Where did your main characters design come from?

[RagtimeMoz]

They say a good artist copies, a great artist steals. I'd say that's pretty true but people are creative enough to take their favorite things in life and express them through their art.

So if this is true then who/what are your main characters based off of?

For my main characters Felix and Rat.
Felix is pretty clearly based off of Jake Blues from the movie The Blues Brothers. He is also inspired by one of my friends I've known for years.

My other main character Rat is inspired by Sanosuke from Rurouni Kenshin mostly.

Let me know where the idea of your characters came from, and feel free to put links to your stories.

Ragtime | Tapas

[N1ghtm4r3]

all my chcraters have some base is soemoen or somethign i had seen, just moulded enough to say its my own
one of the mroe obvious is my character Blade star was inspired from krystal fox ( this pic shows how similar and difdfrent they are in scale)

Knights chronicles | Tapas

[alexchandler88]

My main character is based visually on my daughter who is very thin naturally and my main character is starving at first so it helps to use her as references she's healthy but built like a 90s model but as my character gains healthy weight I'll use my own photos for body references. Face and expressions are my other daughter lol it's a family project.

The Secret City of Abundance | Tapas

[TheLemmaLlama]

Clockwise from the bottom:

Saku: Basically generic anime protag-kun but in a moe artstyle. His outfit is based on the one I've been wearing for the past year
Myrrh: An amalgam of various character designs I've had, the origins of which I can no longer trace One of their outfits (not depicted in this cover) is based on Rimuru's from 'That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Slime'
Eury: A mix of 2 people I knew IRL, and a bit of Riko from Made in Abyss
Alana: Standard tsundere hairstyle but with one ponytail (at the back) instead of two because I've seen no-one over the age of 20 IRL wear twintails unironically. Black hair to subvert the usual tsundere red hair.
Dolly: Basically I wanted to make her look delicate and fragile. For her dress, I was thinking hospital gown or Feena from Ys I
Emma: Kuuderes/short deadpan anime girls with long hair. Her coat was also one of mine.
Seth: Fargoth from TES III: Morrowind, Anders from Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, Kevin Graham from Trails in the Sky

[BLTX]

Donnie was designed with the typical depiction of a creepy stalker, as well as some insperation from "The Smiling Man."

Donnie The Fighting Psychopath | Tapas

[Pony_wearing_a_hat]

For all the characters in my novel I basically take the archetype/personality I'm working with and put it through a blender filled with dirt. For Agony, the closest thing to a main character, I took early 2000s fashion, kinda Disney Channel bad girl vibes.

Her body is based on my body language when I'm writing her dialogue. She's scrawny and stringy, worn out but with some fighting spirit. Very much like a street chihuahua. I also sort of think of her like a doll made of sticks tied together at the joints. Her face is kinda like a stretched out rubber band.

[IzzyBloom91]

Now, Xepholen is base on the "eyes are the windows to the soul" which is why his eyes are golden color. Gold is pure. So just indicating he has a soul of pure light not a single trace of evil. I wanted a heroic character who looks more rebellious; so I made non-symmetrical, for example, in his clothing by having one long sleeve only on one side. I also wanted to go with fits more in the category of Mercenary look.
I gave him bright warm clothes to indicate two things.
One- I wanted a character who seem like the type that can sell the cool aspect, but I am a good guy impression.
Two - the irony of him starting the story as a thief, he doesn't look the part of someone who can easily hide and lurk in the shadow. With bright colors like that he should be able to easily be seen by authority but for whatever reason they can't track him. It's a way to mock authorities.

Infinite Strike | Tapas

[Aeneas1]

Erik’s is inspired by Olafur, but very, very loosely. The only thing they have in common is that they have three balls which make up their body, and that they have feet, which isn’t too unique since all snowmen in my universe have feet (how else would they walk?)

[TheDoublekey]

Well, the character designs from my webcomic were inspired by many things, I'll go over them in a sec.

The guy on the bottom-left wielding a sword is called Frederick and he's the main character of 'Age I- Age of Darkness'. His character design (and first draft, especially) was inspired by Jonathan Joestar from the manga/anime series Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. My story was originally an rpg maker game and I remember using the character generator to actually get some inspiration.

