Animation in Entertaining and Educating Children: A Case Study on the Character Design of Lion King
Chapter 1 Introduction
Character design is the development of a character, whether it has good or evil attribute, but it must be appealing and can tell a story. Character design is always about the story as much as the drawing. ( 2006) The ability to do drawings that have a touch of humor and personality in them is important and something all character designers should strive to achieve. For a character considered as cliché or being too similar with other characters, this would unlikely stand out to the audience. It is important to ensure that the characters designed are fresh and attractive. How the characters carry themselves and move is also important in character design. This will help to create differences among characters, incorporate personality traits, and background story would bring the character to life and make them unique.
Character design applies in many areas within the creative field either to promote products, for entertainment or educational purposes. For example, character design is a common consideration in computer games (Fig.1), movie posters (Fig. 2) and packaging design (Fig. 3).
Fig.1: Kumi (in what game???)
Fig .4:van-helsing poster
Fig.2: In this movie poster people, the character is
being drawn with heroic attributes.
Fig .5: pecochan
Fig.3: Character design for Milky. It tries to convey
the message of delicious and cute, which would
attract young children.
A successfully designed character will stay in audiences’ minds. It is also important to note that when the unique characteristics of a character appear in different occasions or stories, the character must be the first thing to come to mind and thus narrate its traits either in physical or psychological manner (1997). In this sense, the character is important to make the audience react and feel in a certain way. This manner of story telling by using character design also applies in animated movie especially created for young children such as Lion King, Finding Nemo as well as Kung Fu Panda. The characters in these animations directly or indirectly help to entertain and educate young children in various ways – about love, compassion, and moral values.
There are several ways of designing and developing animated movie for children. Sometimes we can see that animal characters express some human emotions and thought and at other times, irrational or illogical things happen to the characters, which make people laugh or cry. In this regard, the character design involves the aspects of behaviour, outlook, personality, individual style, and actions. All these elements of the characters could engage the audiences and make them emotionally and psychologically attached to what they are watching. One interesting animated movie that shows all these elements of character design is Lion King (Fig. 4).
Fig 4: Characters in Lion King
Lion King, an animated movie created by Walt Disney received recognition as a very successful piece of work. The story, characters, music, background environment and visual styles seen in the movie have attracted young viewers from all over the world. The animal characters of Lion King have unique character design. How these animal characters in Lion King could touch the hearts of young audiences as compare to other animal characters in other animated films from the past as well as today? How the Lion King characters communicate moral values to young audiences? Furthermore, how these Lion King animal characters win the hearts and minds (entertain) of its audiences?
This dissertation aims to study how character design in animated movie works in entertaining and educating young children. The main case study of this dissertation is the characters in Lion King. In analyzing the characters of Lion King, characters from other animated movies would be included as comparison. The analysis would look into all aspects of character design and development such as drawing techniques, animation techniques, narrative (parable, myth social and cultural contexts), personality and behavior (body language, facial features) as well as other psychological and emotional attributes. All these aspects are important to understand how character design can help animation to deliver its intended message.
Chapter 2 Character Design in Animation
Character design refers to the process of defining the perspectives, personality, and traits of a character in animation games or films. This commences with the conceptualization of the character in terms of gender, age, race, height, body build, and other identity factors. Two factors are for consideration, the physical traits and the personality ( 2005). The determination of these factors relies on the planned story or the story could revolve around the character. The succeeding considerations involve various factors such as function and aesthetics. Character design is a key part of animation for entertaining and educating children. However, character design is not as simple because of the need to incorporate both artistic and technical factors (2006).
Character Design as a Creative Process
As a creative process, character design could reflect personality. A basic creative standard is the use of proportions to reflect different personalities with sharp features for male characters with brute strength or gruesome features for villains such as witches or evil stepmothers. Designing a character could also be for its own sake to express unique forms and images even without a story in mind. Artists can use references in creating characters. Many known characters or images find bases on real life people or objects, although exaggerated to develop personality. Once a character has been conceptualized based on references, the next step is to refine the design by considering whether the design is capable of development into a full-blown animated character given the purpose and the allocated budget. (2006)
There are two basic character design options. One is realistic characters and the other is stylized characters. In the case of realistic characters, digital animation technology allows animators to create realistic characters or mimic actual individuals or objects. Nevertheless, this involves a greater price. The closer the character mimics the real thing, the harder it is to accomplish because of the need to consider details of the real thing and more costly. It is also challenging because audiences have personal knowledge and experience of human features, expressions, emotions and movements and realistic animations receive greater praise when the characters closely resemble the real thing. (2006) Even children can recognize disparities in animated characters and this could affect the quality of their experience with the animation. There is risk in using realistic animations but the reward is also great. In the case of stylized characters, this involves more freedom for animators to create unique features and the audience is willing to forego differences from the real thing. This is the preferred option since animation works best by creating its own reality. ( 2006)
Figure 6: Photo-Realistic Character Figure 7: Stylized Character
The next step is to consider the physical and functional features of the character by identifying the features of the face such as the distance between the brows, the chin, and shape of face. The body structure is also considered. (2005)
After this stage, the last step is the finalization of the character by defining the emotions and movements and placing the final changes including the colors and sounds.
