Mike Milo’s Journal

I am NOT a nerd! I KNEW it! My brother however (teehee) got a 99!

Characters are complex things… or er… people. Studios say they want them to be familiar so that we feel like they are an old friend and yet you are essentially creating a living being or pretending to.

I know when Harry and I first started writing together we spent a lot of time coming up with stories which we would then toss one- sided characters into such as one is optomistic and one is pessimistic. Very wooden, So one’s pessimistic… great. What else is there?

How does he feel about eating?

Does he like to cook his own food or does he eat out?

Does he like driving or would he rather ride shotgun?

Does he raise his voice when he’s upset or is he introverted and gets really quiet?
If he were to come to your house would you trust himwith a bag of money on the couch if you left the room?

Do you think he would pay his taxes or would he cheat on them?

Does he have friends and if so why? If not why as well?

How does he feel about where he lives. does he love it or is it a place he’s parked for now but plans someday to move up?

You might think everyone is ambitious but I could site quite a few people who are just happy with where they are in life with no desire to move up.

All these things can help attribute to good character.

Think about it. Stimpy is a loving soul, you could trust him with your life, he would rather be second fiddle but if given the chance he could be a leader. I imagine he’d like to cook his own food as he’s a bit domestic.
However Ren is someone you couold definately not trust with a bag of money… yet he might feel really bad about stealing it and eventually bring it back. He would most likely like to go out to eat and be waited on like the King he thinks he is. He’s clearly the driver in the relationship and you KNOW he can’t wait to speet on thee leetle people from hees penthouse in thee sky!

I believe when you can actually tell what a character would do in a certain situation you have created someone. Their likes, dislikes and preferences are really important when creating a “living being”.
Imagine how God must feel!

I’m not saying I “know all about it”, quite the contrary, I am learning too… I findthis topic of character development really interesting and hopefully you do as well.

So as some of you may know I have been ptiching ideas in the TV animation business for at least the last ten years or so and until this past year I thought I knew it all and that the only reason that studios passed on my ideas was because they diedn’t know what they were talking about…
pretty pompous huh? But I figured, I’ve ptiched at least 50 concepts around town, I must know what I am doing…
Wrong.
This year I learned an incredibly valubale lesson and I’m not entirely sure how I went about it other than praying to God for a good idea. Anyway, I will share it with you so you can benefit from my 10+ years of stupidity!

Whenever I tried to create a series idea I would think about it for a while and end up with something like this…

Elmo and Boodro are two aliens that work for a garbage company in space. Elmo is a kind soul and Boodro is a cantankerous fellow. The two are always arguing as they traverse the galaxy picking up trash as they find all sorts of wierd things and go on all sorts of wacky adventures.

Sound good to you? I used to think so too. But then I learned.

What works much better is:

Elmo is an over-emotional alien, he hates space and yet he’s stuck there. Day after day he’s forced to pick up others trash and he hates it. As an Interplanetary Sanitation Transport Engineer, he hates the bugs, he hates the filth he hates the grime… But it’s what he does and he tries to make the best of it. He hopes on day to be able to drive the garbage truck, but that will probably never happen because of Boodro his pushy self center partner. Boodro who likes the trash and saves bits of it by shrink wrapping it carefully. Boodro who always seems to find a way to crash the ship even though he’s out in the wasteland of nothingness… Boodro who’s breath smells like tamales.

See the difference? Granted, I am not making an award winning example because if I did, I would sell it and I am just trying to prove a point…
See the problem with the first one is that it is all setup. The second one is all character and happens to throw in that they are garbage men in space. In the first example, we set up the whole show and the situation without ever really delving into the characters at all. Who are these guys? Why prevents me from just taking Garfield or Sponge Bob and plopping him right into this show? What makes it unique and not just some cookie-cutter crap?

The real character in this show is “space” not Boodro and Elmo. They’re single celled organisms as far asI’m concerned. I could care less about them… and so could the studios.

Sponge Bob works so well because he’s unique. He also happens to live under the sea but that’s not who he is… truthfully Bob would be the same if he lived on an island or in a jungle. The same silly laugh, the same loyalty and the same funny take on life and it’s values. Yeah Bob would not change no matter where he went. THAT’S character.
Most studios these days are looking for their “Sponge Bob” and that’s what they actually say ” We’re looking for Sponge Bob, but not Sponge Bob” so people give them what they think that is, they create some characters that live in space instead and all the jokes are “space jokes” and they are really nutty. Or they are all onions and they live at the bottom of a drawer and they’re really wacky… or they are cars that all live in a garage somewhere and they are all rfeally nutty. Funny thing is that’s not at all what makes Sponge Bob successful. It’s his attitude, his character, his personality. That’s what works.

Make sense?
Anyway, that is what I have learned this year. Whether I can actually apply it to my pitches remains to be seen but I can tell you this, it is one of the most valuable lessons I have learned in my career.
The other one is to learn to keep my mouth shut more often and listen isntead of formulating what I am going to say next while the other person speaks.

If you found this usefull and you’re interested in hearing more like this then tell me… if not the silence will be my guide!

Every year for the last 15 years or so, I have made my wife a Valentines Day Card. One day I will see if she’ll let me post them here. They always involve a cat and a dog for multiple reasons, most evident beeing that my wife resembles a kitten. Soft, sweet, loves to be pet and has razor sharp claws if you cross her! Anyway, this year is special to me because of all the crap we’ve gone through and yet we love each other more today than we did when we first fell in love. And that is truth!
Anyway, here’s this year’s card… Hug the one you love and make sure you give them a gift… as Tony Soprano always says: “Never come empty-handed”

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. She would have been 58 years old. Four years ago she died of a brain hemmorage while my brother and I were on a plane to come say our last goodbyes. It was very sad. She was only 54. Sad. In the long run it was for the best, she had had a massive heart attack ten years before she died and lived with only 20% of her heart working. She even had a heart transplant but by the time they found one for her it was too late and the rest of her body just shut down. She taught me how to laugh and in many ways she was my best friend. And yet she drove me crazier than anyone ever has… sometimes I just wanted to throttle her, she was so annoying. At the age of 50 she was still giving me wet willies. She told the people that worked for me that when I was 4 I bit my bicycle and was never afraid to show me as a baby with my naked bottom! Grrrr, she frustrated me…

I get all of my restless energy from her and also all of my oddness, my quirky sense of humor and all of the sense God gave a stump from my mom. Also, without a doubt all of the confidence I have as an artist were all gleened from my mother… My mom could laugh, longer, harder and better than anyone I knew. When I moved to L.A. we would talk for hours on the phone and I always found it funny that I got to know my mother best on the a long distance call. We seemed to have passed that same exact qualities to my daughter Melissa now and Melissa is one of my better friends and she is only 9. My brother’s daughter Emily, looks so much like my mom at times it is startling! Aamazing that one woman (pain in the ass that she was!) could have such a profound effect on a generation.

I will miss her greatly.

People, wherever you are or whatever you do, understand that you need to take care of your body. There are people that love you and even if you think it’s not true, there are people that will weep when you die and will miss you greatly.

Believe me I know…

Some doodles I did at Church yesterday… and yes I WAS listening!