Posts Tagged ‘buffy’

Dramatic Character Changes

Posted: 23rd September 2011 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: "Sorority", Concepts & Development
2

On the reintroduction and transformation of Jill from the ‘Inertia’ vignette to ‘Sorority’, and the unexpected surprises along the way.

In every fiction serial, especially those in visual media, one of the great creative freedoms comes from the opportunity to show existing characters in dramatically changed roles. From alternate-timelines like Fringe and Buffy, to space/time-leaps as seen in Heroes and Battlestar Galactica, and all the hundreds of alternate/non-canon comic book lines, there are few things as rewarding to the long-time fan as the complete displacement of a character (or characters) into a new environment, a new perspective, and a new aesthetic.

With Night Zero’s non-linear vignette style, we’ve done a number of time-jumps with our characters with varying changes (but no parallel universes or time travellers… yet). The ‘Sisters‘ vignette placed the Nazarovs back in time but without much noticable shift in personalities, mainly because not much of their personalities had been revealed in the serial to that point. Yevgeniy’s appearance at the end of that story was a fun change in appearance, but his real character change was in the vignette ‘Devon‘, which looked at him as a fresher, more rambunctious leader. And of course there’s the character of Jezebel, who changes dramatically at every turn and yet still remains ever the same.
Read the rest of this entry »

Character Deaths in the Zombie Genre

Posted: 5th November 2010 by Anthony van Winkle
Categories: Behind-the-Scenes Photos, Concepts & Development, Episode 5 - "Reversals"
1

On the philosophies of creating and destroying characters in zombie fiction

This current group of scenes in episode five, collectively summarized as “The Death of Dariya”, is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. It marks a significant point in the Night Zero timeline: for all the many characters we’ve explored and for all the dozens of zombies we’ve encountered, this is the first time we’ve actually transformed an established “main character” into an infected, striking them from the ranks of human survivors and tallying their name in the register of the apocalypse.

While some critics may argue that a lack of long-established characters’ deaths is poor zombie narrative, I consider it to be a strength of the Night Zero story and philosophy. In a typical zombie-genre work, be it graphic novel, film, or television show, an initial cast of characters is introduced and picked off, one by one, as their surviving party encounters new challenges. The reader can expect, by the end, only one or two characters to remain from the original group; in an ongoing serial story, new characters must be constantly introduced so that the regular eliminations can continue. To this end, character deaths in the zombie genre are essentially progress markers, and each story or episode will be sure to include at least one: the more significant the event, the more established and well-loved the character who dies.
Read the rest of this entry »