Aging your characters (physically and mentally)

[AmazementComics]

Do you ever age your characters? Like do they actually go through physical changes that are permanent? For example, in your comics/novels are there time skips to where a child becomes an adolescent or adolescent has grown into an adult, or perhaps an adult to elderly adult?

OR

Do you have characters that may have gone through trauma or anything that's considered significant that they keep at the back of their mind as they become wiser about the world around them?

Do you have alternate versions of your characters which made them older but kept it as a one-off alternate universe? Share your thoughts down below.

[Random_Guy]

Typically I don't age my characters physically because I feel like I'd get disinterested in a story spread out over years in universe. Mentally, of course my characters grow and improve, that's just natural character development.

[Inspector_Spinda]

YEP!

I'm finishing up chapter two of my comic right now and I've already shown the present adult vampire version of my character and the teenage human version. There will also be a third and fourth design of him as an adult, but still human in this mid 20s and a version of him as a young child.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I have some emotionally immature thousands years old characters, because of the time perceived differently at their living place and/or trauma.

In my current series I don't "age" them (my time skips aren't strong enough) nor the story revolves around them getting maturity as they age. It's rather about dealing with the state of their arrested development I probably only will show them growing up and age in flashbacks.

[Rai_Muffin]

Hard to show evidence since my serious is still new,
but I like to write characters maturing; dropping childish habits and mellowing them out as the series progresses.

Physically they won't change too much, even when I get to time skips,
but for the protagonist, she wears casual clothing to begin with but adds armour and gains scars to her appearance the further the story moves along.

Here's my series,
though like I said it's pretty early on.

Raiden Legacy | Tapas

[skippyjoeskilling]

Since my comic takes place over 3-4 years, I actually have a fair bit of trouble with this. I want it to be clear that the characters are aging slightly (16-20), but obviously there's not going to be a sudden visible shift from one chapter to another. I mostly try to show it through the main character getting a bit taller, and people changing how they wear their hair and dressing a bit more maturely. And emotional maturity, of course.
There's going to be a few flashbacks to the main character as a child, which is definitely a tricky design challenge. Here's roughly what he looks at 8, 14, and most recently in the comic at 18.

And yes, I have designs for them as adults. even if it never comes up explicitly in the comic, I want to know what they do with the rest of their lives, if they have kids and their jobs and whatnot.

Nowhere, South Dakota | Tapas

[TheGentleArtist]

Yeah, my age my characters; but I haven't gotten to that point yet.

[Siromany]

One of the biggest themes of my comic is changing and progressing as a person. All of the characters change both physically and mentally throughout the comic.

This also means so many character designs (:
Made a fun draw a while back that shows the most significant changes in the main character, but this doesn't cover all of his appearance changes through the comic.

There also will be a good amount of flashback chapters, with his earliest age being 14. He's 22 in the main section of the comic, and 23 at the end of it. A section of pre-epilogue comics has him at 25, and the actual epilogue takes place when he's 33

[Freemints30]

Well I do plan to, right now all the events are taking place over a few days-weeks so of course nothing much would change. But in my story I do plan a large time skip so my characters would physically age but I also plan a lot of mental aging before then.

I want to show what effects solving the underling mystery may have on a bunch of relatively naïve young kids. So by the end of the child arc where they would only be one year older, so not much physical change, they would all still have aged quite a bit mentally by then.

[UrMom]

Do you ever age your characters? Like do they actually go through physical changes that are permanent? For example, in your comics/novels are there time skips to where a child becomes an adolescent or adolescent has grown into an adult, or perhaps an adult to elderly adult?

OR

Do you have characters that may have gone through trauma or anything that's considered significant that they keep at the back of their mind as they become wiser about the world around them?

Both of these for the most part. I don't show my characters literally growing for children to adults, but I do show flashbacks of different stages of their childhood. Also my comic takes place over the span of 5+ years, so the characters naturally change. Both of my MCs also experience/have experienced trauma, and learn to grow from it through out the later part of the story, becoming heathier, more mature people in the process.

[indagold]

I actually have a comic about that with childhood innocence evolving into corrupted adulthood.

Castle by the Beach | Tapas

[arbiterswake]

Not so much age as physical changes due to illness in my story. The character just withers away in a way that anyone with a chronic illness could probably relate to and the situation gets pretty ugly at times.

[ar-ninetysix]

It's more of the latter for me. I have limited space to develop the characters as is so I need to have them already established as people who've gone through stuff lol the eventual comic is gonna take place in the span of a few hours for the most part. I'm debating on whether or not I wanna include flashbacks as they wouldn't really progress the story. If I decide to put in an epilogue, there'd be a time skip, buuut it'd only be like a month.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Yes to all three questions

In my one-shot Dino Orphan, Rip is shown at a young age, and what he was like then. It also follows his mother Dawn from childhood to adulthood as well.

In the main comic, I intend on putting Rip and Freya through some traumatic situations. Rip's already been through one. It will only get more and more difficult as the story continues. The characters will indeed age physically as well while the story continues. As for timeskips there, if I do them they'll be very small.

And then we come to the alternate universes...
Any of them I create for RP purposes and even just for fun, I consider canon, in a way. (Hence why I never use characters from the comic, instead I use alternate versions.) So I've got AUs where Rip is old. I've got them where he's young. I've got them where he's dead.

[Bree_Mana]

My characters in my comic TLC started out around 10-12 years old and now they're all 15. and by the end of my comic they'll be in their Mid-20's. plus they've pretty much ALL been exposed to trauma so mental growth has definitely been a factor