While searching for the perfect show to stream one evening, an interesting title popped up on my Queue list. It showed a Rosie the Rivetter inspired drawing with a paint brush and the title “She Makes Comics” written below it. As an avid fan of documentaries AND comics AND a ...

In stories there are always protagonists and antagonists. And sometimes it’s the protagonists that are more interesting while others it’s the antagonists that steal the scene. Very rarely, it is both.

In all the wide versatility and range between characters, what is the common feature of interesting, memorable ...

Reflection Characters

When I was doing a little reading on the “Mentor” character type, I learned about something called “Reflection Characters”. It was an eye opener; I'd never heard of this before, though I could instantly see how it made sense in storytelling, and dozens of examples came to ...

From the Best of Banes Collection…

CHARACTER SHAPES

I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one.
Characters derived from basic shapes can ...

Failure is the stepping stone to success. That’s what I teach my students and my clients, and it is true, right up there with “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”: If you learn why you failed, you won’t fail again the same way- and that brings ...

The Hated, part two: Heroes we hate

Last week I blathered on a bit about villain Protagonists. These are evil, or “bad” characters who get to be Protagonists!

But what about more traditional heroes, or supporting characters are written to be the “moral compass” or “voice of reason”, or just ...

LISTEN!

Jerky, jerk, jerks! Let's talk about this type of character…
This topic is based on Banes' newspost from Thursday, he based it on characters like Reggie from the Archie comics. Jerks can be pretty good characters in their own right. They can be villains, heroes, antagonists or protagonists ...

The Underdog is a staple of fiction. Protagonists, by and large, are Underdogs.

It probably makes them more relatable; how are we supposed to root for someone who either has, or easily gets whatever they want? Where is a character supposed to go unless they start out low?

Even the ...

I was just watching Midnight Run.

Actually, I haven't watched it in almost a year, if I'm being honest. But I was just THINKING about it. One of the all time great movies. A perfect movie.

I sometimes wondered if there would ever be a sequel to it ...

*Colin and Betty from Pinky TA

When you write a big long story that goes over many chapters and arcs, things tend to evolve, grow and expand quite a bit outside of what you originally envisaged. What I'm talking about here are side characters- These are people that may ...