Deeper than that

This week, I spent hours wrestling with personality quirks of characters in a show I’m working on.

The areas they harmonize, the areas they disagree.

The outfits they won’t need until future seasons, but are worth knowing in advance for continuity of design language in other objeccts.

In the culture of their world, what came before that will never be seen, to make a coherent world-view that influences how they walk, what they reminisce, and what they hope for.

Why?

Can’t you just draw a cool-looking character and call it good?

You can…

But any old machine can do that.

People don’t connect with cool pictures and novel stories.

They connect with something deeper than that.

The human work of caring more deeply than that.

The feeling that someone wrestled with the nuances for a long time, pulling together worlds worth getting lost in.

Many won’t even notice it, consciously. But they’ll feel it, unconsciously.

This is the human work of making things that matter for people who care.

It’s worth every struggle, especially when nobody’s watching.