How has your MC changed from creation to now?

[Domae]

My main character, Marcus, underwent a ton of redesigns before he achieved his final, awkward form in The Nymph's Story. Not only did I change his appearance (i.e. clothes/color scheme), I completely redid his background, which included changing his goals, motivations, intentions, and ethnicity. I actually changed his name a week before TNS went live, so now I occasionally have to fix my script/outline to reflect it.

I want to hear about everyone's characters and how (or if) they've changed from day one until now.

The Nymph's Story | Tapas

[mariusthered]

mine has. Marius started out as a bratty kid in 1970's earth realm, getting in trouble with his mum for drilling holes in her coal bucket. he is now a grown man in another realm and lord protector of that realm with magic ability's and a bunch of people to watch over. he started out wanting to be a sith like vader....he's more Jedi now (but without the lies) (or as jedi call them "a diffrent point of view!" )

Blunderland: Book 2. :: ch2:p4 | Tapas

if anyone wants to read the first story issue one is for sale via the comics for sale button at the bottom of my tapas comics.

[Kelheor]

I really don't like to change my characters The only way they could change is through the logic of plot, like moving into adulthood and/or changing their surroundings, like place of living/work/etc.
After I decide how they look like or that they love eating bananas (and I usually decide most of it in the beginning), the only way out is going to other country with different clothes traditions and starting having the bananas allergies.
Their hair/skin/eyes can slightly change as well as colour scheme, but really not much. Like, I changed Gil's skintone and hair colour to slightly darker in the middle of the third chapter, because I found out he is just too pale, and then of course I had to make it darker it for Summer too.
Here's the original sketch, their look from the first arc and the look for the next arc. They will have darker clothes in their teens, but the colours are pretty much the same: orange, red and khaki for Gil and different hues of blue with some yellow for Summer.

Hexameron | Tapas

[Rhonder]

Hmm, Alex has undergone quite a few subtle changes from the first time of drawing him to the present. Partially because his original design was made... like 10-12 years ago? He started out as just an "anime" version of myself to use as an online avatar/persona and in fan fiction lol. I believe the very first instance of the character was this Digimon fan comic I made back in middle school:

That's honestly the only reason he has goggles LOL because he started out as a Digimon main character, so of course

This was one of my many comic projects that only got like 5-ish pages in though lol. Some years later, in Highschool, I started drawing the character again with an updated design, along with updated designs for some of my other friend-characters for standalone illustrations, like such:

The main changes at this point were taking the original t-shirt (that was based on one of my favorites from middle school LOL) and stylizing it further, making the lizard design a lot bigger; Adding a jacket, again similar to one I wore a lot, doing those awful half-pants/half-shorts things, and just more detail, as my style had progressed a lot xD

Then I put these characters (and most of my drawing, in general) away for a long time during college. After college I started working on a re-reboot of my comic series that I had been working on since middle school right after the Digimon one, which was one of those "100 chapter shonen inspired mega ultra awesome stories".

Then I got introduced to Tapas and realized through the wisdom of all of the fantastic people here that I didn't want to chain myself to something that impossibly long for a first "real" project lol. So I started writing TreasureHUNT!! as a one shot to ease myself in. Everything about this comic was intended to just be a warm up lap, so I didn't spend too much time during any part of the planning phase because I just wanted to get into the production part... so when filling out the story with characters, I decided to just revisit several OCs that I had from earlier in my life instead of trying to come up with new ones lmaooo. In particular, I didn't want to just reuse the OCs from my other long story in case I revisit it someday, so I grabbed my friend-OCs since they weren't affiliated with any story yet. Anyways, my first updated sketch of Alex from that planning phase is here:

For this jump, I was wanting to keep the essence of the design, but dial it back some since the previous version was very over designed xD Kept the sweatshirt main design, but removed the lizard and arm swirls, turned the pants into just regular shorts, and gave him real shoes.

