Wednesday 27 April 2011

Task 10 Elements of game design, part three: Character

Hey people this week I’m going to be talking about characters and what they can bring to certain types of media.

When I read books (which isn’t often) I like to visualise the character in my own way so a book with important descriptions of character in it is perfect for me. Normally when I read books I can emphasis with the characters more than in films. I’m currently reading a book by Andy McNab called Zero Hour, I really like Andy McNab books due to the realism, language used, important character descriptions and history behind the main character. In Zero Hour as you find out about the character. (Spoiler alert) as I continued to read I found out that the main character has a terminal illness, this made me empathise with the character more due to the raw human emotion that surrounds terminal illnesses.
A film that I really liked and found it easy to empathy with the characteristics was inception to be a really good film due to the script and actors. I started to believe that the dreams and its intruders could actually happen due to the great acting and also that our dreams are private and the script bends that theory completely. Also Leonardo de Caprio plays the main character because he has lost his wife which is very traumatic experience.
The Directors/Writers use our human emotions to empathise with the characters, also putting the characters in certain situations will provoke different responses.
When Directors/Writers choose to create a character they need 6 key points and here they are.
1.       Speech: The content and manner of speech can help evoke personality such as shy, aggressive and anxious.
2.       Motivation: The character ought to have good reasons for their actions.
3.       Concreteness: Everything has to be realistic your character, giving your character specific beliefs is one way another is to create more information about your character for instance, specific brands from certain supermarkets this could show his social background and income.
4.       Change: A character should react to their responses either by changing or avoiding the change. The character needs to grow and develop throughout the story by adapting to situations.
5.       Behaviour: A good way to show a characters behaviour is to put the character under stress which can reveal certain traits. The behaviour of the character needs to be regular with what we already know of the character.
6.       Symbolic association: The mind associates meaning to an image/event thus making it symbolic. So if I was to choose the colour red as the colour of my characters jacket it could show that he is angry.
I’ve recently watched the whole series of The Walking Dead and it is a fantastic TV show, but it was first a comic book and I’m looking to buy them to. The Show is directed by Frank Darabont who is also known for directing The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption. The camera angles used help me feel as if I could be in the show its self. The character Rick Grimes is played by Andrew Lincoln who is an English actor and plays a quintessential American cop his acting is amazing in the show. The main story line is Rick is a cop he wakes up one day from a coma to find the earth is overrun by walkers (zombies) and he doesn’t know what has happened to his family so he tries to find them.
So overall I believe that a character needs a history and we need to know a bit about it to fully understand a character. Using traumatic or stressfully events can show a character in another light and can also help us empathise with the character.

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