Courage the Cowardly Dog's Design

This video goes into detail about the design of Courage from Courage the Cowardly Dog and how he is essentially designed to be performed in a manner specific to his character. It was somewhat of an eye-opener, because this video points out how much characterisation is put into his design, and it is a good example of a cartoon character that is designed this way.

It actually indirectly refers to a point made by Eric Goldberg, in his book Character Animation Crash Course. What Eric explains is that in order for a character to have a good performance, they must be convincing, and in order for that to happen the design must take into consideration the size, weight, strength, and shape of the character. With the case of Courage, his face is shaped like a circle and his body is given a simple bean shape. His arms and legs are very minuscule, and on top of that, he usually has worried looking eyes with every expression, except for when he is screaming. The simple shapes of the character make him visually appealing, and the lack of too much detail, the constant expression for his eyes, the smaller details, and very few shapes that build up his body, all really give the audience an idea of how small and helpless he is supposed to be.

 

Before going into detail, I will look over at the character of Courage to see if his design is appropriate to his personalty. Ed Hooks talks about how characters don't have a personality unless they have something to do. This was a point he disputed against the legendary Chuck Jones, who argued that story did not matter to a character, and all that mattered was personality. Ed Hook's, on the other hand, says that without a story for the character, there is no personality. This is true in the case of Courage because after all, Courage is a cute little dog, but he is also a very unlucky dog and is pretty scared of everything, but none of that would matter without a story to back it up. You wouldn't find a star main character like that in a cutesy fairy-tale show either, it would have to be a horror setting, because the humour of the show and the character's personality is all based around his discomfort towards everything around him. You have to ask yourself: "What makes the character happy? Sad? Scared? Angry? What motivates the character?" None of that would matter, unless you can ask the question: "What would the character do if...?"

Ed Hooks uses a character biography, specifically for creature characters, to outline the characters and their story:

Creature Character Analysis:
Physical Attributes?
Defense Mechanisms/Strategies?
Locomotion?
Age?
Life Span?
Diet?
Physical Health?
How does he procreate?
Relatives?
Sense of humour?
Fears?
Goals?
Culture?
Intelligence?
Education?
Relationship to other characters in the story?
Source of income?
Name?

Courage is a young dog that was adopted by Muriel as a puppy, after being left abandoned, following an incident with his parents. After that experience he began to fear everything, but when it comes to the safety of Muriel, he is able to face his fears to rescue her. Even though Eustace, Courage's secondary owner, is cruel to him, Courage is not afraid of him, and even comes to him for help in certain instances. Though he does dislike Eustace a lot, that does not stop Courage from coming to his rescue. He is a soft little dog, with pale pink fur and brown spots. He has a huge mouth from screaming a lot, and his eyes are big oval shapes that stretch the more frightened he gets. He also has tiny arms and legs, because he is weak. They are also rather floaty because the ability to move moves those tiny limbs, the arms more so than the legs since they are used a lot more, anywhere around the body gives his body language more flexibility, and over-the-top expressions. The simple shapes that build up Courage make this logic more convincing.

With just these characteristics, though, I can see how this leads to his design and how they attribute that with his performance. Courage was designed to be light-weighted, because that's how we relate to him being scared, since everything else is big and threatening to him. The tiny arms suggest a lack of strength but the threadlike structure of them, and, as the video above points out, the fact that they are not attached to one spot, they tend to hover all around the main body, lets them move flexibly, still allowing for more dynamic poses. Courage also has a large mouth and big eyes, simply because his facial expressions are more stylised, more exaggerated, and this makes his moments of pure terror all the more comedic. His eyes are designed so that the more white space there is around his pupils, the more terror they convey; this is so his fear can be exaggerated by making his eyes grow bigger, the more scared he is, while his pupils stay the same size. His mouth is large, because it exaggerates his pose when he screams, and because of the empty space on his main body, and the wispy nature of his arms, he can exaggerate how wide his mouth opens without the issue of his arms, legs, and other features ruining the pose.

With Ed Hook's point combined with Eric Goldberg's, it is clear how Courage is designed to be characterised, while making his personality convincing to the audience.