January 06, 2005
Character study - Blake
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Blake Melanie Harken (16). Born in Bargo, NSW, Australia. Growing out of being a tomboy. Unassuming. Questioning. Fiery intellect. Determined to be taken seriously. Naturally inquisitive, a natural talent for controversy.
5'1, 55kg. She slumps about the home in a less than lady-like manner to the despair of her generation Y parents. Not an unattractive kid but one that stubbornly refuses to primp, in the real world at least.
Thick black hair. Sits awkwardly above cute elf-like ears. An unkempt fringe partly obscures blazing green eyes. One concession to vanity - a discreet nose stud which, truth be told, her parents were relieved to discover, given her otherwise inward focus. Her look is utilitarian, functional. Her clothing goes with her preferred footwear, shoes that become a form of roller-blades on-demand.
Blake is a very serious person and she has not dealt with either puberty or social pressures gracefully. At school, she can be a bit of a slacker, confident but detached. She is quick to anger and yet shy to friendlier approaches by other kids or teachers. She has already been tagged by the educational system as a trouble-maker because she got caught in the school's computer system at age seven (the age at which she learnt to cover her tracks).
Blake was one of the first generation of kids to grow up using the Reactive Interface Grid (a non-invasive mind-machine interface). Blake was always going to have an affinity with virtual space that her parents lacked. Dad's influence meant that Blake went one stage further.
Never on to seek out the company of others, Blake emersed herself in her virtual world, Kerela, learning by osmosis the history of Australia and developing an understanding of the natural landscapes that it contained. Kerela is Australia, a virtual simulation of its present and past eco-systems.
Kerela is her dreamscape, a literal dream. A world that can be crossed at the speed of thought, a vast continent that has been simulated to perfection.
Dad and Mum met as young activists, trying to stop the uranium mining in the far north of Australia at Jabiluka . Blake has little or no idea of his goings-on outside the home.
She yearns for more social contact with her peers but after the events in Sanctuary she becomes ever more removed. She becomes obsessed with the downfall of the State - the regime under which her town and its wilderness has suffered. Her only touch of romance has been an awkward crush on a boy in the senior year who has had several brushes with the law already.
Her parents are trying hard but a little nervous about her development. Blake has a phobia about dancing and considers it supremely unnatural (a communal malfunction? a nervous tick?). She has little social contact with peers outside of school and has spent considerable time being home-schooled by her dad, a world authority on computer security and a local computer science professor. She loves her parents but rejects Dad's attempts to teach her total respect for authority. She is unaware of Dad's activist involvement.
Mum, on the other hand, has a more hands-off relationship with her daughter, whose intellect she finds somewhat intimidating. She is around but could be dead as far as her relationship to Blake at the moment. Blake shows no interest in the activities that her mum enjoyed at her age and this has put a distance between them. Blake finds it hard to respect any woman she views as a victim of the patriarchy.
Whereas most girls her age are busy creating their own identity through their wardrobe and networking in the school yard, Blake has undergone a different route. Growing up in a household overly familiar with bleeding edge technology, courtesy of her gruff but affectionate academic father, Blake has focused on constructing virtual identity and has quietly run rampant in cyberspace for several years. Her online identity is older (Blade), the identity she feels most comfortable with. The frustration of having to hide her virtual accomplishments from her class-mates is starting to wear away at her.
Blake is clever enough to have covered her tracks and even has invented a virtual companion for Blade, CD (aka the Customised Dude) as a way of disguising her origins. Blade does however wear Blake's real world affiliations on her sleeve. Blake is a wanna-be eco-activist who is experiencing constant frustration by the failure of others to take her seriously. She is too young, and too much a girl for the local eco-activists to take seriously.
Logging on at night and becoming Blade in the virtual world of Cityscape is a perfect escape valve for the young hot-head. Her fluency with computers is a welcome distraction from growing up in the modern world of the near future.
January 03, 2005
Voice overs
NEWSREADER
The newsreader sounds disturbed and personally involved in the news. Fear, uncertainty and doubt about our future is the message.
TECH
A male technician monitors State surveillance systems for a living. Nothing is too bizarre, too outrageous to raise a strong reaction.
VIDEO NARRATOR
A clinical yet soft and soothing voice that could be selling you soap powder, along with State environmental marketing messages. Something about the inflection suggests that this could be synthetised… perhaps…
Character study - Beefy
Beefy is the class bully. Big for his age, a little ungainly, he uses overbearing body language to mask feelings of insecurity. He wants attention but doesn’t know how to get it. Left to his own devices, he gravitates towards picking on class-mates that stick out or appear weak.
Character study - Mark
Mark (21) is an activist geek, all nervous enthusiasm, rough social skills. An invaluable contributor to the activist group, he provides technical support wherever required. He and Daniel exist in a little bubble within the group, and have formed a friendship despite their age differences. Mark looks up to Daniel on account of his old-school credibility. He wears activist and digirati-themed T-shirts with phrases that mean little to outsiders.
Character study - Teacher
The school teacher (40) is world-weary and jaded, happy to leave his classes on auto-pilot in front of a video. His clothes reflect a meager salary. Intelligent but easily intimidated by both his students and the State school surveillance which constantly measures performance. The teacher stoically tries to meet his targets without rocking the boat. He avoids confrontation wherever possible.
November 30, 2004
Character study - CD
CD is a cheeky, and somewhat unhinged, crudely-drawn stick figure guy created by Blake to be Blade’s companion in virtual worlds. The “Customised Dude” has various functions but ultimately he is a guide.
Although usually depicted as humanoid, CD is completely flexible in terms of appearance (like Genie in Aladdin). Fluid transformation is part of his hyper-active antics (Roger Rabbit). He is capable of mimicking any voice or appearance given sufficient information. He is based on illegal software – in the wrong hands he is dangerous.
