While the idea behind Animoo was a result of a simple joke, the characters and story in Animoo were not created on a whim. Rather, the characters were drawn several times; their personalities were fleshed out over the course of development. Here we see the development of characters Murray, Herbert, Lilith, and Marcus over the course of the game's development. This section deals with the physical and personality development of the four main characters in Animoo. It will also deal with possible ideas on how you could better develop your own characters when creating your own story

Murray Boughvine was originally created as a simple cow with Japanese animated eyes. The reason behind this was that the story was more along the lines of Babe, with a real cow obsessed with Japanese anime he watched on his owner's son's television through his window. He vowed to the other farm animals he would find his way to Japan somehow, in some way.

The problem with this story is that it hampers the possibilities with gameplay. Having a semi-realistic cow in a realistic world would limit gameplay potential. A decision was made instead to make the animals anthromorphic in their own world similar to ours, With that, the design decision would change the main character of the story.

When designing Murray, we looked at several sources of influences with anthromorphic animals, most notably Jim Murray's work (Rocko's Modern Life, Camp Lazlo). We also looked at friends and relatives which fit the nerd/otaku stereotype bill and drew ideas from that. Murray has unkempt curly, red hair, and can always be seen wearing a shirt featuring characters from his favorite show or video game. His headband represents his undying love for Japan's culture.

Most important to the character's creation, though, was creating a body structure for Murray that stood out. We set out to make him recognizable from a silhouette, a sure sign that this character would be unique enough to be recognized from other characters we created. Murray was therefore created as a heavy set character compared to other main characters.

He is, after all, a cow.

Herbert Brown. He's a bear with glasses. At least that's how one would simply see it, but his creation actually was pretty interesting.

When the Animoo project began to pick up steam, it was decided to focus on cooperative multiplayer. This meant creating other characters who were similar, yet different, from Murray. The first of these characters who were fully fleshed out was Herbert. The first drawing of him pretty much set the character in stone: a slightly hunchback bear who towered the other character sketches, a stark contrast to Murray who is about the average height of other characters.

Using this character staple, different facials of Herbert were created. A few featured him as more of a sharp-toothed, grizzly looking bear, but it was decided that a friend of Murray's would be a more easy-going or shy type character.

From there, details were added to Herbert to create the timid character he is now: glasses were added to show his obsession with watching anime and using computers all night long. A cute shirt wardrobe was made to show how soft-hearted and kind he is. His snaggletooth was added to show some imperfection on his face, making him unattractive in the world of Animoo. The bald spot on his head, interestingly enough, was based on one of the artist's acquaintances who shares a number of attributes similar to Herbert.

Why a bear? He was chosen because it fits a warrior-type animal/character which can be found in the woods. Throughout the game, Herbert realizes he has this strength potential and eventually leads to him having pretty devastating attacks. Plus bears go "roar."

Herbert Brown

Lilith went through many transformations before being completed in her design. The first drawings of her dates back to when the game had a more realistic universe as opposed to its current cartoony animal universe. Her design went through an even more so than usual cartoon phase than any other character in the game.

Originally, Lilith was a stereotype of a shy, nerdy girl, but Herbert had already filled in the timid character slot. Instead, we decided to have a bit of fun with her. While the nerd aspect would obviously be kept, it was decided to make her personality a bit more joyful yet frantic, talkative (a sharp contrast to Herbert's personality), and especially defensive of her friends.

A challenge we had when designing Lilith was making her appear feminine. Because animals of both genders tend to look similar, we decided to modify female characters with subtle features without making the animals look like humans. For Lilith, we added a hairclip, a small facial structure, and long tuffs of fur around her neck and head to make it appear as if it were long hair.

Ferrets are known to do this little dance when they are about to attack, so it was incorporated into her. When she starts to get visibly upset, you can notice her start to shuffle around. One of her more powerful attacks involves the so called "war dance," itself.

Her clothing was also interesting; she always wears a purple sweater that she loves with other shirts underneath, most notably an often used tie-dye shirt.

The design of Marcus was tricky. We knew we wanted a dog for certain, but were uncertain of what kind of dog it would be. It was decided that Marcus would be either a Comondore or a Catalan Sheepdog because of their interesting hairstyles, and let's be honest, would you want to play as a Poodle? Ultimately, it was decided that he would be a Catalan Sheepdog.

Marcus is the most laid-back of the four main characters. While one could say that Herbert is pretty easygoing, we decided right from the get go that Marcus would not be shy and would speak his mind, sometimes getting the four of them into trouble. His character still enjoys the nerdier things in life, however, and provides a much different personality who enjoys the same things as the rest of the group.

An interesting note to put here: All of these animals were chosen with animation in mind. All of the four main animals have unique body structures which are animated very differently from each other. Marcus, for example, has a more anthromorphic stance than the other characters.

Marcus Barker