Wednesday 15 January 2014

Character Spotlight: Raimundo Andres Goicochea


Character Spotlight:
 Raimundo Andres Goicochea


In the second of the character spotlights, I take a look at the second half of our dynamic duo, the Argentine freerunner Rai.   

In the very beginning, Rai was a very different character. A surly, stoic Brazilian, who I quickly realised was an unsympathetic bore, who brought nothing really interesting to the story. I've mentioned before that this was initially supposed to be Catherine's story, (in alot of ways, it still is) and the other characters were either fairly incidental, dead, or like Rai, charisma vacuums.  I started over, and didn't keep much more than the name. I moved his country of origin across the border to Argentina, I made his character model leaner, gave him a kinder face, and more tired eyes, in an effort to maybe tell parts of his story through just his appearance. I took inspiration from an Italian football player, Claudio Marchisio when giving him his look. He has a strange combination of fatigue and intensity in his eyes, which I really felt would be a good base line for Rai's look. 

The backstory his face fails to tell, was initially told in flashback. If you look at the first few pages, you'll see it plainly laid out where he's from, what he used to do, and where it all went wrong. This method worked, to a point, but as more of his past came up, I really wanted to now hint at it, rather than come out and say it. When his past was revisited by Ansgar and his revelation about Rai's crime, I tried this technique. You learn that Rai has a foster brother, whose family took him in the periods when, as Rai said, "my mother couldn't take care of me." The reason for this, I left to the reader. I found it a much more impactful way of giving the character his past. 

As for his present, there are a few things to note about Rai. He's more emotional than Catherine, for instance. She's, to a certain extent, emotinally cauterized, in that while she does allow herself to feel, and feels as strongly as Rai, she is more in control. Rai will often let himself be ruled by emotion. Without actually giving him a diagnosis, he experiences higher highs, and lower lows, and is less equipped to effectively deal with them. 

In that respect, given the situation they find themselves in, you can justify calling him the weaker of the two. His saving grace is his physicality. I wanted him to be the physically superior of the two, and ended up giving him a skill that Catherine lacks, namely his freerunning. When looking at the story way back, I found that Catherine was by far the central character, and I do concider her the main protagonist. But I wanted Rai to have his moments in the limelight as well, and the second chapter, as it now develops, is largely about him. The reason for this, I won't get into, since that would be spoiling it, but he may find himself severely isolated  
Today's fan art is by the creator of The Black Mudpuppy, Ethan Kocak. 

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