Today’s EEEEE is brought to you by Ebullience, Exploration, Expressiveness, Emotion, and Education. That is to say, we’re here to talk in greater detail about building character into the world of Smolville - so you’d better say your prayers and eat your vitamins, because brother, we’re about to run wild!
Today, we’re going to take a closer look at Griswold. He’s our resident pro wrestling farmer. He says things like “I make my apples do sit-ups EVERY DAY. It’s good for their cores.”
He also waters his plants with his own sweat.
Pictured above, Griswold, glistening in the sun, smelling of effort and satisfaction.
Griswold, as you may guess, is not particularly big on subtlety. That’s what made him the perfect place to start as a basis for exploring our extended cast of characters - “big” personalities push at, and define the boundaries of who (or what) thematically fits together in a world, and how.
When building new worlds and stories, as a creator, you are often looking to find the “no”s in a world - something that tells you that you’ve gone too far. “No” is often something feared, perceived as negative or confrontational - but creatively, you learn so much from no, especially when you answer the next logical question that follows: why?
Those conversations set foundations and rules that allow other characters and elements to follow, and to thrive. It also makes it easier for other people to understand what is true about a world or an IP, and to be able to bring their own unique perspective into it. Our world has truly begun to come alive as we get into the great, dynamic conversations of “Yes, and wouldn’t it be funny if…?”
“NO’s are the bricks on the road to YES!” - Smol Brain, Influencer on ChimpedIn
So in our pursuit of no, it turned out “pro wrestling farmer” was not too extreme of a position - Griswold actually felt right at home. So the next step was to bring words (and terrible jokes) to life. Here’s an early round of passes:
Seven contenders all vying for the championship belt..
Each of these takes hits at a different set of qualities that were present in his character. Some are earthier, some are more rough and tumble, others forthright or determined. However, it was really the take in E that immediately captured us: there’s a kind of absurdist humor that feels absolutely right in someone using potted plants as dumbbells. The fact that this feels like a logical, and perfectly normal thing for him to be doing really told us volumes about who he was at his core.
Once we had the foundation to build off of, again, we started to look for boundaries. This came in the form of exploring how expressive Griswold could be - here’s another look:
“See Smol, the numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for you at the Farm Alarm!”