Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph's Character Progression

By Carey Bryson, About.com Guide

When animators began production of the Disney hit animated film Wreck-It Ralph, the main character of the game could have been anyone or anything. Beginning with a completely blank slate, animators began to imagine what their '80s video game bad guy might look like. Pictured above is the first sketch, drawn by art director Mike Gabriel, of what Ralph might look like. Here is what Mike told us about the initial ideas of who Ralph should be:

Ralph could have been anything, because it's an 8-bit video game character from the '80s. So, Donkey Kong, okay, big gorilla, we can't do that. You got all these strange made up characters, these strange Japanese kind of characters, comic con -- I mean, he could have been anything...Well, what we ended up with was this sort of androgynous beast kind of a guy.

Rich [director Rich Moore] would say, Peg-leg Pete -- I want a big burly kind of a bad guy... he started there with Peg-leg Pete, and Homer Simpson he had up on the board, and I forget who else.

This first Ralph doesn't look much like the hero we've come to know and love, but there is one characteristic that stuck with him through virtually all of his transformations. Click through the next few drawings and see if you can find the one Ralph idiosyncrasy that stuck.