Character Design as a Technical Process
There are also technical considerations embedded in the artistic or creative process. The first technical consideration is modeling to transform the character into a three-dimensional character. Modeling is digital sculpting by manipulating surfaces. Surfaces could be patches involving simple and flat surfaces and polygonal involving more flexible and complex surfaces to fit the anatomy of the character. If the character mimics a human, it helps to have knowledge of the human anatomy to know the places to make surface indentations to form the human body but also the places to manipulate to create movement. ( 2006 )
Figure 8: Example of Modeling
The second technical consideration is texturing or the use of colors and surface features to distinguish character features such as rough hair, silky eyes, solid teeth, and smooth skin. Texturing also covers the clothing and other accessories. This uses brushes and colors palettes to make the distinction. (2006)
Figure 9: Example of Texturing (Spiderman)
The third technical consideration is rigging or the integration of movement into the character. Manipulating polygonal models would provide complex movements of the joints to show walking and the arms to express movements such as carrying an object or brandishing a sword. Techniques in rigging include the use of skeleton chains, layering, rotation planes, sliders, pole vectors, clusters and lattices, and other systems that mimic kinetics and movement. ( 2006)
Figure 10: Example of Rigging (human arm)
The appeal and ability of animation to convey messages depend on the effective consideration of these technical factors in character design. The technical aspects of character design should coincide with the creative aspects to create characters able to communicate to the audience in themselves.
Basic Elements of Character Design
There are also basic elements of character design. One, more or all of these elements could occur in an animation and although standards in animation are flexible, these elements support the development of effective animated characters in providing both entertainment and learning.
First element is function or the form and construction of the character. The form of the animated character should take a logical form. (2005) In creating a giant, the idea is to stack shapes to create bulky character. In addition, function also pertains to practice movement in space. Moving characters should move in space and there should be modes of movement such as the curves of a rolling ball, feet for humans, and legs for animals. This involves using angles in a plane and more angles means more complicated work in creating movement ( 2006). Moreover, the character should be repeatable since movement involves the same drawing with changes to indicate movement.
Figure 11: Examples of Functional Characters
Second element is aesthetics ( 2005). This means that the character should express balance in terms of forms or shapes regardless of whether the character is the lead or the villain. Much like an architect designing a building, the initial consideration is a design that would stand followed by the succeeding consideration of ways of making the visual impact pleasant by combining and manipulating shapes, curves and lines.
Figure 12: Example of Animation Aesthetics (balance)
Third element is distinction and recognition. Even if the character is stylized, the audience should be able to recognize the character and distinguish this from other characters (2005). By manipulating proportions and shapes, the characters should become distinct. Even if most characters utilize generic surfaces and shapes as the starting point, the outcome should have a distinguishing mark.
Figure 13: Example of a Distinguishable Character
(Mickey Mouse as a mouse)
Fourth element is personality (2005, 2006). This constitutes the most important but difficult to integrate into the character design because this comes from the contribution of many people involved in the animation such as animators, storyboard artists, animators, and the director. The physical feature of the character already exudes character for substantiation by movement and voice. A humorous personality finds expressed through the eyes and mouth as well as body build and clothing.
Figure 14: Example of Differences in Personality (woman scaring a girl)
Fifth element is originality so that the character should be something that the audience has not seen before. Although this is difficult to achieve since most characters evolve from stereotypes or generics, originality means showing characters in a different light ( 2005)
. Without originality, gamers or viewers would relate the two characters leading to confusion. In games, originality depends on the theme and character profile such as skills and weapons while in animated shows or films, this find expression in character features, voice, and personality.
Figure 15: Example of an Original Character (Betty Boop)
These elements are important but not exclusive considerations in developing animation that integrated both entertainment and education. These elements guide character design so that the animation that affectively mixed entertainment and education evolved the characters, more or less, using these standards.
