Exercise : Animal farm

In this exercise, the aim was to create an Anthropomorphic character. As an inspiration, I chose one of our cats, we have two with very different personalities. Our oldest cat is Belladonna, Bella for short : a black and white Molly who’s very nervous and skittish. The youngest addition and the subject of the character here is Salem, a small framed all black Selkirk Rex cross girl, clever and mischievous, aloof on the surface, but loving and friendly on her terms.

Our youngest daughter is always making suggestions about how Salem would dress if she were a human, what she would compare to etc. and we often compare her to real personalities which is good fun to do!

As both cats have acquired an array of ridiculous alter-egos and names, I went with the most commonly used name which Salem has, apart from her proper name : Weejee, which is what she’s called after Salem.

So here, she becomes Salem the Ouija (Weejee) cat.

It’s generally agreed in our house that Salem would be a goth girl of some description, she did have a real pentagram collar charm, but refused to wear a collar after a while so that didn`t last long.

She like a stroke now and then, but it can end in chewing in a flash..

She doesn’t bite hard though, and it never has any malice really..

..often loves watching birds in the garden, a favourite pastime of most cats..

She always enjoys a nap on the soft foot rest cube we have, she wasted no time making that her own bed.

Conclusion

I’ve never found anthropomorphism a particularly easy thing to achieve, it calls for a bit more of an intimate knowledge and study of the particular animal you’re attempting to apply the treatment to. It reminds me of an anecdotal story I was once told by a talented animator I worked with years ago :

He said a friend of his at college had wanted to work for Disney all his life since he could remember. Near the end of graduation, there was an exhibition of student work and several companies were there talent scouting, and Disney were there. The friend went for an informal interview with Disney and there were a pair of suits from the hiring department looking through his work. They scanned through his work very quickly, thanked him for his time and said he should apply when he had more than one portfolio of work and that he should preferably study animals in every pose and apply one of each to an anthropomorphic set. Then get in touch with them again.

The upshot of the tale was, he took this advice on board and eventually got hired by Disney, fulfilling a life dream, moved to the states and got a job there…and left because it wasn`t the dream he’d thought it would be.

The point I’m making here is that an animation powerhouse like Disney place such high importance on the study of animals in nature in order to impart personality and characteristics, so it’s simple to see the depth of study you really need to at least pull this off with some success, on the creature side at least.

This was a fun little exercise though, a small furry journey into the fantasy otherworld of an otherwise temperamental Selkirk Rex with a taste for human hands and arms, and a slightly evil streak.