How much of yourself you put into characters?

[Moshimitsu]

I'm sorry to hear you had such an experience. But in the end you made a good use of that so that's great! Those kind of things are horrible but they make us stronger and wiser which is also good in some twisted way.

Drawing everyday situations as the one you've shown are understandable. That's why there's a trend in those comics (and why they're addicting!). I have no idea how could someone come up with so many panels like that if there wouldn't be any inspiration from real life.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Veriesin is a she - which kind of adds into even more of me, since that cycle of anxiety is exactly something I have to deal with a lot. People don't really take it seriously that a woman struggles with needing to forgive herself sometimes and that anger/indignation are normal things to experience, and with Veri, adding that on top of a violent job only makes her struggle more with the concept of going too far with it.
And it still helps with myself as much as my experiences help me writing them; using the suggestions I found in therapy makes me wonder if it'll work for them and which actions fit who, and there's already a huge important chunk of character development out of the way.

[LittleMissDevil]

I actively try to seek out variety in my characters, but of course parts of my self are reflected in them. I'm not always aware of those parts, but I think it's hard to avoid. My perspective on the world and on other people will always be reflected in my work, it's kinda inevitable. ^^

A big theme of my comic is the feeling of rejection and being ostracized - be it by individuals or society - and how the characters craft their identity around that. I personally have dealt with that in my childhood years a lot. My characters go through way more extreme things than I did, but the inherent feeling of "being wrong in the eyes of the people around you" as well as starting to identify with their role as "the other" is still similar enough. The second comic I have in mind will deal with the inner rejection of the self more so than that from the outside - also something I am familiar with.

My characters deal with those things way different then I do. One thing I love about ensemble casts is how you can show people reacting so different to the same problem. But at the core of most of my characters is a conflict that I am deeply familiar with - for better or worse.

Well and sometimes I just give the main character of my comic the same haircut and similar facial structures as me and never realize it until someone points it out.

[tchotchkeco]

For my characters in Detox? None really. Since the story is a bit satirical I have to write characters more exaggerated than how I normally would (I'm looking at you, Alex/Ohm).

For my novel Deadboy Party though...my main character Deadboy is pretty close to me in a lot of ways.

[ZatchZ]

It's called empathy, it what makes your character likable to the audience.
If your audience can't relate to the character, then your audience becomes disinterested very quickly.

[nostalgicroxas]

Not that much anymore. I put in facets of my personality, but not large bits. I think the character who was ever the most like me was Hito in very early iterations of himself and as time went on, I've just taken ideas and points involving him and adjusted it so he's more of "himself".
Will has a lot of things similar to me, namely his shyness, but I don't think that's something that's "unique to me". I keep putting things into Crow like him trying to figure out different things to cook, or a hobby to pick up (gardening or cooking, ect).

[Rhonder]

Yeah I did/do the same thing When I was little most of my MCs would just straight up be me, and when I reached middle/highschool and started writing my first original story, I created an MC that looked nothing and was named nothing like me (outside of being kind of short, but blonde vs. brunette, etc.) but that personality-wise was still pretty much straight up just what I envisioned myself being like if I were in his shoes.

My current comic is a strange evolution of that concept though: The 4 main characters are all straight up just based off of the cartoon versions of myself and a few of my friends I made up in high school (short story: I wanted to get started on the project asap and didn't wanna waste time on character design, so I just grabbed them and ran xDD) buuuut I've put a lot of conscious effort into letting them be their own people, and not just be 1-to-1 copies of their real life counterparts. It's been good fun for the people in question too, seeing "their" characters do cool stuff in a comic has been entertaining for all parties involved

[snailienz]

I always try to like somewhat relate to my Ocs in some way. Whether it's a general "lgbt experience" or a specific feeling I'm used to like having a manipulative family member. I want to make stories that feel real so I tend to take from life experiences.

[AmysGames]

I definitely had my share of thinly-veiled self-inserts growing up. Nowadays... well, I wouldn't say I actively avoid making characters like me so much as I just focus on making each character unique. I'm sure there's aspects of myself in a lot of them, but it's not really something I focus on one way or the other.

[Lucca_Vendramel]

Cozmata is mostly a reflection of me when I was a kid, and Nimbus is based on my mom. As I'm bad in thinking of flaws for my characters, I use those of people i know!

[WriterLinXiaolong]

Considering I treat my character as my children... there are few of their traits that is somehow related to me. For example, their love for meat. Sometimes, they would also hate what I hate, but sometimes, I also made it that they like what I hate. But their personality is their own. I don't know if that makes sense lol

[VibrantFox]

in some cases it's small fragments of myself or who i used to be or who i'd like to be but again just tiny bits.

other cases it's been exactly like this:

there's been a lot of times where certain traits are there but then a character grows beyond the original concept and evolves into something else so it depends

[AilyneGouveia]

Even if I try to avoid it, there is always a bit of "me" in my characters. The worry is the way of thinking, it's hard to think like someone else.

What I'm trying to do is to be inspired by people around me or people I've met in my life and use them as a base. So i can ask myself "Ok, what would X do in this situation?" Even if I do not know exactly what the person i used to create the character could think of , I may be able to anticipate how she would act.

[draweththeraven]

gods i have a ton of OCs ive projected onto in some way - none in the comic im posting atm, theyre personified religions and that would be weird, but a lot of older characters definitely!

my oldest OC minda used to just be a carbon copy, mary sue version of me for the Doctor Who universe. she then changed to a generic carbon copy mary sue version of me, but now she's even less that which is good! here she is!

a bunch of OCs (including minda, but also others) i have are lgbtqa+ or have fashion styles id like to wear too, so those guys have a bit of my personal experience as well. i think it's partly to do with empathy and wanting to see people like you in the media, but for me it could mayyyybe also be the trauma lmao. a LOT more of my characters have an abusive parent than is probably healthy

[OttoGruenwald]

I got to be careful about doing that. If I put too much of myself in, all the readers will get bored and leave the comic.

[arcojawa]

All of my characters are based on someone or something. But only the main character incorporates a lot of aspects of myself. The rest are people I've known, people in real life, or even some fictional characters.

[Moshimitsu]

This. Exactly this. You made my day

[borzoiteeth]

Like others have said, in a way there will always be a piece of you in a character because it required you to have thought of it for it to exist.

That said, there are no characters that look like me. "Act" like me at best 30% in design. tmi I've spent most of my life in mass self-hate. The last thing I ever, ever wanted was to think of anything that would remind me of myself. In a twisted way just this year I found out one of my main themes in most work I do has some sort of dysphoria/dissociation. Completely unintentional, this big thing I didn't know I was struggling with has bled onto many of my characters.

On the audience end, it gets really frustrating when a character does/says something and they think that's something the creator agrees with. Trust me, I do not ever want to meet 99% of what I've created in real life thank you.

[indagold]

I wish my characters weren't so much like me, I always want to make new characters with new personalities but everyone is a socially awkward weirdo.

[N1ghtm4r3]

all my main hero characters and main villain are kinda parts of myself mostly the main heroes, each can be seen as one version of my very soul