than the other characters of the story, in order to make them worth the reader's time. Of course, I'm sure you could think of exceptions to this rule, but for the sake of time, just go with me on this one.

The character's quality that sets them apart offers the writer two equally valid options: putting that character 'in their element' and taking them 'out of their element.' I've been watching some Star Trek: The Next Generation recently, and the episode "New Grounds" displays both of these ideas very well. For those of you that have a life, let me fill you in on the character Lt. Worf. He's a Klingon, which is an alien race based on wolf pack, alpha male, warrior mentalities. He is very strong, and hell-bent on duty and honor, and how they relate to combat. Previously in the series, Worf's mate Keylarr dies and leaves Worf their son, Alexander. In this episode, Worf must deal with suddenly becoming a single parent.

Out of the element:

Worf is the ship's tactics and security officer. He's a Klingon. He's a bachelor. He is in no way cut out to raise a young boy. Thus, it becomes very interesting to watch him struggle to operate in this very unfamiliar territory. At first, Worf tries to use what is familiar. He instructs his son about honor, discipline, and Klingon heritage. Not only does it not work, but it pushes Alexander away. So Worf must learn something new and grow as a character to find out how to deal with this problem. He learns that in matters of the heart, a firm hand is not always the answer, and that Alexander is dealing with the death of Keylarr, too. Thus, they must work together to confront their feelings. That's not something that Klingons are very good at. But Klingons are good at fighting battles together, which is another way of looking at their mutual problem. Worf was out of his element. He tried to solve it first with what he knew, and that didn't work. He learned something new, and adapted it to himself, making the solution his own.

In the element:

In reference to a page where Supergirl blasts out her heat vision, Dennis O'Neil says "Supergirl shows her stuff, as every good superbeing should at some point in every story" in The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. Whatever the character's qualities or talents are, the audience needs to see them showcased. In the episode's final act, Alexander is caught under heavy debris in a fire. Worf may not know how to be an idealistic dad, but if there's an I-beam on top of somebody, Worf is the one guy on the entire ship that can do something about it. So, the audience gets to see what makes Worf such a unique character in comparison to everyone else. Usually, this is the most visually interesting part of any story, and it's typically in that final crisis. This is what the audience waits for and pays to see. What's really great about this episode is that this final action kills two birds with one stone. Earlier in the episode, Worf thinks he can't raise Alexander and wants to send him to Kronos, the Klingon home world. But Alexander secretly runs away. The episode's sub-plot is the cause of the fire. Worf is in crisis. He's the ship's tactics officer: his duty to the ship is to stay on the bridge and try to protect the crew, but he's also a father, and he can't stay on the bridge while his son is dying. In a moment of crisis, characters instinctively choose what is most important to them, whether they understand it or not. Even though he was getting ready to send Alexander away, he leaves the bridge to save his son. The danger is a type that Worf is qualified to handle, and it teaches him what's most important in his heart.

Having a character deal with something they are unfamiliar with can be just as interesting as watching them do what they're best at. If they do too much of either, though, it will become problematic and predictable.

Silhouettes: Part 1, For every Action, there's a Jackson

This image is taken from the book "Cartoon Animation" by Preston Blair. Here, he demonstrates the importance of the silhouette as it relates to action. The version on the right is still understood as a duck pulling the rabbit out of a hat, but the version on the left reads better because the shapes suspended in space on a basic level communicate the same thing.

Here's another way of looking at it: I recently saw this image from the play "The Butler Didn't," currently being shown at the Metropolis Performing Arts Center in Chicago. You might remember a statement I made a while back in this blog: nothing is more visually interesting than a beautiful woman. While I still hold to this idea, the actors compensated for this. Both women are in the foreground and are dressed very nicely.

So, why is your attention first brought to the young man in the dull grey suit behind them? Well, for one, he's in mid-air. It also helps that he's in the center of the composition. But there's still two beautiful women--one wearing a short, bright red dress--that are closer to the viewer, and therefore much larger compositionally. Let's look at this through the magic of silhouette-vision (i.e. 20 minutes of work in Photoshop).

Notice how subtle the two women's poses are. The one on the right is holding a wine bottle in front of her, which protrudes it from her silhouette, drawing attention to it, but no one in this composition is crazier than the guy in mid air. His arms and legs are protruding in all different directions. The larger man in the way back has no way of drawing attention to himself other than the fact that he is wearing the brightest color on the stage. If he wanted to draw attention to himself, the best thing he could do would be to take whatever it is he's holding onto and hold it above his head. That would reveal it from his silhouette and spread out his body more.

Creating a unique silhouette is essential in communicating an idea. In the case of action, the storyteller's job is to convince the audience that an action is occurring. Though subtlety is just as important as extremes, it should be quite obvious that the more extreme a pose is, the more clear it is what is happening. With all of this in mind, look at every one of Captain America's poses from these two pages by Jack Kirby. There are probably about a thousand reasons why Kirby's work is great, but these two pages are especially good at demonstrating how a good, unique silhouette does wonders for an action sequence.

Shameless plug: that's my brother, Michael Woods, doing the crazy jump. He's an actor in Chicago; if you're ever in the area, go see a play.

Character Design Basics

This is the cast of "Seinfeld."...now what's weirder, the fact that I just reduced the four main characters of a TV show down to basic shapes, or the fact that even if you've only seen commercials for the show, you know which character is which shape? This is not a coincidence. While I don't know this for a fact, it's very credible that the creators and casting directors put a lot of thought into the basic shape of the cast members.

This was all pointed out to me a few years ago in art school. The basics of character design rely on the human necessity to find visual distinction between people. At the most basic level, you have distinctions of race, gender, age, and physical disposition. I have been thinking about this recently because my roommate and I have been watching the show "Community." The cast of characters in it has a lot of visual variety in these basic levels.

Quick note before I go on: this has NOTHING to do with racist or sexist motives. It is an inherent quality in the human psyche to distinct people by gender and race, as well as age and physical disposition. On a subconscious level, when the mind is trying to recall a person, these factors simply come up first.

In "Community" the two people that share the closest resemblances on these levels are the two young girls Britta (foreground) and Annie (middle row). They're both young, white, physically fit girls. But Britta is a blonde, and Annie is a brunette: one of the primary distinctions that guys make when comparing girls. Variety is obviously not on just the basic levels, but extends into clothing style, hair, height, and all the other factors that make no two people exactly alike.

Variety is necessary in character design because an audience has to instantly 1) connect faces with names with personalities and 2) find someone in the cast that they can relate to. Variety can be something that is a part of the story, too. The original Star Wars trilogy emphasized the variety of species and character background in the Rebellion with the uniformity of the Empire. Some stories have an agenda of political correctness, which is fine, but good luck sneaking it past the audience without them catching on very early.

Sometimes, though, variety in character design isn't completely possible. With as much variety of characters in "Lord of the Rings," when I saw the first movie for the first time (having not read the books) I was so blown away by everything the film was showing me, that I sometimes got Aragorn and Boromir confused. Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean were both perfectly cast, and looked exactly as Tolkien described their characters, and their similarities are a part of the story, but I just needed to see the film again to understand how different they both were. In other cases, factors like location and time period don't allow for visual variety. There's no two ways about it: a World War II story about US soldiers is going to have a bunch of white, physically fit, guys who are all basically the same age, and wearing the exact same clothing. The TV series "Band of Brothers" had this tremendous hurdle to deal with on a large level, and so lots of focus was put into the distinctions of personality between characters.