Character Design - Mordred Research

Mordred is the villian, but he is the villian of an 80s cartoon. There were lots of great cartoons in the time period so researching a pantomime villian as opposed to a super serious one was relativily easy. My main sources of inspiration came from Skeletor from 'He-Man' and Cobra Commander from 'G.I. Joe'.

As you can see from these images, both villians were very pantomine in the way that there movments are very over the top. For a saturday cartoon, I thought it was important that the enemy was not a terrifing creation but has a comedy edge. The children have to laugh at them.

In terms of design, I have used armour to keep with my theme but have also taken some ideas from an unlikly source, 'Power Rangers', particually Lord Zed.

Lord Zeds is designed to be strong and scary for the children, but what I liked most was the showing of muscle and the mask.  The muscles symbolise a strength that the character has, as the Power Rangers have no  real muscles on show to match his physicality. Themask adds to the unknown in the way that you don't know who or what this man is and in doing so, he has no emotion.