Yesterday I followed my grandmother to the marketplace, where the tables are lined with whole skinned animals, and buckets and tanks of live seafood lay at your feet. Along one corner were cases of whole skinned dogs, in the kind of wide ice-cream case you look down into to choose a flavor. Hardened, tough vendors spoke out prices and offers in loud, quick barks. What particularly struck me was a tank near a quiet corner of the marketplace, full of dainty little red squid. The vendors wouldn't let me near the merchandise, so I couldn't snap a photo; you'll have to do with the sketch I photographed below: pretend the squid is colored or something.
The squid were very pretty, and I wouldn't mind having them in a personal fish-tank: they had little see-through flaps attached to their tops that diligently propelled them about, and they were a solid, pretty red; not the usual mottled botch of random colors. What made them especially endearing were their eyes: squid have very large eyes, and on a standard squid the eye look monstrous. But on these tiny squid the large eyes looked inquisitive and adorable. They reminded me of a hummingbird's; large, round black eyes ringed by a touch of white. These large round eyes, in my opinion, give their possessor an innocent, bright appearance, due to the touch of white on the edges of the round black center.
When I first came up with the idea of a Serious Little Boy I didn't really know what he would look like: I just knew he would look really cute, which would make his seriousness all the more amusing. I didn't want him to look like some generic moe-blob, and I didn't want him to look like a rip-off of the other characters he was inspired from. It took until we visited a family friend's house last winter that I suddenly grasped what he would look like. This family friend had modeled the outdoors porch to attract and feed hummingbirds, and I found myself wondering why hummingbirds looked so adorable; when you look at a hummingbird up close, they don't seem quite as cute. When they are seen from a distance, the patch of white ringing the outer corner appears like a part of their eyes, making them appear larger. Also, since the white is on the outer edge, the birds appear cross-eyed. If the white was on the inner edge, the birds would probably lose their appeal... though that doesn't seem to be the case for Miyazaki.
I always thought Totoro looked kind of scary...
Based on the eyes of these appealing animals, I therefore came up with the character design you saw in the last animatic-thing I made. Basically the little boy is based off of a hummingbird! Unfortunately, the Serious Little Boy's gender seems to confuse everybody, so I'll have to work on that.
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