The last major jump to how he ended up looking for the comic-proper actually came by accident in the storyboarding process. I was going super fast and rough, so a lot of the early panel sketches had him looking kind of like this:

But at one point I accidentally made his little top of head curl a little bigger and more pronounced:

and thought it looked kind of cool so I rolled with it through the rest of the storyboard:

and then that translated into his present appearance:

Not gonna lie though... after working on the comic for almost a year now, I really hate how doofy the top part of his hair looks One of the things I'm looking the most forward to as I'm coming into the end of the first season is being able to redesign him a bit for season 2 LOL But yeah looking back, he's come a looooong ways~

TreasureHUNT!! | Tapas

[DasIstWunderblyat]

A lot! Although you can still see connection and similarity in their designs, it is mostly their stories that are changed the most. My story has changed in a drastic way since it was first written, it evolved from a shonen anime-esque bizzare tale to... I don't know what to call it now.

• The main character, Kôra Halin underwent some drastic development. He evolved from the 2012 version of a bratty demonic child who is a secret living weapon, to the 2019 version of a desperate rural boy who misses his ravaged home.

  
  
  

• It is a bit hard to believe that this normal-looking nereid boy...
  
  Becomes this depressed whale that can transform into a human

  

• This brooding vampire is named Lawa, he is a chairman of Vampire Epicurean Society that curates best blood from all over the world.
  
  Lawa might be the prototype of this alcoholic dullahan who uses human body parts for weapon and spends his free time gaming.
  

  

Karana | Tapas

[IndigoShirtProd]

I mad a topic just like this a few months ago!

It's always nice to remember where we all started with our stories, especially our character designs. Some of our characters haven't changed at all, some have changed quite drastically. But something that we can all probably agree on is that no matter what they looked like, you never want to go back. I'm only half joking of course. I remember the first time I drew my comic like it was yesterday; a close friend of mine inspired me to start comic making. I drew it traditionally with ballpoint pens…

One of the main characters, didn't undergo a lot of major changes. Overall I think he changed for the better.

[ble]

My comic has only like 4 months, so it hasn't changed yet, however they will have character development in the future, like the main will become more brave and independant.

Baphomet's Sheep V2 (GL)

[sekabead]

my oc has changed many times because my comics is constantly changing (and they are all scrapped ideas) lol.

[punkarsenic]

my first character sketch:

a drawing from my most recent chapter:

so, uh, visually, a lot

in the early chapters balor is really whiney and righteous.. not really self righteous, just righteous. her character feels more solid and compelling now, shes less morally driven at all and more focused on belonging i guess. man, character in twaw is a mess tbh.

[azzy-m]

Okay so, what a coincidence, my MC is named Marcus as well, lmao.

At the beginning, my MC was in fact, not the protagonist but the love interest. Of course, since the emo ones always end up being my favorite, he became the protagonist later on. He was portrayed as grumpy and kind of a dick because he thought the protagonist then (named Archie) was hitting on his crush, Terry, when in actually Archie has a crush on Marcus (and Marcus's crush is actually a lesbian - you know what, it's a gigantic mess back then, lmao.). Back then he was a basketball player, not a former baseball player, his motif color was red and not blue, and his hair was a very light brown, for some reason.

(from may 2018)

Yea, his hair was supposed to be dark brown-ish, but for some reason it didn't translate as well when I made the switch from Krita to Medibang. It's black now because it looks better.

(also woowee look at that shitty lineart. I didn't know that Krita has a stabilizer setting, and I don't know where you can find it)

The second version of Marcus was in the old version of my current comic, he's more friendly but he really, really did not have much of a character back then. Even I'm having trouble remembering if I gave him any character. To be fair, I only made like two episodes from this time. How much personality can I give to a fucking love interest in two episodes?

(from june 2018)

I just want to put up some current photos of him because I want someone to scroll down and see the progression of his character design, lmao (and in extension, how much the art has improved. these are from july 2019)

So you know. A lot.

The Stars Above Us | Tapas

[Kann]

Oldest drawing of Himuri on my drive is this one... xD

So he went through A LOT of changes both look and character wise. In first version of stories he was supposed to act more like Sakari does. He was quiet and timid and not even close to being as talkative and outgoing as he is now.

