Catastrophe!

You know....there is never a good time to have your house burgled, but... one week before all of your Uni work has to be handed in, is most definitely the worst time! On saturday 24th April, my house was broken into and camera and macbook were stolen. I was more bothered about the 6 months of my life poured into making my animation (final piece for 3rd year), along with all of the time i had spent talking about my work to other people and prioritising it! What a waste of time. Fortunately for me, i backed some of the work up on my external hard drive after being prompted to do so after three people in uni had issues with their hard drives and lost all of their work. Even so, i still have to redo some of the work which was due for submission. The show must go on!

Hey Bloggers!

This is my new blog. I will be regularly updating the home page with up and coming creative ventures and ideas. Basically the home page will be used to update you all on what i've been up to, what interests me lately and what i plan to do in the near future. So subscribe....you know you want to haha.

I've been asked to give good and bad examples of a specific artifact relating to my current research. I have been looking at different characters, most of which have been cartoon and for children/adolescents. I find it quite difficult to think of any characters which are bad that I've come across whilst researching. This is because if they were bad characters then I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be known or even successful enough for a handful of people to know who they are. I have interpreted this part of the brief in this way and can only specify in a hypothetical sense. I will state a good and bad formula for creating characters that appeal to a mass market of children/adolescents:

Good

• Easy to relate to
• Colourful/interesting to look at
• simple design and interesting story line
• diverse selection of co-stars
• humour
• Originality and imagination eg. sponge bob square pants is a sponge who can speak and lives in the sea. What an original idea.
• can be adapted into other marketable forms such as games, clothing and toys etc.
• Be a positive example and moral in characteristics
• Explores original use of media and experiments with methods of production which are original and individual
• Is aesthetically pleasing

Bad

• A character which is very similar to an existing character aesthetically and in content
• not considering colours and personality traits eg. very dull colours for a very happy character
• UN-interesting story lines (which purely depends on the nature of the character)
• not considering who the characters target audience are
• unjustified immoral behaviour
• a character that is so specific it cannot marketed
• is unintentionally ugly

The above bad examples are a theory alone, as i cannot see how anyone would unintentionally create a character without consideration or purpose.

"Graphic Idea" background research

For the Iteraction project i will be creating a character who can be adapted to various different situations. I have been looking at the following existing characters for inspiration and ideas in developing my own: Southpark, Spongebob squarepants, Sarah Fanelli, Max Scratchmann, Henrik Drescher, Hannah Barbara characters, Jonathon Burton, Quentin Blake, Pete Fowler's Monsterism, ect.

What i am trying to do, is create a character which is relatable, funny, simple and colourful. This character must be marketable also and possibly have friends which viewers can also relate to. There are so many ideas that i have, and i must learn to choose one option and develope it to a good standard. I will be looking at many cartoons and comic strip characters and also look at how they have been merchandised for the consumer market. As part of this Research i will be looking at some of the artists named above and seeing how they have appealled to a market.

I came up with the following character animation. Ronnie Barko from the Bronx.

Fred astair puttin on the ritz

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-_o9pXLZKtM