Before I begin the final chapter of my Real Ghostbusters blog series, I would like to thank Alex Upton of The Real Ghostbusters.com for mentioning my From Real to “Real” series. When I started this, I was hoping it would be enjoyed by fans, but to have other members of the Ghostbusters community validate the work is icing on the cake!
We now come to the final chapter of my series, “From Real to “Real”. We’ve had a fun ride together. Five fruitful chapters full of fun memories. We laughed, we cried, we made out in the back of the Ecto-1 and we both felt awkward the next day. But we got past it and we still signed each other’s year book. I’m gonna miss you From Real to “Real”. But we must look to the future, move forward, and continue our lives. So without further to do, I bring you the final chapter… Egon Spengler!
Out of all the Ghostbusters to be translated from film to cartoon, Egon is the most extreme. None of the choices made with his design are subtle, but the perfectly capture the character traits the embody Egon.
Those traits being:
- Genius
- Extremely Logical
- Disciplined
- Introverted/antisocial
- Honest/No Filter
- Pessimistic
As you can see, the two Egons are extremely different, yet share a commonality. There are a few features that were crossed over from Harold Ramis. Notably the lips (though they are fuller in the animated version), the chin, the large ears, and the size of the nose in proportion to the face. But there are also drastic changes. First off, they shaved quite a few pounds off the movie counterpart…and the movie Egon was already a thin chap! They made the cartoon Egon down right twig like! But this allows the artist to define his bone structure, which gives Egon’s face a more unique appearance, and allows him to stand out from his more fleshy teammates. While they kept the round rim glasses, they made them red rather than black or gray. That is because in animation, color pallete is important and helps separate characters. Not only does it allow him to stand out from any other character who may have glasses, it also compliments the yellow of his hair. And that segways me to Egon’s greatest change…this hair! It only draws one similarity to the movie counterpart in the fact that its big hair. Egon always had poofy hair. I personally thought it was because Egon was out of touch with popular culture and thought big hair was cool. That a big pomp adore would make him a little more relatable.
The artists on Real Ghostbusters took that concept and twisted it…literally. They gave Egon the big twisted burrito hair, and to keep it from feeling front heavy, added a rat tail in the back for balance. They even changed the hair line to accentuate the massive front. You can imagine Egon being so unhip, that he would visual that hair as “hip” and make it his own. Egon is also a character of patterns and habit, he would most likely maintain that hair til his death. So the fact that he got rid of it for Extreme Ghostbusters seemed like a faulty move.
Now why make his hair yellow? Simple. It was another way to seperate Egon from the rest of the pack. Winston already had black hair, while Ray and Peter already had two different shades of brown. The only option was blonde….and it works! Egon’s hair is the visual representation of his inability to connect with popular culture. He is the Yin to Peter’s Yang. Egon is such a genius, he has a hard time relating to others. It’s that genius that is the root of all his other character traits. It is why he is antisocial, and a pessimist. If you were that smart, of course the rest of the world would appear dumbed down. I would have a hard time relating to that as well. Brain power that also allows him to be extremely disciplined with his emotions. Even in the scariest of moments, he verbalizes his thoughts and feelings rather than showing them with erratic behavior. Excluding the opening library scene in Ghostbusters, but I dare say he ran only because being there alone would only make for poor science. The artists captured these other traits in his eyes. By having them slightly slopped downwards along the outside corner, he gives an appearance of being slightly unamused and under stimulated by the outside world.
For the body, the design department exaggerated the physical attributes that were already present with Harold Ramis. Much like how they took Ray and made him shorter and rounder, they took Egon and made him taller and more lanky. This serves a few purposes. The first, of course, is to help separate him from the group. Aside from the unique silhouette the hair provides, having Egon taller and thinner than the rest also allows him to break away visually when they are all side by side. Secondly, Egon is a bit socially awkward, and one of the best visual signs of that is the tall, lanky kid in high school. You know the type…long limbs, slightly hunched over, never able to fit in. As for the uniform color selection, it is the most drastic color change of the group, right up there with Winston’s uniform color selection. But lets read into it a little deeper. The majority of Egon’s suit is sort of a desaturated blue-green. A far cry from the Khaki suits of the movie, but perfect match for Egon.
Blue-Green represents a person who is exacting, discriminating, and poised. If anyone is exact and discriminating, it’s Egon. He is first to calculate with no room for doubt and dismiss all options that doesn’t fit the math. The Blue-Green person tends to be intellectual and refined, persevering and stable if rather detached. That couldn’t describe Egon any better! The pink trim is a stroke of genius in my opinion. That subtle color change ads a great deal of insight into Egon’s character. Pink embodies the gentler qualities of Red, symbolizing love and affection without passion. This shows that Egon has a subtle sensitive side beneath that brainy and detached exterior. We see this when he converses with Janine towards the final act of the movie. He shoes some affection towards Janine, but he is sure to keep it void of any passion.
So as you can see from my Real to “Real” series, no matter how true they stay to the movie, or how far the stray into extremes, each design aspect of The Real Ghostbusters was clearly thought out with each character’s personality in mind. It is a quality that many cartoons lack in favor of a current design trend or fad. But cartoons that take the time and effort to visually flush out a character’s traits and personality tend to be the shows that become classics. The Real Ghostbusters is a prime example.
