I've been in a creative mood again lately (it takes years sometimes to get enough inspiration to start creating in the way that I do), and have been thinking a lot about new characters. My friend Dan, who I've been talking ideas with lately, was asking me about what kind of work I put into my characters to flesh them out and make them feel more alive and real- whether or not I actually try and use a method-acting type approach to designing and becoming a character, which I replied, absolutely.
Some of the first things that come to mind when designing a character have to do with personality traits, interests, hopes, desires, fears, past events, present environment, and things that might happen in the future. Just like a character in a novel, I think it's extremely important to think about all of these different things - to really try to make a character feel real, and at the same time likable. Although I really pride myself in making my characters seem really unintelligent and quirky in their own ways, I don't want them to be so outlandish that they are annoying or frustrating to deal with. I want them all to be likable in some way, to have some kind of earnest and sincere quality that makes them relate to the human experience.
For now, I'll list some of the things I think about with each of my different characters, and how I actually went about creating them from start to present.
My first real character that I did in public was Yangley. I had a vague idea of him in my head, an outward representation of all my own personal anxiety and dorkiness. I knew right off the bat that I wanted him to have a kind of asthmatic type of breathing, kind of slurping his own breaths and talking as if he had a permanent type of headgear or retainer in his mouth at all times.
I didn't really know much else outside of that, but as I started to add different character traits, things became more fleshed out over time. One great way to start developing a character is to actually work on their costume before even thinking about personality traits. I was listening to this great interview with the woman who does the costuming for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and she was saying how she feels like what a character wears does as much to explain their thoughts and their mood and their personality as a line in the script. I completely agreed.
Yangley's basic outfit consisted of a corny backwards hat with part of my hair going through that hole you see in hats for some reason (pony tails?), glasses that were always on crooked (with the tag still on), a very unstylish t shirt or sweater, and some pajama type pants. I remember always trying to tuck in his shirt awkwardly, with the pants ridden up quite high. These are all kind of stereotypical things I think about with the "nerd" type look, minus maybe a pocket protector and a calculator.
His character was very undetermined when I first started. I remember vaguely tossing around ideas with my friend Richard in Montreal. It was my last semester of university, and I remember feeling very bitter and disillusioned with my life as a writing major. I seemed to like a lot of the kids I was in writing workshops with, but there was something about the pure English-lit majors that really bothered me. They were a bunch of 18-21 year old snobs who found solace in reading, and seemed to have no qualms in putting down others who were not as well read as they were. Even then I remember thinking that that was a really fucked way of treating people. After doing so many magic shows and interacting with people of different cultures and class backgrounds, I find this to be even more the case now. English lit kids are the worst. There's nothing worse than a bunch of kids putting you down because you don't know the difference between James Joyce and a bowl of fucking croutons. I still don't!!
Anyway, I remember joking around with Richard that I should pretend to be a character for an entire semester during one of my final classes at Concordia. I had wisely made the decision to take most of my difficult classes my junior year, which resulted in having to take freshman level classes my senior year. There were a couple kids in some of my classes I remember always giving people haughty and pretentious looks whenever they said something out of the ordinary, or whenever they were unsure of themselves in relation to literature. It made me cringe every time. What a terrible way to treat people, and to treat yourself even. If reading and writing without life experience is all somebody cares about, they're bound to end up being a pretty terrible person.
So I thought to myself, well, if you're going to make fun of people for not being sure of themselves, how about I be the most UNSURE person in the fucking world? How would you react to that? And so, Yangley was born.
The first time I did Yangley was actually in class. I still only had basic ideas of what I wanted him to be, and that continued on even after the class was over. I just remember that first day when Richard was sitting in class, not even aware I had come dressed up, and I loudly started stumbling down the stairs, exclaiming, "GAAaAAAAahhHHHHHhhhhHhHhHH!!!!!!!!" the whole class stopped what they were doing and stared as I bumbled out of the classroom. That was when my love of becoming a character was born.
