2nd Year Major Production - Character Inspiration 2

Next up I will post some of my inspiration from another couple of characters. The first being the main villain of Dr Z.

Whilst I have built Dr Z up on my own, I suppose a good representation of him would be Dr Evil from Austin Powers, only again, not as eccentric or over the top. Just in the sense that he is a comedy Super Villain. I will post a video of him regardless, so you can understand a small bit of a villain that inspired me.

This is an introduction for Doctor Evil, doesn't give you a huge character reference, but it shows who he is.

The second is for Dr Z's two henchmen. First you should know, they are named Fidel and Benito, both of which are named after dictators, Fidel Castro and Benito Mussolini. This is just a fun reference. They are in fact just two bumbling idiots, that are completely useless at anything. Fidel is the smarter of the two however, while Benito just doesn't really know what is going on most of the time.
Benito himself does have some inspiration drawn from the character of Kevin Malone, from the US version of The Office. I shall show him here:

Kevin doesn't have much common sense, which I have amplified slightly with the character of Benito, despite him just being a bit part, though he is one of the more Major Supporting Characters.

The rest of the characters I have created haven't really got an inspiration as such, I didn't loosely base them off of anyone, but these were just a few examples of characters I have based and got inspiration from other shows off.

2nd Year Major Production - Character inspiration

When I came  up with the characters for Behind the Cape, I had a few inspirations for some of my characters. I took my influences from certain characters from television and film, and have very loosely based some of my characters on them.

The first is Captain Justice. He took inspiration from 2 of my favourite cartoon characters. Captain Hero (from Drawn Together) and Sterling Archer (from Archer). I have toned him down a lot though as the characters of Captain Hero and Archer are quite extreme. I shall post videos to give a better idea of who they are and what I mean. Captain Justice has taken some of the arrogant personality traits of Archer, with him believing he is amazing and the best at what he does, whilst taken the 'really awful Super Hero' idea behind Captain Hero. Personality-wise, Justice isn't much like Captain Hero, who is a disgusting individual, I just liked the idea of a really poor Super Hero.

This is some best bits of Captain Hero

And some of the best quotes and moments from Sterling Archer.

If you tone these characters down a bit, you get Captain Justice, only he does have his own personality traits, and he is individual in his own rights. This is just where I drew inspiration from.

2nd Year - Major Production - Casting

So I began the other week, looking for someone to play the main role of Captain Justice. I posted an ad on casting call pro, and wrote an audition script which I sent out to a few of the people who applied. So far I have only had one video audition response, which quite frankly, was nothing like I had hoped or I had imagined, so the actor who sent me that will not be getting the part. I am now hoping and waiting on the other actors to get back to me.
The role of the villain, Doctor Z has also been cast as Josiah Norris, who is a comedian and writer, and who also hosted my Studio Production project 'Punchlines'. I feel he will bring a good amount of comedy, warmth and depth to the character of the villain, and help portray him in the way that I imagine him to be, which is why I cast him.
I just now need Captain Justice to be cast. A few extras have already been cast, I just need to find a few more, but that should not be too difficult. I shall bring updates as and when I receive more audition pieces for Captain Justice, and eventually post who I have cast as the role.

2nd Year - After Effects Workshop

On Wednesday, we went to Rochester campus to have an After Effects Workshop with Simon Holland. This was the first of a 5 week tutorial to help us understand how to animate certain things to help us with graphics and possibly some basic special effects we may wish to use within our pieces. We learnt how to impose images into other images, and give them certain effects like glowing, make it seem like it was raining and other such things. We then were given a logo for a fake company, and asked to animate a couple of things within it, such as gears which were shown in it, and we made them rotate.
All in all it was a good morning, that helped as previously I would never have known where to begin with After Effects. We also learnt how to render the files. The things I made are on the computers back at the campus so I shall upload them when we are next in.

Professional Practice - Dissertation Proposal Presentations

Dissertation Proposal Presentation from wilderb33st

2nd Year Major Production - Behind the Cape Presentation

Behind the cape from wilderb33st

2nd Year - Major Production - Behind the Cape

With my collaborative partner - James Ogden, we were thinking of names for the Super Hero Mockumentary. We have decided to call it 'Behind the Cape'.

It is going to be a 15 minute long piece, featuring two main characters, the hero - Captain Justice - and the currently unnamed villain. We know he is going to be 'Dr' though, its just a matter of what the second part of his name is going to be.

The start will feature 'The Professor' - only briefly. He is the character/person who is making this documentary on the lives of heroes and villains. He will give a brief explanation as to what he is doing at the start, before the title sequences. He will also wrap up the documentary briefly at the end. Throughout, we will give the idea that The Prof. is always present, by having his voice over asking occasional questions to the characters, from 'behind the camera'.

The main elements of the story haven't quite been worked out yet. We know that for the villains segment, an 'evil council' style meeting will be held (though not in the traditional sense), where many villains will gather round to present ideas for the capture and killing of Captain Justice, and even for World Domination.

Other aspects are Captain Justice replacing his tactical Computer 'J.U.S.T.I.C.E.', a talking supercomputer that can hold proper conversations and provides great amounts of intelligence for Captain Justice. He replaces it with Apple's 'Siri' computer on the Iphone 4s/5. This upsets J.U.S.T.I.C.E greatly. The initials below are what J.U.S.T.I.C.E stand for. We must bare in mind that Captain Justice himself is an arrogant, self obsessed, moronic idiot, so the name is a reflection on this, with him trying to make it sound 'cool'.

J ustice's
U ltimate
S uper
T echnological
I ntelligent
C omputer
E xtreme

I should say more about Captain Justice, as he is the main main character of the documentary, and the most developed character so far. Firstly, he is very fit and well built. About 6ft tall, with short brown hair, and really big arms and muscles. As I said above, he is very arrogant - everything he thinks and says is law to him and he won't accept anything anyone else says - he is self obsessed, which is pretty self explanatory, and essentially he is just a bit of an idiot. His 'Super Power' is having a very profound sense of Justice, so even the smallest of things he considers unjust, he will do whatever he can to make it right, even if there is no need to interfere at all. Personalitywise as well, I wanted him kind of loosely based on 2 fantastic animated characters, Captain Hero from "Drawn Together" and Sterling Archer from "Archer".

To help aid in this, I will be watching many different mockumentaries, and even some "Archer" and "Drawn Together" to help formulate Captain Justice's character. Mockumentaries I will watch include "The Thick of It", "The Office" (Uk & US), "Summer Heights High" and many more. Those are just a few examples.

Watch this space for more updates!