I have been looking in to popular children’s animations and trying to analyse what makes the characters so popular and I have come up with an interesting discovery. More often than not there is more than one character and each character plays a certain emotional role. Let me explain. Take Shrek and Donkey, Shrek is the large, level headed hero while Donkey is the comical clumsy village idiot. Whilst there may be more than one character in the main cast, they can always fit in to one of two categories:
1) Hero / Big / Brute / Strong / Fearless / Easily frustrated / Metholodical
2) Weak / Small / Scared / Stupid / Simple / easily amused / random
With both of these elements you can include various factors in every film:
- Humour – the clumsy one can do something stupid
- Peril – adds suspense but we have the big/hero to save the day
- Side story’s – something a little different when the idiot gets sidetracked
- A main story – the hero/level head to keep the story moving forward
- Sadness – the hero’s reason to begin his quest through the film
- Happiness – the clumsy one is happy for the hero at the end of the film (and usual wins an added bonus prize for him/her self)
The method of using multiple characters for the range of emotions is clearly a tried, tested and proved method of creating children’s animations. For this reason I am not sure I feel comfortable questioning it, rather I have decided to embrace it (and let’s face it, arguing child psychology is a bit above and beyond the scope of this module).
For now anyway here is a little table I put together to support my theory,
No more questions your honour, I rest my case.
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