What is your method: Character creation first or Comic and Story first?

[mbindhammer]

Always these questions... Of course the story comes first. No character is interesting if she/he/it has no story to tell. In my opinion, the best stories are told by putting the character in an impossible position at the beginning of the story, and then it's up to your intellect how you get the character out of it.

[Rhonder]

I almost- if not- always wind up crafting the story first and then flesh the characters out within the narrative. I could see where crafting maybe just 1 or 2 important characters first and then writing a story around them could work... but my brain just doesn't work that way.

This can lead me into traps occasionally though. I had a story idea that I was working on briefly a few months ago before re-shelving for a while because I had the story premise all worked out, and even several minor characters... But then I was having a lot of trouble trying to lock down what i wanted the MC to be like. Which is, like, obviously really important before starting a comic LOL I wasn't sure of her personality or talents, which led to difficulty in even locking down her design. So, like, yeah, that story is just in limbo until I manage to work that out.

[cookieroach]

It's so interesting that everyone has their own process, I love reading about how other people create!

I create main characters first, and the story follow. I also like using the same characters for different stories, like having actors I can choose from. Side characters come later though, it would be difficult to do in advance. I can have a difficulty with deciding on a story sometimes, because I think plot is boring compared to the characters.

[Tanako]

Based on the OP, this sounds like more of a distinction between fleshing out the character in preparation for the story, or letting the story inform the character's personality...hm...

yes. that's exactly where I was going with the topic.

[Caro]

Looking at my body of work it almost feels completely evenly split 50/50 between the two!
For the most part though, since the story overall is more important I’m always trying to tailor the character to fit the story and only very rarely the other way around.

So usually even when I start with a character in mind its not usually fleshed out until I have a bit more story. It’s just like... a rough idea or something closer to seeming like a stock character and then the process of writing the story will add dimension to the character as I go along.

Maybe I start with both actually? Because a lot of the time my works start from the idea of “What if a [blank] type of character was in a [blank] sort of situation?” That seems like both to me!