RobertFiddler

Hello everyone!

Sorry for my absence, I do my best to create more stuff, but working on several projects beside doing a fulltime job and with my attention being spread so thin, I really running low on energy to draw. I Wanted to make a quick entry because recently I had a lot of discussion within the Zootopia community about the meaning of portraying a character out-of-character, and some points I felt like are worth sharing with a bigger audience.

In literature, OOC-ness is widely accepted as a big technical flaw from the writer's part. But many argue that fan-fiction is just a way to spend time, mess around and overall enjoy yourselves, so it shouldn't be held true to these rules of writing. Even if that is true, that's still not an explanation to certain OOC-ness, just and excuse and it doesn’t make it any less of a flaw. You may put this flaw into your story intentionally because you do the work just for fun, but then you have to accept that you are making the story for your own entertainment and not for the people who actually love the original character that you change for your own needs and desires.

I've come across this article that makes some very great point on the matter of OOC-ness in general and how one should avoid it. If you are a writer I definetly suggest reading it:

hlwar.livejournal.com/72273.ht…

But while we were discussing how to understand and portray well-established characters and their traits, an interesting question came up, about the correct usage of characters that we know little about. I started writing a bried study on it, and it turned out a bit better than expected, so I decided to share it with you all. Hope you will like it!

Please keep in mind that the following are not recommendations on how to write a fan-fiction, just some tips to those who are interested in becoming better in reading and understanding characters and keep them consistent throughout their stories. A few ideas in case you don’t just want to write for your own entertainment, but out of love for the characters and you want your work to represent them in a way that pays them respect.

The article makes some great point about OOC-ness and how to avoid it, but also states that characters where the established traits are not enough to determine a solid character, are often up for several interpretation, that are all acceptable in many cases.

In the Zootopia fandom a character that is such can be Jack Savage. We literally know nothing about him as he is a scrapped early draft of the protagonist that later became Nick Wilde. So his personality, goals and even skills are all up for the writer's imagination. He has been a cool super agent, other times he is a helpless scared spy-movie actor.

The true challenge is however a character that has some traits established but not enough to make a solid character. Such is the semi-canon older sister of Judy, Violet Hopps, from the Disney comic: Brothers & Sisters. Violet has 3 main actions in this story /SPOILER WARNING/:
-She tells Judy to take the day off because of a little injury on her arm.
-When Judy goes to work anyway, she commands the other siblings to get on the bus so they can follow and stop her (In result, the bus goes out of control from the too many passengers, and Judy saves them, by stopping it)
-When Judy arrives late and Bogo threatens to fire her, she stands up for Judy and tells Bogo that Judy just saved their lives.

When you know so little about a character, you have to carefully analyze every action, and work out a possible motivation and character trait for it.
-first, she tells Judy to stay home because: she is very loving and caring person, maybe a little over-protective who is afraid for her little sister's safety.
-she commands the other siblings who follow her instructions because: she has her sibling’s respect, a leader type
-she stands up for Judy against Bogo because: she is thankful, recognizes Judy's abilities and wants to see her little sister succeed and being happy.

These are the base traits, the skeleton you can start working out more character traits on. Is she also intelligent? Is she fearful of foxes? Would she approve of Nick and Judy as a pair because of her sister's happiness or would she be against it because she is afraid that Judy is getting close to a fox? These are all up for interpretation and no answer is wrong as long none of the base character traits stand against it.

However when doing analysis like that it's easy to misinterpret characters which leads to stuff that people will call out as OOC. Such example is a short story of Violet I read one: After hearing from Judy that Nick is still single, she asks him out on a date behind Judy's back. That leaves Judy heartbroken and angry, because she had feelings for Nick and Violet just ignored that possibility, thinking that if Judy would be interested in Nick she wouldn’t have said that he is single.

The possible interpretation behind this could be that her first, second and third action from the comic together portrays Violet as a character who always tries to be in charge and she always pressures everyone around her to agree with her, and she must have everything going her way. For such character it is entirely possible to only look out for her own interest and happiness, with other words: selfish.

However this portrayal of her ignores the motivation behind each of her actions individually. The only reason she would ask Judy to stay home because of her injury is concern/worry, and the only reason she'd change her mind and stand up against Bogo is because of gratitude to Judy and wanting to help her keep her job. These motivations are selfless.

Compared to that, the sister that makes a move on a man her little sister introduced to the family, is obviously not caring, not concerned with the happiness of her little sister and overall someone so selfish that it’s doubtful the rest of the family would respect and follow her: As a result she is Out-of-Character even with that little number of character traits that we based her on. That's why it's important, if you WANT to stay true to a character to examine each action from all directions to fully understand its motivation and personality.

That's it for now, I really hope you found this little article helpful and like I said I promise to try to find some time to draw more!

With kind regards,
Robert Fiddler

Hello Guys!

I'm still alive! Somehow... I've been working on various stuff this summer, but nothing worth of uploading to deviantart, but that said, I'm working on various projects!

-I am working on the rest of the latest Hellsing Excidium Chapter, despite reaching a little writers block with it. I want to upload the entire chapter when it's finished instead of page after page. I hope it will be worth the wait.
-I am writing the 3rd Chapter of the my Zootopia x S.W.I.N.E AU fanfic, Operation Melting point
-I am also going to assist my friend Kulkum and Weaver on another chapter of Sundarance this months

And thats just that stuff that I plan to do before the end of this year. I promise I'll try my best to be more productive, but several personal life stuff slow me down quite a bit, which means that there is still a bunch of ideas in me piled up that I hope to show you guys!

Speaking of showing you guys something, Cas and her friends have just finished dubbing the second part of An Adventure in Zootropolis, and they did a really amazing job again! Hope you will like it as much as I did!

And again, sorry for the lack of updates, I try to give signs of life more often!

Hello Guys!

Happy belated easter to everyone!

I got heads up from Cas VoiceActs that she and her friends finished dubbing the first part of my first longer zootopia comic, "An Adventure in Zootropolis", and what I can say, I love it to bits!

It is always so amazing to see others appriciate my writing and drawing, but to be able to hear voiceacting so good, every emotion to be so spot on as the way they were in my head, without any of my help or guidance is just so spine-tingling. They all did an amazing job and I hope they had as much fun making it as I had watching it!

Be sure to check it out too, like, comment and subscribe to her and check out the channels of her fellow awesome voiceactors!