Designing Good Characters... the Basics

[puppet builder]

Lots of people are asking "How do I...?"

Oftentimes, these questions are technical in nature, but before color theory, fleece and foam can be applied; people often gloss over the fact that puppetry is about messages, teaching and relaying information to people, not to mention having fun!

Character Development, Character Arcs, and how Personality Attributes relate to Physical Form, Character Interaction, Stories, Plotlines and so forth are all things to be considered when designing good characters.

Anyone else want to offer their thoughts, perhaps methods and expand upon this?

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I'm actually going to be doing a lecture on this very subject next year, so it's kind of cool it came up here! There is a real lack of really good books on designing puppet characters that goes beyond the technical stuff.

I really suggest reading Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Although it is not written about puppetry, much of what he says about the design of cartoon and comic characters is very insightful and made me think about the design of puppets in a totally new way (Scott's book is also used by web designers, graphic artists and lots of other non-comics people). Most of the better books on animation that cover character design can also be helpful.

As for story structure and the actual writing of characters, I refer to a ton of material I have saved up over the years with my best resource being my well-worn copy of Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey. Again, it's written for another medium (film in this case) but everything in it is applicable to puppetry and storytelling in general.

For inspiration I also frequently thumb through Bil Baird's The Art of the Puppet. Unfortunately, it has been out of print for many years, but you might be able to pick up a copy on ebay. Most libraries also have copies of it available.