Chapter 3 How Character Design Tells a Story
Character design is in itself visual storytelling. Ten characteristics of character design when combined provide visual storytelling. By developing each of these characteristics, animated characters can effectively convey a story. ( 1996, 1996 ; 1998,)
First is identity, which encompasses the physical description of the character such as body build, weight, hair color, and other proportions or features; demographic description of the character such as age, gender, race, and income class; and personality of the character such as attitude, lifestyle and temperament. These could find expression in the likes and dislikes, signature expressions, and idiosyncrasies of the character. (1996) Identity should be easily discernible by just looking at individual characters or interactions among the characters.
Second is back-story, which pertains to the culture-based variances in the reactions of individual characters based on the historical and current experiences of the character that molds individual identity. There is always an underlying reason for the identity of characters. ( 1997) An example is a villain taking revenge for the unjust treatment of people in the village or a pompous king treating servants badly by growing up as a spoiled child and does not know any better. Protagonists are usually kind because these have learned the value of love and kindness while growing up.
Third is appearance, which refers to the process of encoding of the identity and back-story into the selected embodiment of the character. The embodiment of these factors affects the credibility and effectiveness of the character is acting a role in a story. (1996) Before the characters even speak, the visual appearance of the character should already be distinguishable so that a king, knight and peasant have different appearance in terms of built, clothing, style of hair, and movement.
Fourth is content of speech, which encompasses the language or regional dialect, accent, and intonation of the character to support a story. This means that the physical characteristics and attitudes of the character should match speech content. By listening to the speech of the character, the audience reinforces their perception of the identity, back-story and appearance of the character. (1998) It is easy to differentiate an oriental character from a Caucasian character through speech so that speech in itself contributes to the story.
Fifth is manner of speech, which encompasses the choice of words, the timing of speech, and manner of delivery of the character. This relies on the artists to consider speech, pronunciation, timbre, intonation, and vocal quality to augment the storytelling capability of the character. (1998,) Characters portraying royalty speak more eloquently and formally compared to peasant characters.
Sixth is the manner of gesturing or the use of signals usually through facial expressions and hand movements. These augment content of speech and manner of speech to communicate and relate better to the audience. Gestures also reinforce the historical and socio-cultural experiences of the character to express messages better to create a clear story. ( 1998)
Seventh is emotional dynamics, which refer to the emotional model of the characters relative to each other. This constitutes the manner that the characters influence and become influenced by each other. The emotional state of the characters build-up and stabilize as these communicate with other characters throughout the story. A character’s emotional state could remain constant throughout the story or shift from happy to sad and the energy level could range from lively to tired. However, the dominant emotional state of the character creates a story. (1997) Villains usually keep up an angry or taunting emotional state or silent when plotting against the protagonist while the protagonists usually express a wider variety of emotions centering of goodness.
Eighth is social interaction pattern or the manner that a character deals with other characters expressed through speech, gestures and actions. A character playing the role of a mother would likely express care and concern over her husband and children. ( 1997) Enemies are likely to act hostile towards each other with the mode of interactions expressing a story in itself as to why the individuals act this way towards each other and the actions they would likely consider towards each other.
Ninth and tenth are role and role dynamics. Role refers to the position or status of each character relative to the other characters. This expresses nature and proximity of the relationship with some characters more closely related when compared to other characters. The relationship of the characters contributes in building the story. Role dynamics pertain to the extent that characters uniquely immerse in the unfolding experiences, human experiences to relate to the audience. ( 1996)
Integrating all these factors into the character design should target consistency, balance, and holistic value to make the characters tell a story to entertain children and impart to them the intended educational message.
Chapter 4 Case Study of Character Design of Lion King
Background on the Lion King
Disney released the animated film Lion King in 1994 after more than four years of collaborative work with scriptwriters, animators, creative artists, and directors ( 1994). The story revolves around the coming of age of Simba a young lion whose birth made him the heir to the throne of his father, King Mufasa, and making his Uncle Scar second in line. Scar, wanting the throne, joined with the hyenas to plot the death of both King Mufasa and Simba. Scar killed King Mufasa but made Simba believe that it was his fault and urged Simba to run away and never come back. Simba ran away in Shame until he reached the place where Timon (a meerkat) and Pumba (a warthog) are living. They take Simba into their hakuna matata (no worries) lifestyle. When Simba was older, he met Nala, a childhood friend, who was running away from the oppressive leadership of Scar. Upon learning about this, Simba decides to go back. Timon and Pumba came with him to honor their friendship. Simba challenged Scar and learned that it has his uncle who caused the death of King Mufasa. This gave Simba strength and made Scar recognize him. The hyenas upon learning of Scar’s defeat turned against him. Simba took over the throne with Nala as his partner and a son to succeed him. His family and friends, Rafiki the wise man, Timon and Pumba, and the other lions as well as the other animals in the safari surrounded Simba.
