Ian Friend - How does a transnational audience factor in character design for professional broadcast animation

Friend, Ian

Abstract

During my animation career, I've found myself working in many areas of animation but most of my production experience lies in preschool television. This can probably be attributed to the fact that most of the animation work produced in the UK is for a broadcast preschool audience. I now teach full time in the University of Gloucestershire. In one of my modules, we study the relevance of audience in regard to animation character design and how best to tailor an animation designer's work to a desired viewer. The module's content is related to the work I have developed as a character designer during my career. In teaching this module, I emphasise the importance of character design and its relationship to target markets and perceived audiences for animated media. It was during one of my stints at a games studio that I realised the importance of audience in animated design. I had been given the task of creating concept art for a possible new video game starring Nazis and zombies. I produced the work in my usual style. The characters were bright and colourful with fairly cute designs. I made sure that the subject matter was still what it needed to be for an older teen targeted game: bloody and violent. However, I was aware that the cute and cuddly characters I designed were a little different than the norm for this kind of work. I was told by the producer of the project that the designs were far too soft and childlike and the work needed some changes before it could be approved. With this in mind I added some more mayhem, violence, and gore. In desperation I even added a screaming skeleton character running through the background on fire. I thought the characters were drawn well enough and stylised appropriately to be approved. Unfortunately, the image came back again and again, until in the end I was told it's just not right for the publisher. With hindsight, I realised that I had been working on preschool productions for so long that my perspective was misaligned to that of the target market for the game. It was financially important for the games distributor that the game was attractive for the intended older teen audience. Most likely, this demographic was sought by the games company due to their perceived brand loyalty and disposable income (Wesley And Barczak 2010, p.56). I should have delivered something far more palatable for the intended mature audience. Realistic gore and horror are the norm for games like that and would have been exactly what that particular audience would have expected from such a game. Reflecting on this experience, I wondered what other audiences expect and what could constitute adult focussed character design, apart from any obvious considerations like nudity, sex, blood, and gore. Through my research I want to consider the relationship between different types of audience (including age and locality) and the creation of successful character designs. I am especially interested in how universal (or culturally specific) this kind of design work can become. This particular study focusses on character Animation Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jul 24, 2019
• Deposit Date: Nov 3, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 4, 2022
• Journal: Animation Studies
• Electronic ISSN: 1930-1928
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 15
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9987647
• Publisher URL: https://journal.animationstudies.org/ian-friend-how-does-a-transnational-audience-factor-in-character-design-for-professional-broadcast-animation/