He even changed a little from the first page of my comic to now. o.o

(Chapter I, Page 3)

(Chapter VII, Page 20)

Drawing his hair more floof is more fun. xD

[saak]

from being this

to this

[teasidesketches]

I've had the idea for my comic for so many years that, if I'm going to be honest, not only has my MC changed dramatically, but the entire story is almost nothing like my original idea from middle school. LOL

My MC, Felicity, used to be a princess that was stolen away, for starters; I did away with the whole princess thing at some point, though, and she became just a country girl with no royal roots. She was also younger at one point, had much longer hair, was a little bit less... naive, to say the least.

[BlueWorldComics]

I purposely designed the character to be easy to draw using basic shapes (circles and ovals mostly). But I didn't
(and in some ways still don't) have a proper grasp of the proportions of each body part before I started making the comic.

He started off kinda tall and thin, but eventually I got into him being shorter and stubbier (like Mario).

Now because I made the entire Year One before I started posting, I went back for the most part and fixed everything based on my changing preferences before anyone got to see it. But I still have the files of the slightly thinner, but very inconsistently designed version of the character. And as I work on Year Two, I can't help but feel like he's getting even shorter...

The Skyman | Tapas

[Iris-Grimoire]

Mortimer from Splitting Image changed SO MUCH. The story is 7-10 years old though, so that's a bit expected. Unfortunately I threw away my oldest painting of him because I didn't have plans to reboot the story at the time.

Mortimer circa 2011 was a pretty boy, white hair, gray Gandalf robes, straight, and basically had a 'oh I'm CURSED WITH THESE AMAZING POWERS no one understands' kind of personality. He was pretty much a carbon copy of anothe OC of mine from another story, which explains why I lost interest with the original draft, but also in general just an undercooked character because I was more enamored with the idea of an ex-villain than what would actually happen inside their mind.

Then when I wanted to make a new art project, I looked into why I liked the characters he was based on - Megamind, Jack Spicer, Presto, Count Bleck. And I noticed that as a teenager I REALLY missed on what made them work.

Mortimer NOW is slightly middle aged(just lacking in facial hair), jet black hair after much palette experimentation, a much more elaborate outfit to show a more prideful but reserved attitude, bi and with actual preferences other than characters the plot demanded, and with a far more developed personality - from his self-loathing, his educated past but bad tendency for self sacrifice, to wanting to depend on other people because he thinks he's no longer allowed to be treated well, the ego that shows when he thinks he can get away with having fun, and big ol' spoiler mental issues.

Design wise, I had a really inspired class where I just captured Mort's new personality perfectly, but it still needed a lot of adjustments because he'd be horrible to redraw and he isn't one to draw attention to himself. I also started human anatomy art classes and the improvement was obvious, to say the least. One detail that's hard to notice is that his eye scar actually is at a 45° angle now rather than going straight down; I have way too many non-comic OCs with samey looking scars.

Sometime last year:

Final comic design:

[spicy_sweets]

Since I write, I'll just post some quotes.

"Suna said I shouldn't be too careless," Kumo muttered under his breath, staring at the sidewalk in deep thought. A park came into view when he looked up, littered with children. He headed for the swings, one which was free for the taking. "She didn't say I couldn't have fun." Even if he didn't age, his child-like mindset longed for freedom from responsibilities for once.

―from chapter 4

vs

He'd heard the stories. The baku who poked their heads into the lives of humans for their benefit, or those who longed to have someone to talk to without worry. Just like he'd been doing recently. If Lady Tsuki knew what they were up to and still gave them mercy, Kumo didn't want Yuu to experience what would happen if they weren't careful. The sooner this adventure ended, the better for both of them.
―from chapter 18

[nathanKmcwilliams]

So much. Even though this picture is from the Story arc I'm hosting over in the Character Cafe, this is an accurate evolution of my characters visual change over the years. I made Rip up back in 2000 as a Sonic OC. You can probably figure out which one that is XD

[Shanny8]

My MC went a total change even before I rolled the webcomic out. I had originally created the character back in 2002- back then I had created him as 8-10 years old, and had given this really weird funky hairstyle...

I ended up putting the story on the shelf until 4 yrs ago when I decided to do this project as a webcomic; I then aged him from his former age to 15.

[Domae]

Since you don't change your characters much, do you find yourself spending more time developing them before you dive into a project? Just to make sure they're what you want them to be?

[Domae]

I'm also a writer! Your character has grown a lot! Thank you for sharing