Hi, I'm a moderately talented artist who has been surfing the pages of Drunk Duck.com for a few months now, mainly because I don't personally know many other artists and I love to admire other peoples work. However I don't leave too many comments....(-_-) which would be nice of me if I left some where ever I went so even some of the lesser known artists would know I thought they were doing a good job. Now I'm thinking of posting some of my own work, but I'm struggling with an important part of the story, the antagonist! Part of the problem is I'm a really nice person and cant see things from a bad guy perspective, and the other problem is my art style is cute. Though it drives me crazy realism in my art work is seemingly impossible! I would really appreciate if any could give me helpful pointers on writing from the perspective of a villain in a comic book, or some tips on drawing believable bad guy. Thanks.

Well an antagonist doesn't have to be bad. He/she merely needs to have views that conflict with the protagonist. Or compete with the protagonist.

Maybe the antagonist wins all the time. Gets the last piece of cake. Picks a better movie to watch.

Basically anything that could antagonize the protagonist. Maybe the protagonist just doesn't like the antagonist for no good reason at all.
Maybe they are best friend's but all sorts of crazy stuff happens due to their being parred together.

An antagonist doesn't even have to be another person. Maybe it is homework antagonizing.
Or the struggle a comic writer goes through to write a good antagonist. There's your story! =P

There are many ways you can make an antagonist without making them evil and all that.

I really love the way you put that! still with your advice in mind I'll have to do some thinking on the subject, otherwise there will be no interest in my comic at all with no conflict.

You know I think I can add a layer of humor to the story if aside from the main antagonist of the story the main character of the story came into conflict with things like you mentioned, or things you wouldn't expect to be a problem.

My Opinion on this subject, with out the right anti Hero, your hero just looks Dull.
BatMan is just a Grown man in Tights with out the Villian Joker to be his Opposite.
G.I.Joe...just a bunch of Army Grunts with out Cobra the evil terrorist organization hellbent on ruleing the world.
autobots/decepticons
Gem/misfits.
My little Pony...and the Glue factory.

Harry Potter is just a really talented wiz kid with out Lord Voldemort.

and what would frodo and Gandalf be with out Sauron.
just a short dude with hairy toes and an old Guy that makes cool smoke rings.

Gargamel he would be some Crazy hermit lost in the woods with out smurfs.
(of course, he could be imagining the little blue men that live in mushrooms, perhaps he ate the mushrooms?)

when you boil it down...there just has to be that Balance.
greater the villian, Greater the Hero .

So if you arent into that sort of story, Look at old Charlie Chaplin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu-rLA4POkI

the guy could turn the most simple things into entertainment.
His visual story telling was super genius.
his antagonist was the Unexpected.

I don't recall the my little ponies having close calls with the glue factory, but that did make me laugh and the premise of the smurfs has always been questionable to me. Though you definitely make sense, and I think that pulling story telling examples from real charismatic people is a good idea. I've always kinda liked Mark Twain's writing but if myself or anyone else were to take an example from Mark Twain or Charlie Chaplain, it might have to be changed a little to be entertaining to todays audiences.

I will agree that the antagonist does not necessarily have to be bad. Conflict does not always have to be with a person either. Internal and external factors can drive a character to act (or react) to his environment. Both can be interesting to read about if handled correctly.

I like complicated characters, both antagonist and protagonist. Neither of them are truly bad (well okay well maybe some), but each is dealing with their own sets of factors which come into conflict with the other.

In fact my protagonist Tigershark for Gemuataions: Plague, started out as an antagonist in the first book (Mercenaries and Angels). In his example he was initially the catalyst for a series of events that eventually led to him realizing his life wasn't what he'd believed, or had been told. That presented him a conflict of dealing with everything he'd done during that other "life."

He's still what I consider an "Anti-Hero" because while he stands for some very good things, his ways of getting there aren't exactly textbook hero types of acts.

Most of my characters struggle with some kind of dark impulses, alter egos, or guilt about past actions (or all three).

