At this point, I know that my character will be bipedal, and will have stereotypical attributes of a villain. I am not looking to reinvent the wheel. Nonetheless, I will still look at creatures and animals, as they follow the same principles. After all, it is just as possible to make a kind, light-hearted creature as it is to make a villainous one.
The most notable character that comes to mind is Shan Yu from Mulan. I know already that I want my character to be something like him, or to at least possess some of the visual qualities as him.
He has a massive, burly physique and a demonic grin. His pose in this shot suggests that he is a capable warrior, unlike many of the villains listed in a previous blog entry. He actually looks like he poses a threat to Mulan. His sword is interesting, too. It isn't a conventional blade, but a jagged one. If this was to pierce you, it would not only kill you, but would hurt you more than an ordinary blade. It tells us that he is sadistic. He doesn't want to defeat Mulan but obliterate her. Perhaps this is a bit too much for my target audience, but I think qualities such as agility (as demonstrated in his stance above), strength (he can hold a big sword like that one-handed), and his facial expressions, are areas from which I can draw inspiration.
I mentioned that my character will be bipedal, but Scar from The Lion King has some great villainous qualities that I can pick at.
Without the head, many of the characters of The Lion King would look the same. Just this one addition makes the difference between good guy and bad guy. Scar has a black mane. He has a scar and dark eyes. His idiosyncrasies are sneaky and suggestive -- always plotting. While I don't want my character to be a double-crossing snake, I would like to replicate the presence that Scar has. If you gathered all of the lion characters of The Lion King together, you'd be able to tell immediately who the antagonist was.
Perhaps I could replicate an implied power, like Jafar in Aladdin.
Jafar doesn't look particularly strong, and doesn't possess physical prowess, but his demeanour and appearance are menacing and dastardly. He has a confident stride, and knows his own ability without having to resort to brutish bodily semantics as Shan Yu does. However, he is never underestimated by anyone. Not by Aladdin, his minions, or the audience.
One could argue that Jafar is a splinter of Maleficent, as they are both very similar, given the gender difference. But perhaps that is to her advantage. Women are seen as more conniving than men. A man would stick the knife in, but a woman would want to twist it. In fact, I see in Maleficent the dastardly qualities of Jafar and the sadistic tendency in Shan Yu. What is interesting to note, is that Maleficent's sadistic tendency is off-colour. She portrays this without looking like a pumped-up savage as Shan Yu does. She actually looks evil. As if she has no goal, no motivation, or ambition. That she just wants to inflict as much evil as possible.
I'm not looking for the personification of evil. Just enough of it to appeal to my audience. I am beginning to notice a trend here though; black and sharp points are common amongst these characters. Particularly the eyes, these characters have pointed eyes.
In light of that, let's have a look at Captain Hook.
Here, surprisingly, we see, predominantly, red, orange, and yellow. He has round eyes, and what's more, he is particularly ugly. A big nose and a long chin. He doesn't look like a villain who has the respect of the audience, but more like a common crook who somehow made his way to the top. Despite this, the audience know that it is never wise to underestimate a Disney villain. They are at the top for a reason.
He does follow the trend of being deformed though. He has a hook for a hand. Maleficent and Shan Yu are supernaturally coloured, Scar has a scar across his eye, and Jafar is lanky and skinny. These kinds of adornments allow us to question how they came to be. Were they acquired previously while battling with some other protagonist? We can rest assured that they are all hardened, seasoned, and competent villains.
Here we have another villain. Female, and real. Not supernatural like Maleficent. Even though she couldn't put up a fight like any of the above, she possesses all of the qualities of a low-life, two-bit thief. And this is what makes her scary -- that there are people like this. Her threat is very real. She wears an expensive fur coat, possibly paid for with blood money, and as a female concoction, she looks pretty bad. She is ageing badly, and has bad hair. This make sense though. She is the most real and human-like antagonist so far. If she were attractive, we may be able to see her as an object of infatuation rather than a cruel she-wolf, thus overshadowing her purpose as a villain.
