What kind of characters are you more prone to in creating?

I'm 100% a sucker for "psycho" characters. Ones like Barry the Chopper from Fullmetal Alchemist. I have a few more that fall into that category than I probably should. They're never main characters though.
Overall, when it comes to main characters, I love characters that are cranky or jerks. The more unhappy they are, the more I love them (Unless they're overly happy for very bad reasons). I dunno how my current main character happened, he's an anomaly in regards to my taste in personality.
Another HUGE habit I have is my characters having some permanent damage that makes them asymmetrical. For some reason I just absolutely love characters with one messed up eye or some special/missing arm. Nearly all of my main characters fall into the category of having a messed up eye or arm.
Oh yeah, and male characters. I neglect female characters horribly, whoops.

What an interesting thread, made me realize so many things! XD

(If I don't count my animal/rock/whatever nature characters from Trivia from Nature) I tend to create characters who totally suck at life and wouldn't survive if it weren't for another character. They usually have some kind of deep fear inside them. And most of them are lonely for some reason.

Gender/age wise, I have all kinds of characters but now I realize for some reason a resourceful but forgetful granny character pops up here and there ಠ_ಠ Dunno where she came from...

I create mostly dudes who have problems. Love interest gets killed, all family killed, suffer from a disease oooorrrr being one-eyed.
One-eyed is the cherry on the top for Echo, I never had so much people with this problem until now. :'D

@getsuart And here I thought I was horrible to my characters >.<

Visually, I have a terrible tendency towards tall, scrawny men because I just like that look, and unless I actively avoid it, there will be at least one in every story. I tend slightly towards guys for probably the same reason most people do -- we all grew up on stories where girls were side characters -- but I'm startin' to branch out!

It would be harder for me to pin down a consistent theme in my characters' personalities, though I don't doubt there are some! I'll need to get a class of highschoolers to write some five paragraph essays about themes that emerge in my work or something.

I'm also very very fond of characters who are hyper-competent in exactly one arena and struggle in others. The overpowered wizard who's too wimpy to lift all his books, the brilliant mechanic with crippling social anxiety, the illusionist who would be a master of disguise if his speech impediment didn't give him away, etc etc. They've all got both a great talent and a terribly hindering flaw.

SLIGHT TANGENT:

Bland Main Character Syndrome is something that every storyteller friend I have has struggled with at some point, myself included, and I'm actually really curious what causes this. There was a Cracked dot com short3 that described the phenomenon in movies as being an easy way to get audiences to invest -- you have kind of a boring, generic hero who gets dragged into an adventure by people more interesting than he is, and that hero becomes the audience's avatar.
I'm actually really curious if it's as common as it seems to be, if it's necessarily a problem, if this is a natural thing, or if it's something we picked up recently from having movies as such a big part of our storytelling experience.
[/TANGENT]

I tend to write and create sass masters! They are oozing of sassy remarks that you would not beeeeeeeeelieve! You ain't going to out beat them sassy whips!

Great Topic.

I have all kinds of characters from annoying teenage girls to complete nut jobs and mobsters. I'm very good at writing angry mum stuff ( coz I was such a good kid lol) so I do have more woman than male characters.

They say write what you know so a lot of my stuff is based on people, or should I say bits of people a trait from one real person mixed with another and hey you have someone new who's fictional. my main character Cassie is kind of based on me as a kid ( and no I wasn't a little girl dur!) she kind of like a fictional daughter (that didn't sound half as creepy in my head ) but yer Characters come from all kinds of ideas and why you should never be without a pen and pad.

In a lot of my stories, the protagonists are generally lovable idiots in the Philip J Fry vein - and I use them as a vehicle to see other crazy characters in the world.

I am currently writing a radio drama that has NO lovable idiot characters and it's kind of weird, to be honest.

I have a tendency to create female characters with some sort of odd problem or ability.
I also have a habit of making characters that aren't exactly human. Even the few characters I have who seem like humans aren't human.

All of my stories start with a lead girl. Their personality always varies but I'm strongly drawn to mabel or star type characters. Fun and bright and goofy. She is always either Bi, ace, or demi. And then i create her love interest. Who is usually a synical pouty puppy.

As for the side characters it way varies depending on the plot. But those are my leads. It is slightly unerving to have a type

I like making characters that look simple but have lots of personality. But Idk if i can develop them enough XD. Btw, in terms of design, I tend to to draw girls cuz Im better at drawing them... What does that say about me?

Honestly, just taking a glance at my character list - it's pretty obvious I prefer creating male characters over female ones! I CAN design female characters but for rather personal reasons I can't bring myself to design one and actually give them a backstory and such - however, I am working on that! Personality wise, they alllll have little pieces of my personality.

