Characters development

 In this blog post I decided to establish exactly what 'purple' trait or interest or something related to them has each of my 6 characters I am developing. Throughout all four of the researches of the color, I have always added some information how I see a character with that trait or how specifically does the research inform my work. 

I started today's process by going through my researches and making it clear for myself, what information I want to use. When I had that established, I decided to make a diagram that shows what connected to purple color, would each character have. Here I am going to add my diagram and discuss it below. 

I have created this mind map in an app called Procreate. 

Going from the left, first person mentioned is the mom. I have already did some initial sketches of the artistic and creative mom in the past. Since purple is the color of creativity, mom would be a messy, creative artist. A person with brushes in her hair and paint stains all over her dress. Someone relatable for all those artistic, chaotic children out there. Moms are usually very responsible and organized and this mom could possibly think of herself as a 'cool' mom. Usually children find the concept of a 'cool' mom quite amusing and funny cartoons have definitely more interest than cartoons that are not funny. 

The next person in the grandma. I see grandma as a quiet person, very wise, very knowledgeable. She is a widow, since in Thai culture widows wear purple. I also see her as a spiritual guide for the prince, she is not talking much, but whenever she saying something, it always has a lot of meaning. I could see her and her grandchildren getting along to make this character relatable. Grandmas usually get along with their grandchildren because they like to spoil them. 

The next person is the son. I put him in the middle of the diagram, because I see him as the main character. I want him to be the age of my target audience, so around 7 years old and make him as relatable as possible. He is a child, who is not at all interested in being a prince and attending all the royal events. He would prefer to be born in a normal family and he wants his life to look like a life of a normal 7 year old. He is interested in mysteries, riddles and all that. He gets along with grandma because she shares her wisdom with him. He spends a lot of time reading and solving big mysteries. He conveys the message that he can be whoever he wants to be. 

The next person is the dad. I can see the dad as a very strong person, with wide shoulders. In my mind he is very proud and he is a champion. I am not sure yet what he is a champion in, but I think he could be a sports champion. I would make him look very strong and generally big. I would want his pride to radiate from his body, and I can see that through a straight back and a huge smile. I can also see his jaw line to be very sharp and his head not very big (only the jaw bigger). 

The last person would be the teenage daughter, who is a rebel. I would want to show that teenage rebellion, where teens find themselves and explore what is important for them. Since purple is a color of women, I could see her being a feminist activist. I would want to show that the teenage rebellion is mostly based on teenagers having their own views no longer imposed by their parents. I think sometimes parents see the teenage time as negative because the teenagers start to disagree with their parents but it is not necessarily anything negative. 

Lastly I added my pet dinosaur about whom I have talked a little bit in my previous post. I can see him as a rescue from a shelter and an animal abuse survivor. 

All of those ideas may still slightly change, however this is where I am at with all those characters after studying color purple really in depth. I think it is important to remember that the characters will not be 100% purple. They all will have definitely elements of this color on them, but I do not think it is needed for them to just be monochromatic purple. 

I think in those designs I could use yellow (complementary color of purple) or yellow-orange and yellow-green (purple split colors). I think when my theme is based on a color, it would be a great idea to incorporate a little bit of color theory in the design to make it more interesting and create harmony.