*Why* did your design your character that way?

[acealmansoori]

@JessJackdaw Thank you so much, you just made my day <3 ;w;

[jennula]

Aw, thank you so much for your kind words, that really made my morning here! <3

[avalonmao]

Thank you so much xoxo

[jessiepolfliet]

This looks freakin awesome!

[nattbear]

Well, i created the idea of my story first and then i needed characters that fitted the world and it's peculiarities.

First I've created "the sisters"... Well, they didn't make and appearence in my comic yet, but they were supposed to be the main characters... I've changed that for "stories" reasons and created a male character called Dan to lead the comic.

He was designed to be a handsome man in an "ugly world". He is one that doesn't really fits. I didn't used a looot of time to design him, he only needed to don't look like the way he feels. The clothes he wears (mostly) was not his choice, someone choosed for him and he accepted... (the hair too) And that's the way things usually works for him. Besides that, Dan likes coats. It's a piece of cloth I decided he would like, as almost any other character in Savage Minds have a preference for some specific kind of cloth. He'll often be seen using a coat. I atributed him with the color blue, as he is one of the most gloomy characters of the story.

Dan has a strong body too, but is not a fighter, or a warrior, or anything like this. But he is a really good runner and has very strong legs. He has some other abilities that provided him with this constitution, but it'll be explained later in the comic.

[JessJackdaw]

Oh gosh! Thank you so much!

I guess I'll post a little more about some of the characters. I'm a little hesitant to show all the species yet as some will be revealed later on. So since the Wizard species is shown fairly early on in the story, this should be fine. XD

Oh boy, and the Wizards are one nasty piece of work. The closest natural equivalent I could think of was the amazing electric catfish. If we're talking about animals with super powers you have to bring up this ugly fish, because not only does it have one of the most advanced electric organ of any species, it can also sense prey in complete darkness using its electro-sensitve whiskers. I also wanted to pull in traits from the cousin of the electric catfish, the electric eel to give the species some range similar to the wizard class' ranged attacks.

While a fantasy wizard can shoot lightning from his/her fingertips, actual electricity doesn't work like that. The current just wants to find the closest outlet to discharge energy and would more likely shock the wizard instead of firing across the room magically. So to compensate for this, the Wizard species holds a large reservoir of water in it's stomach that it can use to soak its prey before biting and releasing a deadly electrical discharge. Wizards also have been known to use tools such as metal staffs or wands to channel their current in new shocking ways.

(All of that disgusting terror melts away when you realize they waddle around like incredibly obese penguins...)

[joannekwan]

Aaaah all the thought you put behind each species just blows me away every time!

[jessiepolfliet]

When do you think we can read your incredibly designed story?

[isaacfriedman]

I've come to realize that my character clothing design choices are kind of boring, and I'm planning to revamp a lot of them in the near future. In most of my designs, a scientist wears a labcoat, a soldier wears a uniform, a POW wears the tattered remains of whatever he was wearing when he was captured, etc. However the faces and bodies are what I try to vary most. There are the obvious body types like Brutus, Anderson Gunn, and FRAAAZ who are all meant to be physically strong, so I give them large, blocky or round frames, often with some visualization of stress or strain visible on the surface. The characters who are fast and unpredictable are slimmer, shorter, and tend to smile more. Mutated characters have visible skin defects and/or differences in the structure of other external organs that may or may not relate to their abilities. Hair and skin color are usually assigned by those that would make the most sense based on their location. There's no such thing as a place where is doesn't matter what hair or skin color a character has. Brittain in 1941 wouldn't have a lot of black soldiers and Germany in the same period wouldn't have a lot of brunette soldiers with big noses. France, on the other hand, would likely have a number of visitors from its colonies who are not white and who don't speak the best French. America would have a lot of black soldiers during this time, but no Asians on the pacific front. Hair color is also important, obviously, and I don't believe in giving characters a hair color not on the brown spectrum unless they dye it and have a reason for doing so even if that reason is just "I think it looks cool." No serious protagonist should have recently dyed hair unless it's part of a plan to deceive somebody. No serious action protagonist would have a pink streak through her hair unless it had significance to her because of her past. Basically, nothing in the character design should be without an explanation in-universe. The explaination cannot be "The author thought it was cool," but it can be "the character thought it was cool."

[isaacfriedman]

Everything I just said about human character design also applies to alien and monster design. If it cant be explained in-universe, it shouldn't be there.

[JessJackdaw]

@joannekwan Oh my gahh Jo, stop you're too nice. XD It's more like I get too into it.

I think it's probably due to the fact I watch an unhealthy amount of nature and science documentaries. D-Don't do that. You turn into that kid that knows all the animals at the zoo, and can't help being annoying telling everyone about it.

I uhh.... thankfully don't do that.... umm.... anymore.

@jessiepolfliet Oh jeebus the pressure. Umm, okay I'm going to be honest here. This is my first venture seriously tryiing to make a webcomic. I've made comics in the past just for fun, never publishing much at all, mostly just for my friends to see. I've written some stories before, and a scarce few have ever been read by others because I just hand-write them and keep them. So, I'm inexperienced. I don't honestly know how long things take to produce and make, and right now I'm cranking out the buffer for the comic.

So! I do have a deadline for myself, and that's the end of this month. Will I make it? I don't ultimately know because making comics is a whole new beast than what I'm used to, but I will do my absolute best.

story?

Wait... I did a bit of a double take because I haven't actually talked about the story at all. XD Just the world lore and character personalities I think, because I didn't want to spoil anything important.

No serious protagonist should have recently dyed hair unless it's part of a plan to deceive somebody

@isaacfriedman Oh my gosh, yes. This right here. I swear, as much as I like odd color hairstyles. Having a human character have blue hair in a war torn country makes no sense. Seriously, I've had blue hair before. It washes out so quickly and you just end up with green hair after. The upkeep is horrible, and there's no way a character in a setting like that could be dying their hair that much. XD Haha oh God, I kinda want to see that.