Say your hero is an office worker - his antagonists can be the co-workers around him (they all get along and he's kinda the outcast). The external conflict can be how they treat him for his standoffishness or differences. The internal conflict can be either how he wants to fit in with them (but is unable to because of an inability to understand their likes) or it could be that he has a secret he is trying to keep from them and he is afraid to open up because of it. Things like that.

I don't know, I may have just talked myself in a circle here, but I hope that helps somewhat.

Another way of looking at it is that both the protagonist and the antagonist think they're right but have differing viewpoints on the plot item in question. Of course this is useless if you plan the antagonist to be something that isn't alive, but it is the easiest way to think about it without turning to some crazy "I'm taking over the world because I'm evil" villan.

An anti-hero sounds like a good idea. Maybe in my story he or she could be an attractive character who is a good person but are trying to accomplish the same goal as the protagonists with a completely different methodology. The protagonists wont agree with the anti-hero's methods, and the conflict of the story will deepen as the two groups try to negate each other's plans to be successful in their own. However as a twist the anti-hero may have been right all along and becomes the hero, or neither of the groups were correct and they have to join forces and work together to solve a bigger conflict they have jointly caused. All the while they both fight a bigger external problem like, an invasion or a disaster set to befall them while dealing with their own internal conflicts.

Take Golden Sun, for example. For the whole of the first game, you were thinking that the antagonists, Saturos and Menardi, were truly evil. In the second game, it turns out that they were trying to release Alchemy so that Gaia Falls wouldn't consume their village, Prox. In the end, you help out the antagonists of the first game in a bid to save their village.

Don't make the antagonist some cheesy-looking hooded guy dressed in black, determined for world domination. That is the most cliched antagonist ever. Deepen the story. Why is the antagonist doing this? What is he hoping to achieve by this? Does he know what the consequences are if he continues with this? Ask questions like that while thinking of an antagonist.

I loved the Golden Sun series, I even had that story example in mind but its been so long since I've played it I had forgotten the finer details of the plot. Thank you for reminding me, I have been racking my brain to remember it for a couple days now.

Always remember that the antagonist (if the character is human(oid)) from their viewpoint, the actions they take are the only sane and rational ones.
I suggest you (GASP) read a few books, they usually delve deeper into protagonist/antagonist relationships and will give you a new perspective on the same subject every time.

Oh no, not reading not books! Anything but that! I'm actually kidding, as a matter of fact I read more than the average person, but I don't read a lot of fiction which might be the best possible thing to help me with my antagonist problem. However I do own a very helpful writing instruction book called "Character Traits" which is a psychology book written to help authors understand different people's, mental conditions, childhood's, careers, and many other things. If it were not for the fact I want my antagonist to have a little humor in him, I might have based him off the information in this book and made him entirely realistic.

The antagonist just has to have different goals and motives from the hero. I always believe the best ones to be the antithesis of whatever the protagonist is or that they're so similar to the main character but because of some minor difference in their early life, the cause and effect rippled throughout their backstory and caused them to be evil or perceived as being evil.

Keep in mind a lot of superheroes started off as villains. For example, The Punisher, Wolverine, Deadpool, etc.

Its wonderful to see that everyone who has commented has been so helpful, I'd like to thank you all for your comments so far. Your really helping me jog my creativity in more ways than an instructional book could. Though still continuing with the subject, I honestly don't know much about comics. although I happen to know a lot about Marvel and DC comics characters because of the animated cartoons I grew up watching in the 90's as well as the recent movies, and I think Wolverine is a very good example of an antagonist turned protagonist. Forgive me if I'm not exactly right about this X-men fans, but once Wolverine became a good guy sometime into the story he gained his own personal enemy who I thought was a good example of this. Her name was Lady Death Strike and her back story was that Wolverine and her used to be lovers but after he was taken away and given his indestructible metal skeleton she fell into depression without him. Later in search of him she finds the same scientist who experimented on Wolverine and persuades him to do the same to her. Now with the same powers, she joins the evil brotherhood of mutants for some reason and in a conflict with the X-men she is reunited with him. Now on different sides they are enemies and after a fight with lots of claws and shredding wolverine stabs her through the chest and kills her, not exactly a happy ending. I found this story line interesting because no matter what way you looked at it neither side could be called good in the end, even though it started out innocent enough.

