Hey again. We spoke about going into more detail with simple characters vs complex characters, and here we are.

To go straight into it, there are many pros and cons to making your character simple or complex. Simple characters usually don't have much backstory, if any at all, and they have fairly simple personalities. Complex characters are the exact opposite, with them having mostly fleshed out and delicate pasts and sometimes having conflicting emotions. Sometimes people hate simple characters because they don't have a lot of "meat" to them, and some people hate complex characters for being way too complex.

How do you figure out which is the best approach for your character? Well, a good place to start is to determine what your character is being made to do or being made for in the first place.

Simple characters are probably best suited for simple things. Some people become a bit detached from their childhood cartoons because, as they have gotten older, they realized the cartoon and the characters in it are often not as exciting as they once seemed. This is because kids' cartoons, like nearly any cartoon that's ever been on PBS Kids, are made so that kids would be attracted to them while also managing to be educational or at least entertaining. Take Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, a PBS Kids cartoon-inspired from the real-life and old kids' puppet show Mr.Rogers Neighborhood show. Daniel Tiger is a kid, much like many of his friends and the targeted audience, and he is simply a curious, playful, and clearly affectionate child. The only backstory we get from him as to his past before the show was that his dad got a promotion and thus they had to move to their current house into a new neighborhood. Definitely not an emotional backstory- not that it was intended to be or anything- but for kids, those first episodes following Daniel's first experiences in his new neighborhood can be surprisingly relatable for kids who also had to move to a new neighborhood as Daniel did. Other than that, Daniel's cartoon is about as straightforward as your average PBS Kids show.

Simple characters are also good if there's a need for a mascot for a product. Say your story has a fictional hot item that's like a running gag or that you're assigned a school project that requires your product or cause to have a mascot. You wouldn't actually give your mascot deep and intricate reasons for being so determined to encourage the audience to support or buy the product. Mascots usually are just there to sell the product to the desired audience. Maybe you, as the creator, might give it a backstory just in case it gets super popular, more advertisements slowly reveal this info, or just because you want to. Some mascots do have a backstory, like Smokey the Bear. Yes, fire prevention activist Smokey has a backstory. He was once orphaned during a forest fire as a cub and was rescued by humans, eventually landing in a zoo. The zoo noticed how the kids like him and how he seemed to enjoy people's company, so they decided to start using him as the spokes-animal for forest fire prevention. As for other mascots like the Fruit Loops toucan... h-he just really likes Fruit Loops, I guess.

Believe it or not, I actually have personal experience making a mascot for something. No seriously, I do. My 10th-grade Intervention teachers started taking us to the robotics lab in my high school to see if any of us wanted to help the robotics team with the non-robot side of their upcoming competition; raise support for the removal of garbage from the ocean for the sea turtles. And I, being one of the only actual creative types in the class and being something of a nature lover, decided to draw something symbolic of the cause being supported. I drew a thing for an Island Turtle- a mythical turtle that was said to be so large, its shell would become an island ecosystem and could even have water as part of the shell- and this Island Turtle had a human on its back throwing trash into the water and making the Island Turtle sick. I originally drew this turtle for a one-time ad type of thing for the team, but next thing I know the entirety of my otherwise uninterested classmates were debating over what the turtle's name should be so it could be the team mascot for that year.

And the entire time I was just sitting there like "...wut just happened?" XD

We settled on the name Shelby by the way, since one half of the class liked the name Shelly and the other half liked the name, Toby. It turned out to be ironic since the academy hosting the competition literally had a building with the name "Shelby" in it. I'll get the first drawing of Shelby up so you'll see for yourself.

Dang. Old art like this sure doesn't age well, does it? XD

Sometimes simple characters "evolve" and can become more complex as the story goes on or as the years of their media presence go by. Take cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse. Once he was just a mischievous happy-go-lucky mouse stealing a boat. Now he's everything from a married mouse, the king with a key, and the holder of a paintbrush that can brighten the darker side of Disney (metaphorically). Daffy Duck was once a random duck that would exist simply to annoy hunters of all sorts. Now he is one of Looney Tune's most infamous and most egotistical of characters, often serving as the rival and frenemy of Bugs Bunny himself. Fnaf started when a guy made a review on Scott's Chipper game saying the game looked scary and Scott decided to try making an actually scary game. Now Fnaf is one of the biggest game franchises of all time.

In other words, simple is good for a start in a new direction, or for things purposely meant for simple things. Sometimes a simple beginning is just the thing to start with. This is kinda the case with Shelby here. He's a massive turtle who, for all his passiveness, is tired of his human passenger's garbage (literal garbage that is) and for him, it's either the trash goes or the man goes. That's really all there is to Shelby; he just wants the trash gone one way or another.

Of course, there are the characters that were always complex. Many people *correctly* assume anime and manga characters are the most commonplace for the complex types, and that's fair enough. Characters in movies and books are often also quite complex. Like I said before, Raven and Joshua are good examples of a complex character. They appear to be one thing, but they have so many layers to them that they feel like they'll never run out of surprises for us. And they work because their media and stories were made with complications in mind. Stories made with multiple sections to their stories, like books or shows, are often where a character with a lot of emotion and thoughts to them are commonplace. Stories that are longer than a simple telling of a fairytale, in general, have characters that have more than a few traits and more than a simple drive.

In other words, complex characters are better suited to long stories. Characters with lots of realistic emotion and thought are usually more enduring and can bring out the message or theme of the story quite well. Sometimes they become more developed and more defined as the story progresses, and other times they were complicated characters, to begin with and they have to learn to tone down as the story goes on (basically character development). And sometimes they're conflicted as to where they should go on their emotional, mental, or even spiritual path. 

