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Trigger Happy
262
Witness the beautiful bounces and skids of Mario in
Mario 64, or the graceful, arcing somersaults and
handstands of Lara in Tomb Raider III. Good
characters are good largely by virtue of having a wide
range of physical abilities, and by having those physical
abilities particularly well animated. Just as we can often
be surprised in the flesh by the beauty of a person
whom we have previously seen only in photographs—
because part of a human being’s attractiveness lies in
the choreography of facial is of much less visual
interest when frozen in time.
For a start, characters such as Crash Bandicoot or
Sonic (see fig. 15) obviously borrow very heavily from
the cartoon styles of Warner Bros and others: Sonic
was allegedly created (after a honcho at Sega ordered
that someone design them a character to compete with
Nintendo’s Mario) by a deliberate crossing of Felix the
Cat with Mickey Mouse, while Crash obeys the cartoon
tradition of animals that look nothing like their real-life
counterparts. Both Crash and Sonic have big heads,
saucer eyes, cheeky grins and small bodies. In this
sense they are deformed, Japanese-style; yet such a cute
stylization is also used in Western cartoons. Perhaps
they are attractive because their large heads and
limitless curiosity remind us of children.