Tarzan

I have chosen to talk about Tarzan as my first demonstration of my understanding of character and narrative because I think he is just the perfect demonstration of how character design can drive narrative. 

Tarzan has been raised by apes so he would move like one, be suspicious of humans, be very animalistic. I like the way they have really thought about Tarzans' muscles and how muscular he would be with all the climbing he would do in the jungle. Obviously this is a kids film so they had to coverup his...manhood...but they did it really well by using a loin cloth which is very jungle like. 

I think the ape like design of Tarzan really helps drive the narrative as we see just how not human tarzan is. He has never seen a human before, and doesn't know what one is. I like his facial expressions as shown in the image above. It's very nervous about new things and the way he sniffs things like he's actually an animal. He's just very explorative and animalistic in everything he does and this really helps show where he is from and why his story is so different and exciting but also believable. 

Also his hair looks like its almost dreadlocks, this is because he doesn't know what a brush is and its so long because they don't know it can be cut, they don't have scissors and they're used to apes who's hair doesn't grow that long. Also his skin is a pretty dark colour as he lives outside in the wild so he would be exposed to the sun a lot.

I like how his fingers and toes seem to work differently to a normal human as he has adapted to swinging on vines and climbing trees meaning he needs to grip more. This just backs up the narrative more.