Jack, the Boy

This is a mood board of different autistic children in films including:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Black Balloon

Autism: The Musical

Silent Fall

David' Mother

This mood board is simply to get a feel for the kind of look we want to go for in our character, the facial expressions are key, as shown in these photos, to defining the character and showing that they have a disability without actually saying it.

Jack is a child with a mild form of autism, he is around 13 years old but his condition means that the age he acts is far below that. However as is quite common in autistic children his intelligence is above average when it comes to problem solving, his main problem being that he struggles to communicate his ideas with other people.

He does understand that he is autistic and it is clear that he is very aware of his condition, occasionally wishing quietly that he didn't suffer from autism.

In terms of appearance he is a fairly normal looking child except that he is a little on the crazy side, such as crazy hair or wide eyes.

It is obvious that he does love his mother but since he himself struggles to interact with others, he doesn't particularly like it when she does. This is especially when it comes to work as he feels she sometimes puts work ahead of him and he likes to have her always watching over him even if she doesn't get involved in what he is doing.

He prefers his own company to the company of others as he finds it difficult to conform to social standards, because of this he doesn't really have many friends. This actually doesn't bother him much at all except on occasion, however it does really bother his mother.

HH