Character Backstories

One of the most important things I needed to establish about these two characters was:

• Who they are
• What kind of personalities do they have
• How is their personality/lifestyle influenced by cultural aspects
• Who is their audience. 

Since these characters were not supposed to be designed to work together as a pair, I decided to create two contrasting backstories. Not only would this challenge me more in terms of physical design, but it would also allow me to see if this influenced the practical outcome of these characters in any way, and weather or not it would influenced the way they were received by an audience. 

Character 1: Farah

For the character of Farah, I decided base her in the modern day. This is because, at the point of designing I had found myself quite distressed and angered by a lot of the political and religious issues going on at this point in time. After thinking about this I had the idea of designing the character with the purpose of educating an audience. 

In what context would this character be seen?

I imagine that Farah is the main character in a short animated film based on the topic of racism and inequality. The general storyline of this short would be based around Farah and her family, emphasising how much of a kind, normal family they are. The purpose of this character and the short that could potentially be made would be to reinforce to a young audience (school age, between 13-16) the importance of acceptance, and that somebody's ethnicity or religious beliefs does not define their whole existence, and that everybody should be treated as equals. 

Character 2: Toby

For the character of Toby, I decided to go with something that contrasted the backstory of Farah. When thinking about culture today, and I started to think about how different things were 70 years ago. With no iPhones, no internet and the different ways in which children were brought up I decided this would be an interesting aspect to think about for this character. I wanted to reinforce the fact that because of the non-existent internet, it would e much easier for this character to shut out the bad things that are going on, allowing him to carry on being a kid.

In what context would this character be seen?

The target audience for Toby would be children aged around 6-9. Toby would be the main character of a children's animated series based around the life of an evacuee. I decided that this would be an interesting storyline to go with, because it would be aimed at youngsters but wouldn't incorporate any of the modern day gadgets we have today. I would hope that this would be the kind of series that would remind kids to go out, get messy and play.