Cooking a rabbit: the secret recipe for crafting memorable characters

‘What’s up, doc?’ The secret to Bug's charisma is no fluke.

Welcome, dear reader. I’m afraid that if you’re reading this expecting an article on Glenn Close and boiling rabbits, you will be disappointed. For anyone sticking around this is less a deep dive and more a shallow dip into the craft of character creation.

Creating a cartoon character is like mixing a magic potion or concocting George’s Marvelous Medicine. Each ingredient alone might not do much, or worse really upset your stomach, but the right combination can spark some sort of alchemy.

I wrote a post a while back which listed the qualities I look for in characters.

1. Bizarre - something strikingly unusual, fantastic, or odd

2. Cute - playful, innocent, and charming

3. Naughty - transgressive, rude, disobedient

4. Relatable - something that relates to our common experiences.

As a rule, the more of these qualities you can pull together in one character the more memorable and striking they are.

That being said, something about the list nagged at me. It felt incomplete.

I wanted to update it, as a fundamental spark was missing: I think the writer or artist should ideally smuggle in an autobiographical element into the DNA of their character. Something that chimes with them personally. An inner core to the character that his or her author understands better than anyone. This element has the potential to kindle this whole thing to life.

There's an interesting story from the golden age of cartoons that relates to this. Chuck Jones initially struggled with the creation of Bugs Bunny. He found that the personality of a Wild, Wild Hare was funny and wacky, but he couldn’t relate to it. He didn't understand what made that character tick. It was only when Jones turned Bugs into the person he always aspired to be that he breathed life into the character.

“I could not animate a character I could laugh at but could not understand. A wild, wild hare was not for me; what I needed was a character with the spicy, somewhat erudite introspection of a Professor Higgins, who, when nettled or threatened, would respond with the swagger of D’Artagnan as played by Errol Flynn, with the articulate quick-wittedness of Dorothy Parker - in other words, the Rabbit of My Dreams.”

So, mix bizarre, cute, naughty, and relatable then add a bit of you. It could be the magic recipe to an unforgettable character.