Usually, a good animation that catches the eye and is remembered by the viewer has one thing in common: a strong plot twist, that is to say, a plot that surprises the viewer, both in terms of plot and characterisation, and that will be remembered by the viewer in a short time. If the narrative is bland, the audience will not remember it, no matter how beautiful and rich the images are.
In class, teacher Lucy Lii analysed several common characterisations and asked us to make connections, for example a character who is a mother but a demon at the same time would give the whole story a sense of mystery and make you feel connected to the character.
I have compiled a few of the characters that my teacher mentioned in class, and they are:
- Maiden
- Monarch
- Mother
- Child
- The Hero
- The Devil
- Trickster
And when creating a character, try asking these questions:
- Where do they feel safe?
- What are they scared of?
- What do they want?
- What other archetype do they like?
- Who do they dislike?
- What do they find easy?
- What do they find hard?
I found that by answering these questions, a complete characterisation emerged clearly, with each character having their own ideas and distinct personalities, and so that later in the scripting, each character had their own framework, which prevented the ideas from running out of steam and avoided situations that did not fit the character’s own personality.
This storytelling lesson today has been very insightful for me. Every time I watch a film I analyse the qualities of the characters that are particularly memorable, and you will find that almost every film you can see on the market has these characteristics, and I think this will be very helpful for me in creating stories in the future, mastering these methods to catch the audience’s eye more quickly and create more interesting animations.