*Why* did your design your character that way?

[mariusthered]

@JessJackdaw after seeing your art i'm gonna have a piece of that waiting pie too

[acealmansoori]

I love to hear more about where their OC idea's came from rather than what they represent. Especially your characters Lady Arrowsmith.

My oc has a great story behind how I created him and how I changed him through time. Ace, started as an RP character in the website RPnation. It first started like this

It slowly changed according to my storyline. Especially his cloak. It represent something vital, everyone wearing a cloak have been pronounced more or less dead the moment they leave the protected walls of the city. It's a mark of an adventurer. Because of the vast death counts, people can't prepare any funerals. So soldiers, volunteers, faction members all wear cloaks. Cloaks are the coffin, they get buried in. FunFact: Meera, one of the main characters refuses to wear a cloak;refuses to die. Which makes her incredibly strong.

As for his Green hair and brown skin, it just worked best for me. I've always loved green, and I think it makes him unique to have that hair color.

Also, im still defining these characters, its a fun ride ;w;

[WhatAHero]

I design my characters different ways depending on the story.
Themes, personalities and origins are the three main factors i look over for creating characters.

full size

For Scumbag Heroes I created the main cast based on a unique phrase i thought of for each character.

full size

The main trio (from left to right):
Ben's key phrase was "hot blooded" and so his personality would paint him out to be eccentric, confident, and passionate. His color palette and his nationality were based on America's overall aesthetic since i figured the USA was usually portrayed as a country rife with passion.

Annie's key phrase was "misguided shonen" and her personality would be that of an innocent teenager who is constantly put down by real world problems but is always ready to get back up and face adversity with a smile. Her color palette makes her stand out much like a main character though her fashion sense is just as questionable. She's meant to act like a stereotypical shonen protaganist from an anime, preaching about hopes and dreams but never really coming to terms with how harsh reality may be.

Leva's key phrase was "cold caretaker". Her overall aesthetic is very straight forward with dark clothing and a sullen demeanor to imply a detached and mundane outlook on life. She's meant to be the realist of the cast and looks incredibly serious compared to her friends.

Creating a character based on a simple phrase or word is a really fun way to establish distinct personalities without the need for over complicating the process needed to make one.

[jennula]

wow, love the character designs on these <3

[jennula]

I'm not sure if I ever commented on your comic, but I really love your character design in Lalita, they're sooo adorable! <3
Funny thing that you design a lot of short fem characters - I'm pretty short and do the complete opposite (I guess I was disappointed that I never got taller than 5foot5/162 cm and compensate by drawing tall people) XD

[jennula]

Actually, I made a huge post about the origin of my characters Ragna and Gav in SPEJS.
The full post is on tumblr and can be read here, but I'm going to summarize it a bit =)
Basically, the duo of Ragna and Gav has been in my head for like ten years, but they've changed looks and personalities drastically during the years. This is what they looked like first, a fantasy duo with a grumpy troll healer and a battle mage:

I naver managed to make anything more than illos of these two, and later on the troll turned into a grumpy tank guy and the girl turned into a healer dude:

This is pretty much the beginning of the SPEJS team, but in a fantasy setting. Here are the two guys in a sci-fi setting instead:

Eventually, I flipped the gender on the human guy:

Eventually, I flipped their personalities too. I found a burly grumpy dude and a happy girl being too meh, and let Ragna have all the grumpyness while Gav's your super happy pilot type, it'd be a more fun dynamic =)

As for visual character design, I really like contrasts and opposites, and I want them to be recognizable even when drawing them being far away in a crowd. I think Ragna and Gav's shapes comes pretty easily for me at the moment, which also is nice when you need to draw a lot of pages during a short amount of time (I usually crunch SPEJS pages during the spring) =D

But yeah, as for why...
..they have a specific gender: It has grown over the years! I drew and wrote a lot of male characters and wanted to flip it a bit with SPEJS. Gav is the only male in the group, the other three characters are female. And Aeros is the planet where girls rule the world
...they have a specific age: I usually draw characters in my age. Now they're a bit younger than me though (28-31-ish). I guess I want to relate to them myself as I write them..? ^^;
...they look like they do: I've really tried to design their costumes and such to match their personalities/jobs. Ragna usually wears toned down colors and doesn't reveal much - she doesn't want to stand out and be discovered. While Gav usually wears clothes that reveal his biceps and chest hair, because he's a flirty little boo ;D

[JessJackdaw]

@acealmansoori
Oh man, I love the idea that their cloaks are their burial attire. That just gives so much insight as to how brutal the world you made is, and even how death is somehow seen as a daily standard. Very cool!

@jennula
Aww, jeez, I love the process you went through making your characters, and I'm so glad you made something new rather than settling with the typical big angry brute and wispy happy human. Also Gav is flippin' adorable. XD Big buff guy and a little poof tail. My heart can't take it.

@aronthemason
Oh gaaah, thank you! I had to go make a thank you note to go with it. I hope I did it right. XD

[sarrowsmith10]

Especially your characters Lady Arrowsmith.

Oh gosh, my characters.. well... Reign was probably the earliest character to have some form:
2007- Warrior prince, with green soft colors. I always imagined him a bit older than how he currently is in the comic (here he is like late 20s I think) The horse armor stayed the same in the comic haha...

2008- Colors changed to red.. he had a pet panther for awhile..

2011- Hooked up with Terri and we talked about the story and through Reign's into the pot. So, he finally started getting a back story here. I really like puff sleeves from the Italian renaissance. Muted red and black, because I wanted him to look regal, rather than kid hero (lots of kid heroes wear bright red).

The other characters, I just sent design sheets to Terri and she picked the versions that matched her vision the most.. For example, I sent this picture of Lady Clara, Reign's aunt to Terri:

And she ended up being like this:

You can also see in these later pages that Reign looks a bit younger too. Terri has his age as 17, and the design fits teen prince much better than the older versions pictured above. Red also stays in his clothes, as red it really the color of his family. His brother and aunt both wear mostly red.

Like a lot of folks I don't have super deep reasons for his look, and Terri had to approve the designs too. She was more particular about certain designs fitting the characters status than anything else... She's really the brains behind everything.

[avalonmao]

Dakota Wu from Motsuro Project lol is chinese because I'm chinese, has fat legs because I have fat legs, has shiny long hair because my hair is always greasy, and has bug eyes because a ton of chinese people have big ass eyes full wonder and no one knows

[sarrowsmith10]

I think that is perfectly valid. We draw what we know. I like characters that aren't perfect caricatures of the typical hero!

[acealmansoori]

I've never been more satisfied. Thank you for sharing that <3 ^0^

Older Reign looks so freaking hot omg! Poor horse didn't get a makeover xD lol

[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."