Brutus
In the original movie Brutus' design was markedly different from that of the other rats as his character's sole function was to look as intimidating as possible and scare Mrs. Brisby witless. He sported large, insect-like eyes that glowed, and an almost complete lack of facial features.
For my own story I needed a version of Brutus that was more aligned with the rest of the rat characters in order for him to interact better.
"The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to The Rescue" had already attempted this but the resulting Brutus was nothing more than a muscle-bound oaf. All the air of "power" and "danger" had been replaced with dimwitted awkwardness. Brutus had become the "dim sidekick" to Justin.
I decided on a different approach.
I looked at the function "my" Brutus was to fulfill in the story and then adapted his design accordingly. In "NIMH: The Final Experiment" Brutus' first function is to lead readers into the story. He is one half of an almost humorous duo of characters that allows an entry into the storyline.
For this I decided that Brutus was to retain his intimidating size and required a character of grumbling discontent. Looking at the original design for Brutus I retained his overall proportions and size in relation to mice and then altered certain aspects to make him more "human".
The body of the original Brutus was hunched over with a huge abdomen and a smaller, lumpier torso, giving him a "flowing" and "unrefined" appearance that suited his function perfectly. For my own story I needed a character that was always "on the edge" from a calm to a violent state. Also, the new function I had in mind required Brutus to be still immensely intimidating, only in a more "promising" rather than "outright" fashion.
So, I smoothed out and hardened his torso as well as enlarged his chest cavity. The lines along his upper body were smoothed out to make them look "harder" and "bulkier". His tunic was supposed to give an appearance of "barely containing" the rat inside. Combined with his original bulk this gave Brutus the ability to change from being "hugely awkward" to "brutishly violent" within the story.
To express his discontent character I went along the lines of "animal association" and gave Brutus a face resembling a grumpy grizzly bear. With Justin looking a bit fox-like and Jenner having been positively "lupine" in the original movie I felt this was a justified approach. The final touches to add to Brutus' inherent "danger" were bushy black brows, small ice-blue eyes and hard-lined facial markings.
Brutus Design by Marcus