authorfly
and I think Wolverine is a very good example of an antagonist turned protagonist. Forgive me if I'm not exactly right about this X-men fans, but once Wolverine became a good guy sometime into the story he gained his own personal enemy who I thought was a good example of this. Her name was Lady Death Strike and her back story was that Wolverine and her used to be lovers but after he was taken away and given his indestructible metal skeleton she fell into depression without him. Later in search of him she finds the same scientist who experimented on Wolverine and persuades him to do the same to her. Now with the same powers, she joins the evil brotherhood of mutants for some reason and in a conflict with the X-men she is reunited with him. Now on different sides they are enemies and after a fight with lots of claws and shredding wolverine stabs her through the chest and kills her, not exactly a happy ending.I found this story line interesting because no matter what way you looked at it neither side could be called good in the end, even though it started out innocent enough.

Wolverine has many enemies in his comics, Omega Red, Lady Deathstrike (who couldn't be more different in the comics and is NOT Wolverines lover, I'm almost certain thats not the case in the film either), Silver Samurai, and a few others. His real ARCH enemy though is Sabertooth. (who was in the first x-men film and very underdeveloped as a character) Wolverine and Sabertooth have a longstanding rivalry with one another who are very similar characters: murderers, use claws, have a healing factor, berserker rage, and a new plot point in the comics (Wolverine's solo book) now is that they could be part of another evolutionary strain or something like that.

The movies and cartoons generalize stuff and combine characters together to try and make things more simple. The X-men has tons and tons of side characters and less popular characters.

I don't know what X-men 2 movie you saw, but the version I've seen (and I've seen the dvd cut, the tv cut, and the theatrical one) their is NO mention of Wolverine ever having a past with Lady Deathstrike. Wolverine has had past relationships with women, and most all of which are usually ended by Sabertooth killing the women. Lady Deathstrike was just an assassin that they had in the movie, which they messed up because the whole idea of Wolverine is that he can't be re-created. Her having retractable metal claws like him and the metal bones just craps all over the idea. In the comics her metal claws are always out and unretractable.

Some essential Wolverine would be most of Vol 3 (thats the new stuff, all of which is as of 2007 cannon) the first chris clairmount/frank miller mini series, and then read the first half of vol 1. Up until Wolverine losing his metal skelaton, I'd say is cannon. Any stuff where he has bone claws I disregard. In my head, I say he had bone claws as briefly as possible (because he has to have had bone claws according to the latest origin story they have for him from Wolverine Origin) and leave it at that. He's a great character.

I think the version I'm referring to aired on Fox Kids sometime in the early or mid 90's, Fox isn't known for having the best cartoon line up. Its possible the Lady Death Strike character I mentioned was a mash up of different characters thrown together for the sake of filling another 30 minute run time, like I said I'm not too familiar with the source material found in the golden ages of the series. So please don't pelt me with stones, or rotten vegetables for my ignorance Marvel Comics fans. However if anyone has an already established hero, anti-hero, or antagonist from another book, comic, or movie you think would be a good example I would like to hear about them too.

Here is some advice from a guy who nows what is like to be evil and good at the same time. The anti hero has to be your hero's opposite in a lot of ways, but will team up with the hero if the problem will destroy the earth (Fantastic Four 2), or is some one that has grugde against the hero for some reason such as Joker's skin being bleached by accident from Batman's actions. The point being is that the anti hero is just some person that will continue the story. If you want further proof, I don't have a name for my prime villian and I won't be able to continue at a point. By the way, what genre is this comic it will help to know this.

