The ALT Guide to Character Design

The Alternative Guide to Animation is an anarchic meditation on representation through characterisation. Character design is a fundamental aspect of the animation process and the ancient and essential human need for storytelling. How we choose to represent ourselves, our heroes, villain’s, friends and society is a fundamental process which we undertake as creative practitioners or engage with as audience members. Within the context of my own practice and my education delivery I have developed a body of research and development work into the craft of character design over the past two years. Running concurrently to this I have developed a ‘how to’ guide to the craft of character design in the anarchic style of my short film work. This film has been developed against the backdrop of social unrest with British and American political shifts seeping into my concerns of how we choose to represent ourselves and the kind of society we aspire to live in. This coupled with my interest in digital technology has lead me to frame the film as told by a Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence. Again our development of acritical intelligence has character design connotations, reflecting mankind analogous to Frankenstein’s Monster. In turn my film, The ALT Guide to Character Design has evolved from a ‘jokey’ take on the ‘how to video’ format (e.g. Youtube tutorial) to a film with a subtext about societies concerns such as race, gender, multiculturalism, capitalism alongside the odd throwaway gag (as is the Monthy Python way)