CD is a digital imp, a shadow, a screensaver, visual entertaining yet cobbled together from existing software. His face is recognizable in any form that he takes. He is designed as an amusement, kind of funny looking, a little strange.
Blake is not a visual artist. She has sketched out CD badly but this is indicative of her focus on substance over style, functionality rather than form. We need to get the sense that more attention has been paid to CD (customising his code) then has been paid to the real world by Blake. CD stands in stark contrast to the beautifully rendered villains he encounters. Minimal effort on visual appearance, maximum personality.
Where did CD come from? Blake started with a copy of FRANC (Federal Reactive Agent Non-Classified), illegal agent software that she found on one of Dad's machines. The 'Customised Dude' has gone through heavy modification and extension to arrive at where we see him today.
CD is illegal because his programming is both powerful and unstable. He's a little like a loaded gun. Blake is still working out his capabilities. This is a walking talking virus/graffitti/tamagotchi style character that demands attention from Blake.
CD has a bug which has yet to be been ironed out. He cannot function in isolation. Blake/Blade has to be in constant contact, rather like dealing with a small child, otherwise he starts to mal-function. Blake has been meaning to attend to this.
CD has one easter egg. The sound of the macarena acts like an override to his system. If heard, CD will start to jump around dancing like a lunatic and be unable to function normally. This was coded for Blake's amusement and like many things she has never gotten around to switching it off. He is her pet after all.
CD is the most difficult (and most interesting) character in the film and his styling needs to work both in 3D as a character and also in 2D (as part of the State’s GUI). Stylistically, CD, the State GUI and the DENR logo all come from the same place.<
CD's humanoid shape must contain nodes that can double as rhythm game notation - e.g. the nodes in the wavy line in Gitaroo Man
October 27, 2003
CHARACTER STUDY - KARMA
Karma is the Chief's personal aide, his head of black ops, his sex toy. She is a software agent like CD but this fact is concealed.
karma (KAHR-ma) noun
1. In the Hindu and Buddhist religion, a person's action (bad or good)
that determines his or her destiny.
2. Destiny; fate.
3. An aura or atmosphere generated by someone or something.
June 09, 2003
Character study - the Chief
The Chief is in charge of the State. He doesn't muck around. In a few years Cityscape has exploded into the tourist mecca of the Net and it's because of him. The Chief is at the peak of his power and he's not aware of it. He is cool, smart, stylish and 100% obsessed with the idea that he will control the minds of everyone in his town.
The Chief was born to be an authority figure. He started out in tech but moved swiftly up the ranks of engineers once he realised where the real power lay. He didn't invent the RIG but everyone thinks he did.The hackers that worked for him were the first inmates of Interlink. In return for their ultimate fantasies, bandwidth paid, the Chief keeps them under mental lock and key.
The price the Chief has paid is isolation. He knows that he only holds onto power by the sheer force of his personality and that he can't slip up. Trust is not a concept he adopts easily. He wishes he could trust someone. He wants to be able to teach someone what it's like to create a world and rule it but there is no one in his league. He surrounds himself with obsessives, they follow in his slipstream but don't interfere. Until Blade.
The Chief wants to convert Blade. He does his damndest to tempt him. The Chief is ancient offline. He can barely move without assistance from his nurse. To make contact with a sharp young mind is his last chance to connect with a world that he has fought so long to conquer. Too bad that he can't let go of the ego. The Chief's weaknesses are ego and greed. He wants a prodigee and he wants ultimate power.
Character study - Dad
Daniel Harken (16) is a gruff and dishevelled professor type about to hit forty. He is an academic expert on computer security. He has served time for computer intrusion and has passed on the hacker spirit grudgingly to his daughter Blake.
Dad is not a good parent. His grumpy demeanor and ill-temper have alienated him from his wife and daughter. At home he hides away in his study, burying himself in academic and activist interests. Despite their shared affinity for virtual worlds, he has never been able to communicate properly with Blake as a teenager. He knows he should try harder but he hasn't. While other little girls had a dollhouse made for them by their daddy Blake got a virtual world.
June 05, 2003
Character study - Blade
A twenty-something ghostly virtual persona, or avatar, created by Blake, a sixteen year old girl, living at home in the town of Bargo, New South Wales, Australia in the near future. Hacker, vigilante, confused teenager-in-disguise, Blade is the escape valve by which Blake is trying to deal with the trauma of having seen her father gunned down as part of a sinister conspiracy she is determined to expose.
Blake reverts to this appearance in virtual space when she goes on the attack during the traumatic events in the Sanctuary. Blade's transformation from ghost to defined virtual persona begins there.
Solemn, strong-willed, proud, athletic, gymnast, wary, confused, lonely, obsessive, reckless, energetic, intelligent, confident, serious.
Before witnessing the traumatic events in the Sanctuary, Blake uses the guise of Blade as a casual mask for casual hacking.
On discovering Interlink, Blade sets out to show the world that the Chief is dangerous by drawing attention to his schemes. By destroying the Chief's power base - Interlink , the secret online prison system holding avatars captive, Blade attempts to draw closure and put Blake back on a more even mental footing.
Gymnastic dexterity (mental ability)
Knack for finding system weaknesses, easter eggs, and back-doors.
Brute force hacking skills
Passionate about getting the Chief at all cost
Kindness (as demonstrated by saving Axel).
Blade's persona is a mask which slowly unravels through the film. Blade appears as Blake aspires to be but the Chief still doesn't take her seriously to Blade's annoyance.
Character study - Axel
Lovable rogue, self-aware teenage pin-up, celebrity activist, brawn not brains, charming, infectious goofy laugh, irreverant, a bit dumb, speed freak, orphan, unreliable, champion racer, stylish.