I like creating monster characters too...or something relating to dragons.

And I'm terrible to all of my characters backstory wise. I can't name more than, like 3, that actually have relatively positive backstories. I love tragedy.

I like the troubled kind of characters who are silent and struggle with expressing themselves....and usually have one or more of the traits that attract me to characters in other stories (being heterochromia, mutisism, scars, odd hair colors, male(tendency to dislike most if not all female characters....), red hair(my favorite hair color in guys), wry humor, and a few other things that I'll remember probably tomorrow....

I tend to always want to create a rather brooding, serious character. (too much of my own personality coming out I guess) I make it an effort when making a character to make sure that I'm not just recreating that same personality type and sort of change it up to make things interesting. I have two main characters in my comic, and one of them is like the character I described above. The other is the complete opposite. They're brothers so it sort of gives me a pass from that serious character that I always have in my stories.

I always like having a misanthropic asshole in most of my stories. Its nice to have a sobering pessimist inject humor. To be honest as far as drawing goes I probably draw more dudes at the moment but prefer drawing women when I can. (I sorta learned how to recently and I've been practicing trying to get it right.)

i really like kid guy characters and snarky girl characters. i think mostly cuz my all time favorite characters are peter pan and xena so my brain just goes there easiest. but im also really into witches so i been making lots of those kinds of characters too for future comics. all different kinds of witches tho. dudes and un-dudes. old and young. good and bad. so that one goes all over the place

If left to my own devices, with no real plan in mind, my main characters tend to be either a.) grumpy dudes with stubble, b.) really kickass ladies, or c.) androgynous people dressed in flowing clothing, like maybe they're cosplaying oldschool ghosts.

As for a.) - where the perfect example is Masahiro - I know why this happens so much; I really, really like characters who aren't immediately likeable, and who have problematic personalities, and who I have to get to know before I like them. I want a bit of a mystery to solve, some kind of wall to break through. So I create a lot of characters with secrets up their sleeves and grumpiness as a coping mechanism. Also, I have a thing for problematic characters in general. In the ASOIAF-books (let us not speak of the tv-show, on which I have very loud opinions), one of my favourite characters is Jaime Lannister - not because I in any way approve of what he's done, but because the way he is attempting to change is fascinating to me.

Creating kickass ladies is always nice, obviously - inside of Grassblades, I've got aristocratic ladies, soldiers, bandits., etc. - and outside of Grassblades, I have space-adventurers, pirates, knights, gangster queens, vikings, airship commanders, etc.,.

As for the last category, I have a thing for androgynity in character-design, AND I like to draw loose, flowy clothing. In a world where practically everything is gendered, I like to sit somewhere in between, design-wise.

.

However, I am making an effort to be as varied as I possibly can in my designs. It's a good challenge for myself, AND it makes the world look a bit more real. Not everyone looks the same, after all, and it's nice to include a bunch of different people.

So I've got female characters who are shy and quiet, male characters who are warm and friendly and welcoming, I've got characters with as many varied skintones, sexual orientations, body shapes and backstories as I can possibly think of. Because not only is it a good learning experience, it is fun.

I tend to create characters in twos and it's almost always a boy-girl pair. And for some reason the boys tend to be sad and withdrawn, while the girls are more shrewd with manipulative/violent tendencies.... i dont know what this says about me as a person lmao

but im trying to add more variety to it!

a vast majority of my characters are children. i just find kid heroes more fun to write, especially precocious ones; child protags are more vulnerable to their surroundings, so there's a lot to squeeze out of a setting. my short stories have teen/adult protagonists in them, but they're in a modern realistic setting, or there's certain themes in the plot that would be too jarring for a child protagonist to explore.

Characters with serious issues, basically. Punks, angry loners, creepy stalkers (lookin' at you, Daniel)....psychotic characters are pretty common with me, too. XD I don't really TRY to only write these sort of characters, I just have the easiest time writing them for some reason so they squeeze their way into my stories. I've concluded my writing is where all my inner evil goes to. XD Though I guess I write the sarcastic yet lovable comedian and adorable but not puke-worthy children fairly well too.

Right now I'm stuck with a 1930s setting so fashion has been easy to reference, though I always try to keep in mind the character's personality when designing their clothes. Even a uniform could have 'special touches' based on the character. Though I guess I have a fondness for black, high collars and long coats when it comes to character designs.

I could stand to vary my characters looks a little more as I'm stuck with the "anime lookalike" problem a bit...I have been trying to give each character distinctive features, it just could be better.

I also prefer male characters because I get to draw man butts.

_{(And....I dunno, they just always end up being dudes.)}