Design of Lion King Characters
There are a number of important characters in Lion King. The development of these characters took years to realize not only because of the number of characters but also because of the need to create different but balanced characters playing parts in the story. However, the creative team had room for imagination and innovation because the story was original and not based on previously published stories. The creative process of the animated film involved 600 artists, animators and technicians producing more than 1 million drawings including more than 2 thousand hand-painted backgrounds, and 119,058 individually colored frames of film (1994).
The characters expressed both creative and technical aspects of character design. In relation to the creative aspect, all the characters were animals but presented in a stylized manner as opposed to picture-realistic manner. The intention was to mimic reality but present this in the animated world. As such, the creative team visited Africa to observe the safari environment, the weather, and behavior of animals. Even if the creative team did not target to achieve picture-realistic characters, there was an attempt to present the stylized characters close to the real thing to support audience recognition. Lion King relates ‘the circle of life’ story and the audience should be able to recognize, differentiate, and understand the characters and the relationship of the various characters via character design. The figure below shows clearly showed African animals and landscape including male and female, young and adult lions, hyenas, warthog, meerkat, baboon, and bird. These characters are easily distinguishable.
Figure 16: Animal Characters of Lion King
With regard to the technical aspects, modeling, texturing and rigging, these became apparent in the design of the characters and helped in enabling the characters to express life. Modeling is apparent by using clay models of the animals based on watching documentaries of African animals and the trip to Kenya. Capturing real animal form and shape into the clay models led to the design of the characters of different animals. There are a number of exaggerations to make the characters more pleasant and express different personalities. Pumba has an overly huge and rounded head, an overly huge task, and thin legs to support his cheerful character [Compare Figure 17 and 18 below]. This is very different from the physical features of a real warthog.
Figure 17: Real Warthog Figure 18: Pumba (left) and Timon (right)
Young Simba and Nala have huge round eyes, which is very different from the eyes of real lion cubs [Compare Figure 19 and 20 below]. The young cubs in the animated film have more tame looks than the real lion cubs that already look like wild animals even as cubs.
Figure 19: Real Lion Cubs Figure 20: Young Simba (left) and Nala (right)
The hyenas’ also have large rounded yellow eyes, menacing teeth, and large pointed ears to create a look for protagonists [Compare Figure 21 and 22 below].
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Figure 21: Real Hyena Figure 22: Shenzi, Banzai and Ed
The form and shape of the characters distinguish the different animals as well as set out the protagonists from the antagonists. Even by just viewing pictures, the personality of the characters and their part in the story becomes apparent.
Texturing or the consideration of color and other texture details is also apparent in the design of the Lion King characters. The characters all exude color contrasts pleasing to the eyes. One example is the King Mufasa with reddish mane in contrast to his orangey earthy body. This has a huge difference from a real lion, which only hues of brown and cream. In addition, Mufasa’s main also hangs down much like human hair but this together with the contrast in the rougher texture of the hair with smooth skin shows provides a regal look for Simba’s father. [Compare Figure 23 and 24 below]
Figure 23: Real Adult Lion Figure 24: King Mufasa
Other examples are the characters of Rafiki and Zazu, which have a similar color contrast schemes of yellow, red, blue and white. The similar contrast in colors suggests the protagonist roles of these characters and the similarity of their position in the movie, with Rafiki as the advisor to King Mufasa and Zazu as King Mufasa’s majordomo. [See Figure 25 and 26 below]
Figure 25: Rafiki Figure 26: Zazu
Rigging refers to the embedding of movement into the characters. This happens by mimicking the movement of real animals and manipulating the points of movement such as joints to create movement. An example is the rigging of the hyena characters. Originally, a single model and texture applies to the three hyenas. However, rigging depicts differences through movement, which in Figure 25 below involves movement in the eyes and mouth or tongue. In Figure 22 above, different movements of the neck and head also create three hyena characters.