A good villain must have a motive. Avoid characters who are 'being evil just because they're crazy'. Even a crazy villain has some kind of motivation for their actions. They may well be totally warped, if the villain has psychological problems, but there will still be a motive there, like 'my villain kills people if their shadows touch him, because he thinks shadows are trying to attack him because he's mentally disturbed'. Some are totally sane, but their beliefs or actions cause put them at odds with the hero. An example would be Magneto. He's decided in a logical and rational way that humans will never coexist peacefully with mutants, so he must take action and subdue the humans to keep his species safe. He acts for his goals with conviction, sometimes aiding the good guys or the bad guys, and always holding the supremely arrogant belief that he's a member of the superior species and should be respected and feared for that. He doesn't consider himself evil. At worst he considers his action a necessary evil.

Not all antagonists are concerned with the protagonist either. On one hand you have villains like The Terminator, who are fixated on the goal of killing/capturing the protagonist or getting an item from the protagonist, then there are villains like Voldemort, who have a number of goals, one of which is to wipe out the protagonist, finally you can have totally indifferent villains, like Galactus, he doesn't really care about the Fantastic 4, he wants to eat the earth, but they oppose him, so he's their antagonist.

Read this article about video game villains.

http://www.rpgamer.com/editor/2003/q3/071403jd.html

It's a long article. But if you really care about your own question, you would read it.

Think about what your story is really about. What are the themes you're interested in? What are the ideas your heroes stand for? And then try to figure out what the dark underbelly of those ideas are. A good villain can be one that represents everything your heroes fight against, but it can also be a character that encapsulates everything that's wrong with the world your story is set in, its horrible dark side that everyone wants to forget about. Those are basically the two notions I base my villains on.

Your first comment struck a chord with me.

I've been told that my comic's style is very cute, like you say yours is. So I thought it'd be helpful to show you how I handled the antagonist problem... there really isn't one. :P

Who says there has to be an antagonist? To me, an antagonist could be a conflict or series of conflicts personified.

You can make a story about a person who breaks their arm but still wishes to play sports. The set scenario can be plenty engaging and interesting without a person getting in the way thrown into the mix.

But anyway, in my comic's first chapter, a little girl walks home from school and discovers her classmates are aliens. Based on the comments I received, people liked the story because they could speculate why the aliens were there, why they needed to be disguised, what would they do when being discovered, etc...

I have many other ideas and storylines planned where there necessarily isn't a main protagonist, and others where there may be one.

So, if your comic is all set and that is your only problem, maybe you can push that matter aside until your characters are developed and coming up with an antagonist is easier.

Good luck. :D

Thats also another of my problems, I can plan story lines and events chapters ahead without the antagonist but then there is always something missing. According to anything I have learned about good writing there has to be a problem or antagonist, and this part of story shouldn't be an after thought. In my case art is my strong point, writing is my weak point.

In that case, get yourself a co-writer/editor who can brainstorm specific facets of your story with you.

I wouldn't mind having a CO writer, especially since I don't have a completely solid story line yet. However I think I would prefer a personal friend who was good at that kind of thing so I could ask for help as I would need it. I'm worried that a person who does that kind of thing as a job or hobby would take away too much of my freedom with the comic.

Nah, having a co writer doesn't take away your freedoms. Not if you can find one that understands you get final veto on all stories.

I recently have been contacted by a writer that wished to assist me. What little he has given me is fantastic as far as tweaking my current scripts.

But yeah, a real life person to brainstorm back and forth with in real time is unrivaled. The 2 of you can learn the entire story together.

Right now my co write knows very little. It will be hard to catch him up this late.

But I think if you merely make a story, as you progress things will unfold and you will end up with a antagonist.

Just do it. Keep writing away!!!

And learn from your experience. To tell you, my first story I ever wrote had this cliche badguy who simply wanted to "rule the world". lol! And the hero was directly copied from that BT'X anime. lol!

