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The purpose of the Explorations project was to focus on something that excites us as a creative Freestyle student. The reason why this project was opened up to us is because it would allow us to go deeper into a topic we wanted to focus on more during the school year or to learn something new that we never got to experience through Freestyle classes before. We could decide on which class would help us the most throughout the unit and then could go to that teacher for more help to create this project.

Something that has always interested me is the work involved in creating cartoons, such as animation. Though, this is a grand topic to focus on so I decided to narrow it down to the core structure of it. Something that is very important to start off with for a story is its development on characters. Some background as to why I decided to go in this direction is because it has interested me for years now. Freestyle has finally given me the opportunity to work with equipment and programs that can allow me to express my passion with this and so many other interests. Junior year has definitely been an adventure with Freestyle.

Process

Over this month of May, I did do a lot of research on the topic to increase my knowledge with it. I read through some comic-focused books by Will Eisner and Scott McCloud to do a lot of my research on how to produce a good story with good characters. Along with that I decided to look into how my own inspirations developed their work before becoming successful. You can see four of the artists above the text. I researched their process of how they grew as story artists and the characters they developed too. This project has inspired me to pursue further into researching and developing my own characters. Even though I have many characters, I decided to focus my Explorations project on my oldest one, Izzy.

"In order to grow your audience, you must betray their expectations."

-Hayao Miyazaki

Jhonen Vasquez was the comic artist and director who inspired me to start creating my own characters in particular cartoon universes. I still look up to him to this day after finding his work, such Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Invader Zim, in the direction of my interests. Overall, I began learning about him in my beginning preteen years. Aaron Alexovich actually started his art career on Vasquez’s Nickelodeon show, Invader Zim. He is inspirational to me because I can relate to him in searching for my own art style. He found that style after working on the show for a while and it even began to form from there. Like him, I see a piece of myself in my artwork as well. Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese artist and director who inspired me to start writing beautiful, meaningful stories by putting characters into the same environment and forcing them to interact. He was inspired by his own dreams and actual experiences in his life. I still look up to him after my father showed me his animations as a kid. I grew up with his characters’ stories and am still attached to them to this day. Tim Burton is another artist whose stories I have grown up with. He has a creepy yet elegant style but is always successful to show the beauty in darker things. He was growing up pretty isolated from people in his life and was living his own imaginative world. I’ve always loved spooky and scary stuff, but he somehow experienced it so respectfully. At least, that’s how I see it.

My artist inspirations: Aaron Alexovich, Hayao Miyazaki, Tim Burton, and Jhonen Vasquez.

Here are the books I researched. The top one is Will Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist. The two underneath are Scott McCloud's Making Comics and Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.

The books that I researched for the explorations unit.
Video

Today’s focus is on development and how to build up a strong character. Izzy here is about... six years old since I officially created her beginning of middle school. I can not imagine my life without her intruding my mind everyday. Okay but after years of practice and a packed month of Explorations research on character development, I finally figured out how to divide a character into separate parts.

Backstory, Environment, Interactions, Style, Personality, and finally Growth.

For backstory, that is the backbone of the character. That is what shapes the character into how they are introduced to the audience. It is very important to have this in them or else they will seem bland and not thought out. Though, don’t let that discourage you. It takes years to perfect a backstory to the creator’s liking! The environment is a setting the character is going to be put into. You got the first step of creating him or her, now you have to place them into a realm of existence...a universe. There has to be places where they feel comfortable and places where they feel the need to leave. A fun thing to do with new characters is to place them into different environments to see how they interact with each one. Then, officially place them into the one that seems most interesting to you. When a character shares a relationship with another one, that is when the audience starts to get attached to the interaction going on between them. It also reflects on how they react to each other and how they both begin to shape their story. For example, Zella becomes dependent on Izzy for providing her blood and company as she lives her endless vampire life. If you want to keep things interesting, you will throw in both positive and negative interactions. Style is something that makes a character memorable. You can say it is their first impression on the audience. It can be how they dress, how they talk, or even how they walk. It might not be the most important thing to consider, but it will definitely draw attention on them. People will grow attached to your character if their style stands out. Personality is formed after the character undergoes all that was mentioned before. After being exposed to so many different experiences throughout their life, they will have some traits stick with them until the end. Of course, they will have to learn on the way to become a well-build character with a unique personality. Growth is the final thing that I seem to notice in any character. After a good book or film, I start to take in how much that character changed over the whole story. I compare how different they are in the beginning than in the end. This part can always be labelled as to why the character is important. Why are they left memorable? Why do they matter?

Well, to me, Izzy matters too much. It’s said that a creator puts a little piece of themself into each of their characters. She has grown more than any other character I have worked on.

Here is the AfterEffects Interface of how I was working on this video presentation.

AfterEffects Interface.

Song

This piece of music was actually inspired by a character of mine, Elliot. He is not pleasant to be around but he is full of surprises. To reflect this more on myself, I created this character to symbolize a bad part of my life.The digital notes reflect on his curiosity and motivation for new discoveries.

MY character, Elliot.

The sharp, surprising transition from the digital notes to the electric guitar strums show how he developed over time: too quickly. He grew up quite fast and became the abusive character that he is in the end. I kept this piece short because that’s how his life went. He grows up too quickly and he dies too soon due to his mistaken actions. There was a small touch of digital music notes in the background of the guitar strumming so that it would not sound completely out of place. I made the guitar strums have the most volume while the other digital beats would have less in the background. In Reason, I used the Dr. OctoRex, Thor, and Malstrom instruments to create and piece all of these sounds. This was an experimental piece of music so it was interesting to play around on Reason to produce these different sounds together. I would not say this is my best but it definitely was interesting.

Here is the Reason Interface of how I was creating this music piece.