The guy with orange-hair is called Nigel and he's Frederick's brother. His design wasn't inspired by anyone in particular and I just made it up on the character generator. With time, I ended up changing him and making his design a bit different and more personal.

The guy in the center with red hair is Drake and his design was inspired by rpg maker's character generator too. Just like Nigel's design, I changed it more and more over time.

Now, the guy standing in the back with the green shirt is named Kay and his story is a bit more complicated. He was created a loooong time before 'Age I- Age of Darkness' was even conceived and he used to be my old youtube and Google avatar (I think he still is on my second channel, actually).
On day, though, I decided his character design was too cool to be wasted and so I created a story for him. After sometime (and making his design a little different), I finally ended up putting him in 'Age I- Age of Darkness'. Sooo, now you know the reason why he's the most different-looking one in the cast. The story behind him is pretty complicated and I don't think I'd be able to tell it all lol.

Age I- Age of Darkness | Tapas

[powerplantanimations]

Okay... so funny story (and yes there's actually a cool story behind this stick figure):

My artist for my other project needed me to draw up some thumbnails for her since there's a language barrier. Now she draws like this:

I draw like this:

My artist found this funny and encouraged me to make a comic out of stick figures. I joked about an isekai and the rest was history. There's actually rules for how we draw stick figures to mimic how I would draw them. First off we don't give them clothes, second no feet or hands, and third no boobs just triangles. The only thing we changed was faces, but yeah.

Now you know Naota's cool @#%#ing backstory.

We do go in depth in or comic about rules like how racism still exists and baldness is as frequent as our world.

That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas

We winged Naota's human design. :v

[DualDragons]

To be fair, I just wing them initially and then start to remove unnecessary things. Dani here had armor plates at first, but now in the story they have become obsolete so I removed them. She also had a ponytail at first but I kept forgetting to draw it xD so now she has short hair. Some elements like the multicoloured hair, the olive shirt and the red jeans did stay from the beginning though

[PapaDom]

Oof. I forgot how I came up with Olivia's design.
All I remember is that I had a phase when I was a teen, and boom! And that's it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[R.n.P]

My main character Luca Vincenzo's design is heavily inspired by Sanji Vinsmoke from One Piece, I really hated the character so I wanted to write a character that is similar to him in a way that I can like, personality wise and fighting style wise he is more inspired from a real MMA fighter in Conor Mcgregor.

The Rolling Stone | Tapas

[simonitropunk]

Lyza is the main character of my story and her idea came from a dream and this represents her character well. Lyza protects people and here she is protecting both her driver and her brother from danger. Her design looks strong yet, she has kindness and that makes up on who she is.

[GingerLoge]

Main character: Grim

Co-protagonist: Loge

My inspiration for them is Norse mythology: I came across it in a novel years ago (Norse mythology is not common where I live. Here we mostly study Roman and Greek mythology, so I knew nothing of the Norse). It was like being hit by a lightning, like falling in love! I started reading every book I can find about it. I was especially in love with the relationship between Odin and Loki.
So, the very first idea of my story was born: two close friends/brothers and a war.
In Grim's design, the idea of Odin remains in the eyepatch and the color blue (and the name, obviously). Loge is inspired by Wagner's version of Loki: I stole the red hair and the name.
The clothings are something I've put together to match the characters' personalities and palettes, but also to match my story's fashion: the sash, the puffy sleeves and geometric decorations are used for other characters too.

[Zay]

My main character Stacy Weathers's design is based off sabrina the teenage witch and Reimi sugimoto from jojo part 4.

Stacy The Demon Killer | Tapas

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Rip Vykirson here is most definitely scavenged from a variety of sources.
The two most obvious ones being Sonic The Hedgehog and Dragonball.
But a couple that are a little less obvious is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Usagi Yojimbo. As I've developed my style the last few years, I've gone less and less manga influenced, and more and more 80s-90s western indie comic influenced.

Overall I wanted to create a dinosaur type anthromorphic character with crazy hair. And that's what I've got here. His design has gone to some crazy places over the years, but it's been fairly consistent in the eyes and hair department, albeit most of his hair throughout the 2010s was pretty spiky rather than wavy like it is now.

[system]

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