Oh no, not reading not books! Anything but that! I'm actually kidding, as a matter of fact I read more than the average person

I heard that before from a guy who has read at least 5x more books than I've read. I asked him if he wanna write his own stuff... he kept saying no and making a thousand excuses why his "novel" will "suck"...

some of the excuses:

1) It was written about before... I want something original.
2) No... I might get sued for copyright infringement... yadda yadda...
3) aagh... its too cliche. Every goddamn movie has yadda yadda yadda...
4) the character I just made is not 'real' enough. He just sucks... yadda yadda yadda...

I think that the more books you read can make you more of a nitpick with yourself. Don't bother. Its not as if every drunkduck comic has such a ground-breaking story that is worthy of a pulitzer prize... (I doubt it if even ONE PERCENT has... lol! )

Don't worry. This drunkduck site is full of amateurs. Yep. Amateurs. Doesnt matter how amazing their art is. As long as they're not out there making the big bucks... as long as they're just sticking on the sidelines... as long as this comic stuff is not their bread and butter and maybe just side income... its all... AMATEUR.

Don't worry. :)

Good luck!!!

Ah yes, those are four of the plagues of procrastinating writers! However I share many of them, I seem to have some kind of writing stage fright. While I'm very content to spend my time writing if anyone asks to see what I'm doing or looks over my shoulder, I clench my notebook to my chest and run away very fast. Not a good habit for someone who is trying to get assistance from a CO-writer, by the way has anyone else checked out the RPG antagonist article that Mlai recommended? Its has some very helpful examples of antagonists motivations from a few well known video games, though I'd say you might find it more helpful if you are previously familiar with the games (which I am). It took me a few minutes to read, which isn't a bad thing but my eyes are terrible so staring at the computer screen for a while makes me a little dizzy.

kyupol
Don't worry. This drunkduck site is full of amateurs. Yep. Amateurs. Doesnt matter how amazing their art is. As long as they're not out there making the big bucks... as long as they're just sticking on the sidelines... as long as this comic stuff is not their bread and butter and maybe just side income... its all... AMATEUR.

"Amateurs are motivated by love." There is little love in professional.


Keeping to topic. Write something and if your style is cutesy just don't make the story too dark/serious.

The advice about a real time person to bounce ideas off of...excellent advice indeed.

I have been writing since I was nineteen...an excutiating experience as much as I loved to do it, because I was so afraid to share (getting plajaraized etc). It wasn't until about six years ago when I first found Fictionpress(an offshoot of Fanfiction.net) that I found the joy of sharing and getting feedback for my work.

Was never an issue for fanfictions(I wrote everything from Predator to Dark Angel fanfictions and even some Gargoyles), because I wasn't using my own characters (but those I created). THe challenge was staying true to my vision of the characters and adding my own and new settings. It was a great way to expand my talents and get pointers on flow, grammar (Which I really am not the best in), and mechanics of the story.

After a while I got that itch to start doing the same with my original works (at the time there were only two...Forgotten Ties and Gemutations: Mercenaries and Angels). That is where I first met Ten No Ryu...the most persistent reviewer and shortly there after a Beta reader for my chapters. Between us we've been able to expand the stories, clean them up, get one published (working on the second one). She has been a great inspiration for me all these years. Her support led to me writing an entire novel beginning to end in six months...and also led to the creation of Cabal (My dhampir from Only Half).

Having someone just to babble at with plot bunnies helps to expand ideas into plausible devices and give immediate feedback on how it's going.

I add to this a caveate however, be sure the person you pick will be HONEST with you. There are a ton of "yes people" out there that will tell you your stuff is great - even when it's not. The best thing about Ten is that she will tell me when it doesn't work, she will make my passages bleed with corrections...and I don't get mad becuase I need it and I know it!

So yeah these things can help!

I still can't bring myself to ask another artist to assist me (I would prefer to do the writing myself.) something about losing control of my characters I think! HEE!