Character design exercise:

The story of how I came up with another story.

Bongo. 

(do ignore the wings.)

This is a doodle that happened some while ago. 

   I bought some new glasses that somehow made me look like Diane Keaton and they arrived today which prompted me to get re-get tumblr so I could search for cool photographs of her off-set drinking tea or something. The first thing I see on the dashboard was one of those "fill-in-your-own" character sheet; promoting the capabilities of bringing to life a complex character. This caught my lil eye, and I had a moment, so I thought oh, what the heck. 

Here's a transcript deciphered from the scribbled questions and answers that popped up all over the page. 

Name: Bongo

Age: 30

Gender thing: dude

Socio-economic background: casual labourer - serves coffee 

Personality strengths: laid back, trusting

Personality flaws: always exposed, too laid back

Unconscious want: sense of family

Conscious want: 

Selfish or selfless: selfless

Impulses: curiosity + friendships 

What they like about themselves: bushy hair and coffee skills 

What they hate about themselves: bad memory

Positive or negative world view: positive

What pushes them to act: disloyalty + disrespect 

A weird one-off drawing that didn't carry much weight has become a story of sorts - obviously I immediately paved out a main character (new to the character generation game)

BONGO cruises through life serving coffee as a barista in a world of creatures who are all really laid back. In many respects their world is made up of Falmouth students/ beach-goers and rave folk. His memory is terrible and he drifts through life with the help of his buds below. An interesting customer leads Bongo + buds to find Space Core Directive 597, the site of an abandoned space program from long ago where the dodgy characters make a shady visit to. Bongo + buds scout the place out, and find out that Bongo's dad used to work there and he has a sister somewhere across the universe. Leaving the land of chill, the fellas journey through space in their rickedy coffee van to rescue Bongo's sister and ultimately save their solar system.

Feature film idea? It's like I can visualise the shots in the trailer, too.

Below are Bongo's buds. Strange rave creature who's strong-point is front-manning; dopey best friend who just happens to know a lot about space because he's always playing computer games; and scarved monkey who's nuts for coffee and building things accidentally.