"Hold up guys... I got to re-dye my hair again. Commander John, reload my mag, while I soak my hair with something that costs more than our food rations."

[isaacfriedman]

That would make a great SNL or Flying Circus sketch XD "Hold on, hold on, just need to let it sit for a bit" "WE ARE UNTER FIRE!" "Just a mo', got to let the follicles soak, y'know." "THEY HAVE TWELVE GOD DAMN TANKS." "And I have four more bloody minutes! Let the panzers come as long as my locks are the right shade of indigo moonlight I don't give a damn." "HOW DID YOU MAKE CORPORAL???"

[sarrowsmith10]

I think it's probably due to the fact I watch an unhealthy amount of nature and science documentaries. D-Don't do that. You turn into that kid that knows all the animals at the zoo, and can't help being annoying telling everyone about it.

I think you just described my whole childhood. Can we please be friends? XD

[JessJackdaw]

Sure! Why not? We can struggle not to correct people when they mispronounce animal names together. XD

At least the knowledge wasn't complete waste I guess. I've saved a lot of snakes' lives telling people the difference between a poisonous and non-venomous snake. Seriously why does everyone feel the need to kill snakes? They eat vermin! D:

Sorry, animal rant over. XD We can resume on topic now.

[otterchild]

Wow what amazing design work!

[jessiepolfliet]

I'm subscribed so one of these days I am bound to run into your comic. At least you arre smart about this instead of me. I uploaded all my pages, and were my readers wanted more pages I didn't have any.

[JessJackdaw]

@otterchild Oh gosh, thank you so much! : >

@jessiepolfliet Aww, thank you too for subscribing. The idea of that blows my mind, but if you feel the story or whatever isn't for you, don't feel bad about unsubscribing later okay? D:

Hey sometimes working page by page is a great motivator! ...It takes every ounce of strength I have not to start uploading now. I don't know how artists like Anna Landin build up their buffers so high. I don't think I could do a 50 page buffer because I'd be too tempted to go back and rework pages which is awful.

....Gahhh. Okay, I'll umm, do one more. A short one because I don't want to clog the thread any more with my crap.

So I have a problem where I can't leave a design alone until I'm 100% happy with it. Amber's design got nitpicked like crazy, because I knew she'd get a lot of panels devoted to her. I knew for her clothes, I wanted a really stupidly designed outfit that is borderline hero adventurer cliche. There is a reason, and it is disclosed fairly early on. So, I'll have to make you wait on that one, but I can talk about the rest.

As far as the colors, in the last design I liked how the orange looked until I paired the design against Skye and realized, oh no, I have two bright yellow-orange characters wearing blue. So I tried to go with a cool palette to contrast Skye and the other two main characters. Since she was armor plated, I looked at beetle shells. I really liked the bright blue-green iridescence they had, but I was afraid it might blind readers so I toned it back quite a bit.

Another big change I wanted was to show she was a growing child of a significantly larger species. So I actually designed the adult Pyromancer first then shrank it down to make what the child looked like. When I shrank it down the first time, I realized something didn't make sense with the design but at the time, I wasn't sure what it was exactly.

So I image searched a lot of baby animals of larger species (a good excuse right?) to see what I was missing, and it sort of hit me in the face. When you have a puppy, what's the first thing that grows? The hands and feet. XD It makes sense, because you've got to grow to accommodate the change in weight in height, otherwise you fall over. So when you're a child belonging to a race of giants, it only makes sense that your limbs are going to look a little stupid for quite awhile.

Okay, I could talk about character design all day, but I'd rather see other people come and talk about it too. XD

Edit: @joannekwan You know you wanna show all your preliminary designssss. XD

[Wandercreature]

Since Superbia's a setting with characters that range wildly in appearance and culture living alongside average American/Superbian humans, I wanted the main character to represent some of those differences, but also the things that everyone has in common regardless of where they come from. Petra Slate is a Nain Rouge. They're responsible for a lot of demon/devil mythology, which really has shaped people's opinion of them in the present day. Her left horn is much bigger than the other one - her mom prompted her to try attending a mixed-species high school, and the right one was broken by bullies on the first day.

Her pupils and often her eyes glow like fire, and often get significantly sharper when she's angry or panicked. Contrary to popular belief, fire-breathing is a defense mechanism, not a weapon, and you have to push a Rouge a long way to get them in that state. She's got a scar over one eyebrow, but that was only from tripping on a playground when she was really young. She'd give you a cooler explanation if you asked.

The nose of a Rouge tends to be somewhat flattened, and will completely seal if they're underwater or breathing in smoke. The darkened area above their eyes is a natural one, and tends to be a little sunken. They've got very long necks and sloping shoulders, which fits a little more with their ram or deer aesthetic, and differentiates them from humans.

She wears a poncho with kind of a green-blue and faded red - these colors are present in a lot of vintage neon signs, and are common in Superbian area signs as well. The colors are pretty important to the setting, so I thought it would be interesting to tie her in with it that way.

Anyways! Thanks for letting me ramble! And take a look at Superbia if it piques your interest! More readers are always appreciated.

[Wandercreature]

These wizards are the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen on this site. Absolutely amazing work. bows and applauds

[kazukitakamura126]

I like how you are playing devil's advocate to character design. It's important to know why you give design your character because they have to reflect their personality, what they represent or their social class. I think I my recent OCs from my comic In the Midst represent this philosophy.

Sikaru she is kind yet shy. She also has a good taste in fashion.

Amilia is brave and very much a tomboy. Although she has a little femininity.

Elvos is charismatic and wants to appeal to the opposite gender.