To be able to challenge what people think of others, and to push them to their boundaries in terms of comfort and accepting what could or could not be real, that's something that I love doing to this day. There are a lot of characters I've been working on since then, and there are a couple that I'm working on right now. As I (well, IF I) continue this blog, I really want to explore each of the different characters that I've worked on, and talk about what makes each of them tick. Sometimes it's something as simple as a costume idea (pATrICK came out of these really big fobby sunglasses and dragon hat I got from a flea market in Florida), or something more to do with one certain personality trait (my newest character would like to become a psychic medium and do tarot readings while transitioning into a real doll).
Thanks for reading so far, and hopefully I'll be able to update soon about various other characters that I do, and some ideas I have coming up. I'll end with a really quick summary with some basic traits and costume things that help me get into character and think about what makes each one of them tick. Some of them are more fleshed out than others. But as time passes, sometimes I'll think of different personality traits that really makes things click in my head. One of my favorite things to do actually, is to think about the community that each character might be a part of, and completely immerse myself in that for a while. I think that's probably pretty standard for a lot of people who create characters, actors and writers and such.
(also I wanted to note here that sometimes it's just as important to interact with OTHERS in order to get a feel for how your character would react. it's hard to actually know until you go out and do that.)
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PaTrIk - super baller asian, iMmoRTAL Pill, big fobby sunglasses, dragon hat, hookers, gambling, drinking foUR LoKO, making sure you're FukKINg BaLLer and NoT WeINEr, making FUN of geORgIE for BeinG An ArtISTPH HaHaHAHAH
Tony Summers- christianity, earnestness, worship songs, being an aussie. i started this job working for a search engine, and i had to rate this site called "reset 2016" which involved a million christians (literally) packing themselves into a mall to pray and to be "TOGETHER 2016". one of the speakers wore a headset mic, which i felt Tony 2.0 should probably have. would like to someday do fake sermons in real churches
Silver Bobcat- being an overweight superhero with family problems. based on a character that I can't even seem to find anymore that appeared on a single space ghost coast to coast episode. his voice is based on what i remember bobcat goldwaith sounding like on space ghost as well (its not very accurate when i go back and watch that interview)
Sling Blade - cyber goth raver (since he's mostly the costume, I had difficulty even coming up with a true character. I watched so many videos of people doing cybergoth dance, and didn't learn much about personality, except that all of them REALLY FUCKING LOVE cyber)
Yangley- extremely dorky, doesn't know what's going on, often confused, terrible sense of self awareness and fashion, all of my anxiety pent up into one person. as i told richard once, if i don't do yangley... i BECOME yangley... :(
Jerry - based on "hacks and tricks" guys i see on youtube a lot. really like irrational thinking and get rich quick scams. since i don't really look like someone from the south, i started doing these videos without showing my face, but still in a southern accent. for some reason getting rich quick has a lot to do with living in the south. maybe that's just based on all the "shop at home" infomercials i watched as a kid. i mean wow, i remember just sitting there for fucking hours and hours at a time watching shop at home sell beanie babies for thousands and thousands of dollars. time well spent.
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new characters:
"haley" real doll (not sure about the name yet) - wants to transition into a doll full time. really wants to make it in this crazy fucked up world as the person she's always wanted to be. looks up to other doll people for knowing what they want and being brave enough to transition into dollhood in their lives. does tarot for some reason. likes to dress like a gypsy.
juggalo gospel / juggalo massage - okay i have no idea but i mean.. hahahahahah
"ultimate beta yangley" - i really like the idea of going out in public and interviewing alphas and regular people on how they feel about alpha males, but being as beta as i possibly can while doing the interview. yangley's probably the best person to do this. he's usually been too scared to do interviews with people, but it's for a school project so..
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that's it for now. wish i had more ideas, but I think i have plenty to work on right now. my goal (don't laugh!) is to make a pilot for a show with a couple friends of mine and submit it to adult swim or other networks, maybe online. a friend of mine claims to know the president of adult swim (he's made music for them in the past), which made me REALLY motivated to start making videos again. i've been taking notes for a long time (do NOT underestimate the power of consistently taking notes), and feel like i'm finally ready for all this creative stuff to burst the fuck outta me.
cya soon!!
l o ve
- g
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