A character I have that could be described as complex (or at least more complex than Shelby) would have to be one of my more recent ones; Orichal, The Deity of Madness.

Orichal, being a deity of unpredictable madness and insanity, is capable and has seen many strange things. But despite what you assume of this genderless lad, Ori is honestly as polite and coherent as you and me (at least I hope you're a sane person). Much more than most of their fellow deities, who view Orichal as nothing more than a disaster about to happen and often blame Ori with many disasters that occur in the mortal plane. And the sad part is that, since Ori has always been looked down on by everyone except their kindhearted mother, Ori allows themselves to be blamed and even says the blame should be put on them to avoid too much unnecessary conflict. On top of that, they are stuck with a sentient curse named Malice that was made to help regulate Ori's powers during times of extreme madness, but also to berate the lad and to keep others away from them. At this point though, Malice has often broken both of his original purposes and he and Ori have come to a mutual understanding that they can't live without the other and that they at least have each other. Nowadays Orichal is finally starting to not always take the blame for everything and learn that they're worth loving and deserving of love, and Malice has gotten something of a soft side lately too (he'd rather get a lecture from Orichal on morals than admit that though). 

In summary, Orichal is a soft-spoken but morally neutral individual that has a caring heart, but would rather avoid conflict to the point of taking the blame as opposed to potentially making it worse. Malice, on the other hand, is the opposite in nearly way; is mischievous in the most malicious ways, loud and abrasive, and more than willing to pick fights, yet he is also aware of all the blame Orichal has taken account for and feels how pitiful Orichal is sometimes. They're both an allegory for the two sides of a personality; one side pure and introverted, the other side rotten and extroverted. An allegory for how different and, well, chaotic people can be in both society and their own minds. They work in their world where the characters I make for it always seem to go on new adventures and shenanigans constantly, whether it's on a whim (like me making this book) or by complete accident. They just have so much potential to kickstart the next big event. 

Some characters blur the line between simple and complicated. As hard as that might seem to believe, you'll see it. Usually, a good place to see characters that tread the line of being between simple and complex are characters that are meant for stories for the teen or young adult demographic in mind. Think about it this way; Rick and Morty are a cartoon, but they're certainly not quite for children since, for all their looney nature, the show tends to say and do things that aren't meant for a child to imprint on. To simply put it, Rick is an intelligent but often...erm, "aloof" type of man while Morty, while still going on board with most of the shenanigans, is often the foil to Rick's antics.

I personally don't think I have a character with such borderline simplicity and complexity as that... Or at least I didn't until I remembered an older fandom OC I made once and, as of writing this, have done largely nothing with them despite my plans. So, let me introduce (or reintroduce in regards to my followers) to you all Caroline.

Yes, she's- erm, or it? Idk, you all can call her what you like- is something from the Other World in Coraline.

I realized that Caroline is a rather simple little thing. She is no doubt uncanny and maybe even a bit spooky to see. And many would assume she would be deadly given her origins from the Other World and her, again, uncanny appearance. You're not wrong in that, but you're entirely right either. Yes, quite simply Caroline is a simple little tinkering of thin metal, burlap fabric, and whatever material makes up her hollow head. Yes, she can be something of a freak, but she is also a rather passive and curious thing. Simply put, she is something along the lines of "innocently creepy".

However, like many of God's creations- us and animals and all that- Caroline has specific behavioral patterns, not unlike us. She can be simple to please creatures, but she does have depth in the form of her personality, however, limited it is. She holds a sense of morality to her, quite unlike most creatures that stem from the Other Mother. She feels no physical pain, but she can feel emotions such as remorse and happiness. She can be playing with a toy one moment, and the next she's dismantled it; not out of morbid desire or anger, but out of the simple drive to learn. Yes, she is simply a creature made from scratch with an uncanny look and behavior to her while still perfectly open to having friends if she can. But if the fates (or, the creator of the story, me I guess idk) desire it, a certain series of events could occur and have Caroline become a more complex entity to the point that she clearly knows more about the problem than anyone else involved. After all, who better understand the Other World than those that come from it?

So, get the picture now? If you're wanting to make a small little comic mainly for entertainment or perhaps want a one-time appearance, it might be best to stick with a simpler character, and if need be the character can have more layers to them added on as the little fun thing progresses.

If you have a big story in mind or perhaps have a diversity of characters already mapped out, then a fairly complex character might be better since their multitude of different interactions between different people and to different situations will help the story remain intriguing to the audience.

If you're not entirely certain how far the story will go or if it will have any meaning in particular, perhaps a somewhat simple and yet somewhat complex character might work. That way, if a small shenanigan event occurs, they're already likely to react in certain ways, but hen when the true focus is on them and a situation they're made for, then they'll be able to catch attention and keep the pace.

This isn't to say simple characters can't be in complex stories and vice versa, however. Sometimes you just need a simply evil villain to run the show, and sometimes you need a complex sidekick to be the pure evil villain's foil. Sometimes you need a complex hero character, and sometimes you need a simple sidekick character for the hero. Who am I to say you should do it a single way? Really there's no right or wrong answer for whether or not a single character should just be there for mischief or if they should be conflicted between their good side and bad side. That's all on you and the story and art you make to decide, not me.

Next time, we'll start discussing ways to lay the groundwork of your new character with one of the many things that begin the journey: inspiration. Cheers! 🐉