One block that people sometimes have when creating a character is delaying releasing it out into the world because they’re not quite sure whether it looks right or should be more fully formed.
Lots of well known cartoon characters have started out in one form and then slowly changed over time.
Everything changes over time, so there’s no reason why your own cartoon character should be any different.
In can be a lot of fun to simply out a character out there and then see how they develop. Also, when people see your character, they might give you some comments about your character which you could then take on board.
In this article I’m going to look at the evolution of my most popular character, Gerald the Goat.
Gerald the Goat’s first appearance.
Here is Gerald’s very first appearance.
Gerald didn’t even start off life as a main character. I’d already started drawing a character called Stan. He featured in some simple strips that I didn’t even get around to thinking up a name for.
As you can see in the above strip, a random goat showed up to the bouquet intended for Stan’s girlfriend. Although it was intended to be a one-off appearance, the goat ended up sticking around and soon ended up with the name Gerald. Shortly after that the strip itself was named ‘Gerald the Goat’, and Stan had to share the spotlight with Gerald.
Here’s one of the early Gerald strips. As you can see, he’s still pretty simply at this point. He probably continued in this form for about thirty strips.
I didn’t even bother with backgrounds at this point, it was just the simply characters, with a little shadow underneath.
At this point, there wasn’t really a cast, it just Gerald and Stan, with an occasional nameless character appearing who would invariably be butted away.
The strips at this point mainly consisted of Gerald thing and butting people, and while that wa a lot of fun to think up, I realized that it would soon become stale, and that it would be more interesting to think up some different material for gags.
To take Gerald off into an occasional entirely different direction entirely, I introduced the space goat.
It was time to assemble a cast of characters.
A couple of characters had already made an appearance.
Rex police dog was an early attempt to introduce someone to keep Gerald in line…somewhat unsuccessfully….
I wanted a human character to do some of the thing that Gerald was getting up to. And so I came up with the idea of misschevious old lady, Granny Mills, who is able to get away with things due to her advanced age.
Shapoklyak show with Cheburashka on the right.
One of the characters Granny Mills was based on was an exceedingly mischevious old lady called Shapoklyak who appeared in the Russian stop-motion animated films which featured the popular character Cheburashka.
The old battle axe’s old battle axe.
The other was Giles’ Grandma character.
After Granny Mills debuted there started to be the first strips that didn’t feature the title character.
Soon after I introduced Granny Mills, I realised that Rex the police dog was unable to control Gerald, and so I needed someone to keep him in line.
I introduced the bull, who chased Gerald around for a bit, but this didn’t really work as bulls and goats are not natura enemies. And my search for a proper antagonist for Gerald went on.
The first big change to Gerald himself was giving him more complex eyes so tht he could show a greater range of emotion. You can also see in the above cartoon that I started to creat simple backgrounds using washes.
At this point the cast consisted of the main characters of Gerald, Stan, and Granny Mills, with occasional appearances by Rex and Little Ivy, and increasingly fleeting roles for the bull.
I also introduced the device of Granny Mills ‘borrowing pets’ from the local zoo, which enabled to have some fun drawing different animals.
Stan’s girlfriend seemed not to be deterred by the fact that her boyfriend was having goat-control issues and also popped into the strip from time-to-time.
I’d already introduced the device of Granny Mills’ ‘borrowing’ pets from the zoo, which got me thinking about what else could be lurking inside the zoo that could be more of a bother for Gerald.
As Gerald was supposed to be some sort of mountain goat, I thought I’d research animals prey on goats in the wild, and came up with a leopard.
Enter the snow leopard
It’s very early days with the snow leopard at the moment. She’s still stuck inthe zoo, so I’m trying to think up some inventive ways inwhich she can break out and hassle Gerald.
It was only fairly late on in the strip that the characters started to talk. For along time ther was only a narrator describing what was going on.
So that brings the cast more or less up to date.
It will be fun to see where it develops from here.
