Our client for this project is DC Thomson, the creators of the Beano and Dandy comics, and are looking for a 1-3 minute short film using one or more of their characters redesigned to be more current, especially keen on getting more representation into their work. We went through a powerpoint of a few different characters from their comic books to start brainstorming what we could develop, here are my initial thoughts:
The Amazing Mr. X:
The Amazing Mr. X is Britain's first super hero, appearing in the Dandy in 1944 when they published adventure strips as well as comedy. His power was super strength, which he used to fight back against small time criminals. My first thoughts on what I could do to adapt this character was make a film noir inspired piece about him fighting crime, somewhat inspired by the character of Spider-Noir in Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse, with a potentially retro feeling to the super-hero narrative. In some images on the powerpoint slides his costume includes a bright red 'X' on the front, making me think I could make a film with a similar colour palette to Sin City.
Pansy Potter:
Pansy Potter is an unnaturally strong young girl, often getting into scrapes due to her immense strength. She is a strongman's daughter in the comics, but I think I would probably change this if I went further with this character as a lot of female characters fall into the trope of having attributes due to their male relations, leaving them without their own self-formed identity. The main visual I like of Pansy's is her spiky hair, which I think could lend itself to some interesting character designs (e.g. goth or alternative fashion sense). I would also want to create a story that involved her strength perhaps getting her both in and out of a tricky situation so that it sin't just a negative attribute.
Biffo the Bear:
Biffo the Bear was a friendly character who tried out different human jobs as an anthropomorphic bear. He looks a little odd as evidently to make his facial expressions readable the artists cleared his face from fur, which although achieves a more readable face, also makes him a bit scary looking. Despite his somewhat unnerving appearance he is a charitable and kind character who wants to help others. If I were to take on this character I would focus on making him a more loveable looking animal, although it is unlikely for me to choose him as my final film last year had a bear as a main character. Below are some other cartoon bears that have a more friendly look.
Ethel Red:
Ethel Red is a young viking girl who enjoys fighting and riding her viking long-boat. She appeared in the comic Nutty, with their most popular strip being Bananaman. She, like many other female characters in DC Thomson's old work, is a surface level representation, she is a girl but acts like all of their young male characters. It would definitely be interesting to explore what sort of mischief she could get up to while exploring the setting of the Viking Age. This time period could also make character design really fun to play about with, like Caroline Leibel's sketches of different historical characters, or I could even mimic Cartoon Saloon's way of taking the subject matter into the style (e.g. Secret of Kells using a similar style to the Book of Kells). I've also considered the idea that her viking longboat, which is illustrated with a dragon's head at the front, could transform into a wooden dragon, and the two of them could go on adventures together.
Les Pretend:
Les Pretend is one of the characters I've looked up outside of the seminar, he is a young boy with a great imagination, often causing his parents trouble when his imaginary games go too far. I liked this character because there's a lot you could do with the scenarios he may imagine. He also dresses up like the thing he's pretending to be, often in costumes made from household items, which could be very fun to design, especially if I ventured into stop-motion, enabling me to use actual found objects in the costumes, like the films below do.
Freddie Fear & Number 13
Freddie Fear and Number 13 are separate comic strips that I thought I could combine the characters into a different family. Number 13 first appeared in the comic in 1987 and Freddie Fear was first published in 2002, both with similar concepts- a family of a supernatural nature. Freddie's mother is a witch who often gets things wrong when trying to make something fro her son, like decorating his room with spooky furniture that comes to life, or trying to cast a spell to make tea instead of cooking. Freddie is often frustrated and annoyed by his mother for this. Number 13 is about a family of vampires, the main character being the son, Boris. The whole family get into hijinks with magic and monsters. Instead of having them as two separate families I thought I could combine them to have the one son, probably Boris, and two mothers, one of them being a witch, the other a vampire. There is very little media aimed at children that has representation of same-sex parents and I think it's something that needs to be improved upon, and it works well with these characters as the mothers in both comics play more of an active role in being parents.
After going over my ideas I have sketched some up digitally in Photoshop to explore colour and to create more finished looking designs:
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