Figure 27: Rigging of a Hyena in Lion King
Movement of the other animals is also apparent especially in the gait or walk of the lions, with paws gracefully touching the earth. There is also a difference in the movement of King Mufasa and Uncle Scar, with the latter moving in crouched position (much like a lion about to spring) as opposed to the tall and regal walk of the former. This expresses Uncle Scar’s scheming and treacherous character. The movements of the hyena also show their predator roles. Rafiki’s movement depicts the character of an old and wise baboon.
Figure 28: Uncle Scar
There are exaggerations especially in the movements such as the almost standing position of Rafiki and Zazu as well as the human expressions of the animal characters but these creative and technical factors substantiates the story. The design of the characters expresses in themselves the personalities and the story.
There are also specific standards in character design. First is function with all of the characters being functional because these express the form of the animals mimicked as well as the movement. Although the creative team experienced challenges in working with animals with four legs making it more difficult to adjust movements of four legs instead of two for human characters, the form and shape of the characters supported movement. Second is aesthetics particularly balance on the character designs. The team-up of Pumba the warthog and Timon the meerkat [See Figure 18 above] expresses balance of form, shapes and color albeit in contrast. The Lion King characters are aesthetically and visually pleasant because of the combination of various elements of design. Third is recognition and distinction. The characters are clearly distinguishable especially the lions, with the most number of characters, from the female to the male adult lions and cubs to the protagonist and antagonist lion. The other animals were also recognizable in terms of the real animals these mimic. Fourth is personality, which is distinct in the case of the wise Rafiki, the happy Pumba, the regal King Mufasa, and the treacherous Uncle Scar. Fifth is originality. The characters are not original in the technical sense because these mimic real animals but original in the animated world because the characters were not based on a previously published story or television show. As such, the design of the Lion King characters aligned with basic standards of character design to come up with characters that in their personality express a story.
Entertainment Value of Lion King
Due to the design of the characters, Lion King has a high entertainment value. This is due to the design of the characters combining the ten characteristics useful in telling a story. The characters of Lion King have clearly defined identities whose emotional dynamics portray the good and bad animals and social interaction patterns in terms of the manner that the villain, Uncle Scar and the hyenas, manipulate Simba to get the throne. The appearance of the characters apart from being pleasant also tells the lively life cycle of animals in the African wild. Children would be able to relate and immerse in the character of the lion cub Simba as he deals with the death of his father until he matures to take on responsibility. The entertainment value finds expression in the number of viewers and phenomenal gross income obtained by Disney from the animated film. Since entertainment means fun and easy recall, the fact that many children in 1996 still remember the film even in their adolescence and adulthood and remember the characters, story, and theme song. The younger generation also knows the Lion King through the release of the sequel and storybooks. This is the first Disney animated film without entirely animal characters and the appeal to children is likely the design of the characters as pleasant by not posing any threat to children unlike real wild animals in zoos requiring parental or adult supervision and involving warnings to approach cautiously and not too closely. The hakuna matata song and dance number of three friends, Pumba, Timon and young Simba also creates delight and fun for children and even adult audiences.
Educational Value of Lion King
As part of the integrative strand or ‘edutain’ approach to animation, the educational value of Lion King is positive but indirect and subtle, and clearly deviating from the traditional classroom lessons. Nevertheless, it was apparent that the character design and the emerging plot tell the story of African animals. The focused subject is science. The ‘circle of life’ is akin to the ecosystem and life cycle, which are lessons in biology and zoology. The ‘circle of life, portrays the symbiotic relationship among animals. Although there are preys and predators operating in defined territories, these are necessary to support balance. This also expresses the life cycle of animals with the younger generation eventually taking over the protection of the territory and procreation. Apart from the indirect science lesions that children can learn from watching Lion King, the speech, gestures, role and role dynamics of the characters also convey a number life lessons for children audiences. One is the value of friendship in times of despair and sadness. Another is the importance of family support in personal growth. Last is the role of love in helping individuals cope with problems. By using character design, the animated film Lion King expressed both entertainment and educational value.
Chapter 5 Conclusion
By focusing on the design of characters in animated films, these can provide entertainment and educational value to children. Animated films now reflect the integrative or ‘edutain’ approach to animation. To express the entertainment and educational values, character design becomes an important element. Character design comprises the entirety of the creative style and technical design expressed in the form or shape, color, movement, and emotions of the characters. The consideration of the design of the characters of Lion King exemplifies the importance of character design in considering the values of entertainment and education. The design of the characters in itself tells a story with elements of fun and subtle lessons in science and growing-up.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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