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Description
Continuing my series of character designs for a hypothetical animated Atlas Shrugged, this is Francisco ('Frisco') D'Anconia, Dagny's childhood friend and the richest man in South America. He enters the book when he returns to New York, amid speculation that his company's assets in Mexico are about to be seized by the government. He is renowned as a profligate international playboy trying - and failing - to throw away money faster than he makes it. However, Dagny comes to suspect he has a deeper agenda, and his arrival in New York coincides with a spate of disappearances of businessmen and entrepreneurs.

For me, any successful adaptation of Shrugged needs to use Frisco as a giant decoy. Everything should point to the fact that he is the Destroyer, the shadowy presence bleeding the life out of America. His backstory with Dagny, the sinister undercurrent in his lectures, the fact that he's a lot more capable and charismatic than the other 'villainous' characters - everything fits with the notion that he will eventually be revealed as the ultimate antagonist. It should be a shock (to people who haven't read the book) when he is revealed as the right-hand-man of someone who has actually been mentioned right from the start and even appeared in the background several times; this shock is what you then use to leverage the hardest part of the property to swallow; that we are going to be asked as viewers to cheer for the guy who wants to destroy the world.

For some reason, when I first read the book, I clearly managed to confuse Francisco D'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjöld, explaining why my adaptation notes make reference to eliminating the extraneous and frankly excessive Ragnar-Dagny romance and my conviction that Francisco was described as blond, leading to some early doodles where I gave him curly hair to differentiate him from Rearden. Here's how 'Frisco' is described:

Nobody ever wondered whether Francisco d'Anconia was good-looking or not; it seemed irrelevant; when he entered a room, it was impossible to look at anyone else. His tall, slender figure had an air of distinction, too authentic to be modern, and he moved as if he had a cape floating behind him in the wind. People explained him by saying that he had the vitality of a healthy animal, but they knew dimly that that was not correct. He had the vitality of a healthy human being, a thing so rare that no one could identify it. He had the power of certainty.

Nobody described his appearance as Latin, yet the word applied to him, not in its present, but in its original sense, not pertaining to Spain, but to ancient Rome. His body seemed designed as an exercise in consistency of style, a style made of gauntness, of tight flesh, long legs and swift movements. His features had the fine precision of sculpture. His hair was black and straight, swept back. The suntan of his skin intensified the startling color of his eyes: they were a pure, clear blue. His face was open, its rapid changes of expression reflecting whatever he felt, as if he had nothing to hide. The blue eyes were still and changeless, never giving a hint of what he thought.

A design note I have is that all characters who are part of the antagonists' cabal always have something red or reddish on their person; Francisco, therefore, always has a red pocket handkerchief or glass of red wine on hand; in his case, of course, it's an indication that he's a :snicker: red herring. Both his skin tone and lapel pin/cufflinks have a strong copper tone, befitting his status as heir to the D'Anconia copper empire. Visually, getting across the 'invisible cape' is a bit tricky - my solution is giving him a long smoking jacket (which also plays to his jetsetting playboy image) and lengthening his hair to collar-length. Visually he should be an inverted triangle; a more compact, angular version of Orren Boyle, tapering from the shoulders to his triangular shoes.

An alternate version of this without the scrubby beard can be found here ; to my mind the beard works to very slightly masculinise the character and give him an edge he lacks otherwise, although I suspect Rand probably envisaged him as clean-shaven.

Incidentally, Francisco's full name in the book is Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d'Anconia. Worth noting that's not actually how Spanish surnames work; Rand seems to have just noticed that Spanish aristocrats have long names and given Frisco a boatload of middle names.

Description
Continuing my series of character designs for a hypothetical animated Atlas Shrugged, this is Francisco ('Frisco') D'Anconia, Dagny's childhood friend and the richest man in South America. He enters the book when he returns to New York, amid speculation that his company's assets in Mexico are about to be seized by the government. He is renowned as a profligate international playboy trying - and failing - to throw away money faster than he makes it. However, Dagny comes to suspect he has a deeper agenda, and his arrival in New York coincides with a spate of disappearances of businessmen and entrepreneurs.

For me, any successful adaptation of Shrugged needs to use Frisco as a giant decoy. Everything should point to the fact that he is the Destroyer, the shadowy presence bleeding the life out of America. His backstory with Dagny, the sinister undercurrent in his lectures, the fact that he's a lot more capable and charismatic than the other 'villainous' characters - everything fits with the notion that he will eventually be revealed as the ultimate antagonist. It should be a shock (to people who haven't read the book) when he is revealed as the right-hand-man of someone who has actually been mentioned right from the start and even appeared in the background several times; this shock is what you then use to leverage the hardest part of the property to swallow; that we are going to be asked as viewers to cheer for the guy who wants to destroy the world.

For some reason, when I first read the book, I clearly managed to confuse Francisco D'Anconia and Ragnar Danneskjöld, explaining why my adaptation notes make reference to eliminating the extraneous and frankly excessive Ragnar-Dagny romance and my conviction that Francisco was described as blond, leading to some early doodles where I gave him curly hair to differentiate him from Rearden. Here's how 'Frisco' is described:

Nobody ever wondered whether Francisco d'Anconia was good-looking or not; it seemed irrelevant; when he entered a room, it was impossible to look at anyone else. His tall, slender figure had an air of distinction, too authentic to be modern, and he moved as if he had a cape floating behind him in the wind. People explained him by saying that he had the vitality of a healthy animal, but they knew dimly that that was not correct. He had the vitality of a healthy human being, a thing so rare that no one could identify it. He had the power of certainty.

Nobody described his appearance as Latin, yet the word applied to him, not in its present, but in its original sense, not pertaining to Spain, but to ancient Rome. His body seemed designed as an exercise in consistency of style, a style made of gauntness, of tight flesh, long legs and swift movements. His features had the fine precision of sculpture. His hair was black and straight, swept back. The suntan of his skin intensified the startling color of his eyes: they were a pure, clear blue. His face was open, its rapid changes of expression reflecting whatever he felt, as if he had nothing to hide. The blue eyes were still and changeless, never giving a hint of what he thought.

A design note I have is that all characters who are part of the antagonists' cabal always have something red or reddish on their person; Francisco, therefore, always has a red pocket handkerchief or glass of red wine on hand; in his case, of course, it's an indication that he's a :snicker: red herring. Both his skin tone and lapel pin/cufflinks have a strong copper tone, befitting his status as heir to the D'Anconia copper empire. Visually, getting across the 'invisible cape' is a bit tricky - my solution is giving him a long smoking jacket (which also plays to his jetsetting playboy image) and lengthening his hair to collar-length. Visually he should be an inverted triangle; a more compact, angular version of Orren Boyle, tapering from the shoulders to his triangular shoes.

An alternate version of this without the scrubby beard can be found here ; to my mind the beard works to very slightly masculinise the character and give him an edge he lacks otherwise, although I suspect Rand probably envisaged him as clean-shaven.

Incidentally, Francisco's full name in the book is Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastián d'Anconia. Worth noting that's not actually how Spanish surnames work; Rand seems to have just noticed that Spanish aristocrats have long names and given Frisco a boatload of middle names.