Hades follows to Cruella model, to an extent. Unattractive, but also supernatural. He has long pointy fingers for bossing people around and a sharp nose and long mouth and chin. He almost looks like a trickster.
So far, I am taking a liking to having my character have an exotic skin colour. It may not be a single one, but I don't want it to be typical and over-exhausted. That is something I didn't like about Shredder. He is far too human to be a villain, given that his adversaries are turtles and a rat.
Disney seems to be able to that well however. Look at the Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Human, attractive, and evil. And I credit it all to her expressionless face. It is interesting to not that both she and Maleficent have obscured their hair. Perhaps it would signify a weakness. That for all of their evil and wickedness, they are still women at heart and want to look nice, as if trying to impress someone. No, the audience need to see lethargic villains, who are leaders and not crooks, who are competent and whose minds aren't reserved for things like hair and make-up, but plotting and destroying.
I already decided that my character will be bipedal, but he still has to have a face. I once heard a story about a man who works at Pixar, and when animating characters, he leaves the face until last in order to get truly impressionable movements from his characters before the facial expressions can even exist. I can do the opposite here by looking at Kaa from The Jungle Book, who doesn't have a body in the conventional sense.
He has the ability to make odd movements however, that would make his character more interesting than the typical bipedal, and it suits him to be a villain, as villains have snake like qualities. They slither in silently and go in for the kill without reservation unlike the hero, who will want to fight face to face. Despite our pre-existing opinions on snakes, Kaa doesn't have all the cunning of a snake. He has a charismatically friendly face even though he is a villain in The Jungle Book. Look at the above picture. What kind of an evil snake gets told off by a young boy? Could Mogli do this to Jafar or Shan Yu?
Stromboli from Pinocchio also fits the snake persona. He at first appears to be a kind-hearted, tubby, loveable man.
But soon shows his true colours, and reveals himself to be out to exploit Pinocchio, and threatens to use him as fire wood, which is another reference to the sadistic nature of Disney villains. He doesn't want to simply kill Pinocchio, but humiliate him, and benefit from his death -- fire wood would be good for the fire, and would keep him warm.
There is a simple mastery to being able to create a visual transformation like this. An large, angry bully can be masked by a large, happy good Samaritan.
Since my character will be 3d, it is a good idea to draw references of 3d villains, particularly Disney-Pixar 3d villains.
In truth, they are not all that different from classic, traditional Disney villains, as they follow the same themes as those above.
Apart from looking grim and soldiery, he has a defective eye. A deformation, just like Scar and Captain Hook. The distance between his mouth and nose is noticeably large, and isn't typical to 2d, drawn characters. This doubles as an aesthetic quality and a modelling vice, as it makes it easier to, I suspect, create more impressionable mouth animations and facial expressions in general.
Sid from Toy Story is again, deformed. He wears braces and is quite ugly for a child, who we are taught to believe are all beautiful because of their innocence. The audience is actually rooting against this boy. Why? Because he follows the generic conventions of the villain archetype. Sadistic behaviour, dark colours, snake-like qualities.
Syndrome from The Incredibles is a great example of a fully developed, bipedal, human character. Exaggeration is one of the principles of animation. ESPECIALLY for 3d works. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within failed because it ignored this principal. Syndrome embraces it. He has a pudgy face and has impossible proportions. His arms are longer than his legs. His torso his ripe and bursts out. I must take note of this, regardless of how my character turns out.
Finally, Emperor Zurg from Toy Story 2. I think he is brilliant because the character is essentially a robot, yet he is able to create effective facial expressions, as in these two shots:
The only areas that really animate on Zurg's face are his eyes, yet they convey the desired messages successfully. The eyes will be really important for my character. I think I will opt for blendshapes instead of skin clusters as I hope to get the same seamless facial transitions that Pixar studio pulled off with Zurg here.
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