Extended Practice Main Characters Ideas, Development and Animal Facts

We then moved onto looking at who are main character was going to be. We already had a good feeling about making the character a animal as they can be adapted so well to make them child friendly and fun looking. This was the easy part, deciding on a character was slightly more difficult so we started by making an initial mind map looking at all of the different animals throughout that appealed most to us, looking at common animals to the less common sea creatures.

We then took forward the animals that we believed would appeal to us the most and expanded on them by looking at basic facts about them, like where they are from, what kind of food they eat, and also what kind of lives they lead by looking at how social they are and how often they are active.

For the main character, which is the one I am taking forward to design and develop we really wanted to go with the unlikely choice which is why we settled on a Koala Bear. It seemed like the most obvious choice to pick the animal that slept for almost 20 hours a day due to their diet, this opened up a lot of possibilities for game play, by having the character that needs to jump around quite a lot and move between platforms it seem right as we could then add in an element of humour by having him say drink pop to keep him active and his energy levels high.

Once we had decided on the main characters look I first wanted to do a little more in-depth research before I started designing the character so I could get an idea about the background, and how they do move when they do. This was a great way of learning a lot about them, and offered more to the story as we could pull together Koala facts that are true or completely opposite to the truth.

Koala Facts
All of this information was taken from here as the source is very trusted and it offered a lot of useful information.

'Though often called the koala "bear," this cuddly animal is not a bear at all; it is a marsupial, or pouched mammal. After giving birth, a female koala carries her baby in her pouch for about six months. When the infant emerges, it rides on its mother's back or clings to her belly, accompanying her everywhere until it is about a year old.

Koalas live in eastern Australia, where the eucalyptus trees they love are most plentiful. In fact, they rarely leave these trees, and their sharp claws and opposable digits easily keep them aloft. During the day they doze, tucked into forks or nooks in the trees, sleeping for up to 18 hours.

When not asleep a koala feeds on eucalyptus leaves, especially at night. Koalas do not drink much water and they get most of their moisture from these leaves. Each animal eats a tremendous amount for its size—about two and a half pounds (one kilogram) of leaves a day. Koalas even store snacks of leaves in pouches in their cheeks.

A special digestive system—a long gut—allows koalas to break down the tough eucalyptus leaves and remain unharmed by their poison. Koalas eat so many of these leaves that they take on a distinctive odor from their oil, reminiscent of cough drops.

These plump, fuzzy mammals were widely hunted during the 1920s and 1930s, and their populations plunged. Helped by reintroduction, they have reappeared over much of their former range, but their populations are smaller and scattered. Koalas need a lot of space—about a hundred trees per animal—a pressing problem as Australia's woodlands continue to shrink.'

The information taken from the National Geographic website is very helpful for me as I continue to develop this character. I have learned a great deal about their backgrounds, which could lead to interesting dialog as our character is very old, he could remember certain facts about the past or tell stories from his parents and grandparents.