Character Development
1. Watch Keynote: Character Development
2. Read Ch. 5 in Wright
3. Questions to consider:
a. Why is it important to develop characters into three-dimensional personalities?
b. How does plot and action come from character?
c. How does character arc help move the story forward?
d. How do the main character’s flaws help create the final climatic scene in a script.
e. Think about some of your own experiences:
• most embarrassing moment
• biggest fear
• something funny that happened to you
• your knowledge of subcultures and other worlds such as sports, workplace, other cultures, hobbies, etc
How you can use some of your own experiences and translate them into experiences that develop your characters?
4. Understand the following concepts:
a. Using character profiles to develop character
b. Using your own experiences to develop your characters as well as observation and imagination
c. Conflict and story come from characters
5. As you watch television and film this week and read comics, ask what characters are compelling and successfully developed (including villains). What was effective? What was overly-familiar and predictable?
6. Assignment 1: Two Character Profiles
Week 1: Assignment 1--Character Profiles
Character Development Assignment: Two Character Profiles
Assignment Goal:
The goal of this assignment is to develop two characters for animation. Get to know your characters so that they have strengths, weaknesses, fears, loves, and desires. Discover what motivates and drives your characters. Once you know this, conflict and story follow. Use the Character Profile in Wright as the starting point for this assignment, but you also want to learn to use your own personal experiences, observations, and imaginations to create and develop characters.
Instructions:
Write a Character Profile for two animated characters using the questions on pages 62-65 in Wright. These should be new characters. They should not be characters you are using in your Thesis Project or that you have developed for previous courses.
You don’t have to answer every question, but you must tell us what the character wants, fears, loves, biggest secret, voice tag and pattern and some unexpected character trait. Your profile should be 400 words for each character. Write it in the first person, as if the character is telling us about herself.
Or you can also simply answer the character profile questions, but do so in complete sentences and be sure to develop the characters traits in sufficient detail as to make them understandable and convincing.
Be sure you tell me what your character loves, fears, and desires-- both physically and psychologically.
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