During my research of more well known villains I have taken note of some of the body language that is used by these villains.
Cruella DeVille
Cruella as mentioned previously, is very thin with accentuated limbs and a large fur coat giving her overly large shoulders. She is often hunched and although skinny she fills the space that she is in, for example the room or in fact the screen. She also sweeps around the scene in a dramatic and swift fashion.
Ursula
Ursula is huge compared to Ariel (the heroine of the film the little mermaid) and she dominates both the screen and also seems to surround ariel with her tentacles. She moves quickly in a creepy way with her tentacles seeming to be everywhere. At the ending of the film she even grows to massive proportions and creates a whirlpool of the sea, becoming enormous in an attempt to kill the heros.
Darth Vader
The main body language of Darth Vader is that of sweeping around with his large black cloak, again he is taller than the other characters and a lot of the camera angles are from ground level looking up at him, making him seem larger and more dominating.
Doctor Who Villains
Looking back at the research I did regarding children's magazines and TV shows, the Dr Who villains in the majority also tended to be much larger than the heroes and also have more of a robotic style of movement, moving away from the 'personable' feel of the heroes. Examples can be seen in famous Dr who villains such as the Daleks, Cybermen and the Judoon.
Sharks
Filling the whole screen and scene in which they are in tends to be the key here. Also their speed. Whether talking about the film Jaws or indeed in more recent adaptations of Sharks in Finding Nemo and Shark Tale.
Most of the villains that I have researched for this project tend to err on the side of madness or psychotic. To show this trait in some fashion I decided to give Terry his OCD and his time-keeping as a sign of being on a mental knife edge. As I have mentioned before, I didn't want to go too 'obvious' with my character so he is not 'mad' but there is scope there for the potential to turn which I hope to demonstrate in his frustration and anger at being ignored.
Again, the majority of the characters looked at show size to demonstrate their villainous temperament. As Terry is short in stature I will be utilising camera angles to portray him as filling the screen to add a menacing feel to the animation. This technique can be seen in many of the different types of media I have researched about villains and their body language.
There are many clips and sequences on YouTube of 'Top ten best and worst villains' and similar videos. This one below demonstrates great villainous characters that are larger than their enemies and camera angles that show their size, for example King pin, Scar, Green Goblin and Lord Voldemort.
I also looked at popular children's video games and literature as part of my research to cover all areas as nowadays most characters get turned into franchises that create films, games, books and toys all aimed at the target demographic that this brief entails. Video games include disney games, mario, sonic and Harry Potter. The literature that I researched included Harry Potter of course, having read these books I must say that the villains are very striking and again tend to be very quick, intelligent, large and frightening, verging on madness.
This link below was useful as an initial starting point when I was creating my character, giving him slanted 'evil' eyes for the majority of the piece. I also used red for the main body which has connotations of danger, and blood which (as shown by previous research) is common among villainous characters. The polished brass of Terry indicates his OCD traits with time keeping and punctuality which can often transverse into tidiness and his pride in his personal appearance.
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