Villains

"... a GOOD villain drives the conflict of a story... without the villain, the hero cannot overcome obstacles and develop as a character..."

"You should always approach your antagonists (or villains, or whatever you want to call them - basically the forces in opposition to your protagonist, or hero) in the same way you do your heroes: you should understand their motives and what they want should make sense. They way they go about trying to get what they want ought to make sense as well. "

"People are endlessly fascinating and have an amazing capacity to talk themselves into believing things they really want to believe....I'm not a big fan of movies where the antagonist is just "evil" and wants to "control the world". As much as there are people in the world who crave unlimited power and money, they always have a specific reason why they turned out that way, and they always have a very specific overall goal they're heading for. "

-Mark Kennedy

Definitions:

Good Guy - Protagonist - Hero

Bad Guy - Antagonist ("ANTI"agonist) - Villain

Think of your Favorite Villains - Why? what makes them memorable?

Villainy by Degrees

Traitor
Thief
Misled
Pirate 
creep
Demon
Crime boss
beast
Obsessed Genius
Serial Killer,
Just plain "Ick" - gross

what kind of hero matches each of these? examples?

STORY, STORY STORY

A Hero is only as good as his Villain.  The Villain Defines the Hero

THE HERO
The Villain is the Hero's opposite.  Without a villain, a story cannot have a hero.  If the antagonist is in direct opposition to the what the protagonist wants. In other words: there's no way they can both get what they want. Only one can succeed.   Against a the villain, we know the Heroes strengths weakness, character, values, morals, what he must learn, overcome etc.

THE VILLAIN
How does the Villain mix, match and collide with the Hero?  (boss, nemesis, character growth, opposite etc.) consider Peter Pan vs. Hook. Starwars

Important story elements should affect your design:
Does the Villain eventually get redeemed or stay a bad guy?
What are his fears?  Why is he a bad guy?
How did he get that way?
Why does he feel justified acting the way he does?
How must he be overcome?

How you portray your villain will determine how the audience views your Hero.  if the Antagonist is too Silly,  then too much fear on the part of the Protagonist will make him foolish.    If the Villain is too scary (also consider your audience) and your Hero is ridiculously outmatched, then the Hero will still feel foolish rather than brave for confronting him.  the Villain can be overcome, but not too easily, and now w/out growth on the Hero's part.

Remember, you Hero is only as good as his Opposite.


Discussions:
Rapunzel vs. the Thugs in the Ugly duckling
Gollem vs. Balrog vs. Sauron
Bad Guys vs. Good Guys: Wreck It Ralph, Megamind, Batman
Consider when a villain is not a villain:

WHEN DESIGNING - CONSIDER

1) Story
2) Shapes used - Diagonals, Triangles, small detail and sharp shapes vs. rounds and horizontals.
3) Silhouette - also consider different types of Straights vs. curves
4) Costume (also colors) - Adversaries that represent different ideals should have costumes that represent who they are and contrast with what their nemesis wears.
5) Gesture
6) Props

Take all of these into account.  for more on shape, refer to the Shape Language Post.

DEMO -  showing 3 different kinds of Villain design- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2VCjqGcTFA

Hands - Structure

Hand Proportions:

Look for Halfs, then thirds

See also:

Quick Hand Proportions - http://radhowto.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-hand-proportions.html

Finger Taper - http://radhowto.blogspot.com/2010/11/hands.html

Walt Reed Reference - 

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/search/label/hand%20reference

Simplify the complex shape of the hand into the basic cube shape.  First, ignore the fingers, concentrate on the basic cube of the palm - Hint, imagine a kitchen scrub sponge.  It's close to the right size and thickness of your palm - plus it squishes and stretches.  Imagine this for the palm of your hand - Note,  Your palm only squishes in one direction, due to the bones in your hand, it is perfectly ridged in all other directions.

Find the smaller cube shape of the base of the thumb as it goes into the palm - note how it moves around the palm, but this cube doesn't flex. see how it keeps a cube shape, even as it moves around.

keep the fingers simple. try grouping fingers and watch the lengths and knuckles

Hand Reference

For more hand reference go to: http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/search/label/hand%20reference

Natalie Hansen Assignment #5

Time Period: 1880s in the Netherlands
My character is a girl in the marketplace selling stroopwafels, a snack made of a thin waffle cut in half and filled with a caramelly syrup. The first stroopwafel was predicted to have been made in the late 18th century by a baker in Gouda. The poor often bought them because they were cheap; they were made of the leftover crumbs and spices from the bakery and sweetened with syrup.

Melissa Vance-Assignment 5

Final Character

Note: I was trying to use illustrator which I am very unfamiliar with. It was an interesting attempt.

First Try

Research, listed under works cited

Works Cited

Lastname, Firstname. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year of Publication. Medium of Publication.

Kemble, Edward Windsor. Until dinner began to come in across the yard',

slaves carry a prepared meal from a cookhouse to a plantation mansion. 1886. Engraving. Private Collection.

Prewitt, Milford C. Changing the Culinary Landscape. New York. American Visions,

1994. Print.

Barton, Keith C. Good Cooks and Washers: Slave hiring, domestic labor, and the

market in bourbon county, Kentucky. Journal of American History. 1997. Print.

Covey, Herbert C. What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways From the Slave Narratives. Santa Barbara, Calif: Greenwood Press, 2009. Print.

What the slaves ate paraphrasing:

Slaves ate together, one cook special for them with 2 or 3 women to help and a man who was the actual cook. One woman was there (called “mammy”) her job was to feed all the children, the man was to feed all the workers throughout the day.

Slave cooks had high value on plantation. Showed high social status on the plantation owner. Cooks usually well treated, but under pressure and sometimes abused. Female cooks were the most valued slaves, often were within close proximity to their white owners.

Role of cook in big house usually done by older women. Viewed as “nonthreatening”.  Old people also took care of the slave children. Any mistakes (such as burning bread) were punishable by extremely violent abuse.

Changing the Culinary Landscape Paraphrasing:

Story about Hemings, the first African-American chef. Used cooking to get his freedom. Owned by Thomas Jefferson who sent him to paris for 4 years to learn to cook classic French culinary skills. Came back and worked for Jefferson until earning his freedom.

Interesting (disturbing) Fact:

While cooks in “the big house” were usually treated better than the regular slaves, making a mistake (even something as small as burning bread) was punishable. In one story, a pregnant woman who was the main house chef was taken out to the barn, stripped naked, and whipped with a spurred whip all over her body.

Garrett Hamon: Assignment #5

Interesting Fact: 

The main food at every meal was bread. Bread is made from flour, obtained by grinding the wheat to a fine powder. The Egyptians did not have windmills or watermills to do this, so the grinding was done by hand, using special grinding stones called querns, and the way it was done allowed some of the stone worn away from the querns to become mixed with the flour. This meant that the bread was very gritty and chewing it gradually wore away your teeth, so many older Egyptians had very poor teeth and lots of dental problems.