@JessJackdaw after seeing your art i'm gonna have a piece of that waiting pie too
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;
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.
For Scumbag Heroes I created the main cast based on a unique phrase i thought of for each character.
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.
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
Actually, I made a huge post about the origin of my characters Ragna and Gav in SPEJS1.
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
@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
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:
1
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. 
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
I think that is perfectly valid. We draw what we know. I like characters that aren't perfect caricatures of the typical hero!
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
@JessJackdaw Thank you so much, you just made my day <3 ;w;
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.
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...)
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."
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.
@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.
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.
@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."
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???"
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.
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.
@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
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.
These wizards are the most gorgeous creature I have ever seen on this site. Absolutely amazing work. bows and applauds
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.
My main character Grave went to a bunch of design changes before I got to her look today.
She started out with black, short hair, some jewels in her face and looked older. I liked that look, but was smart enough to talk to friends and get feedback. They reminded me of the basics of character design. The silhouette of a character should be unique and interesting.
With that in mind I went back and updated Grave to the look she has today - and I couldn't be any happier with her.
My main character Grave went to a bunch of design changes before I got to her look today.
She started out with black, short hair, some jewels in her face and looked older. I liked that look, but was smart enough to talk to friends and get feedback. They reminded me of the basics of character design. The silhouette of a character should be unique and interesting.
With that in mind I went back and updated Grave to the look she has today - and I couldn't be any happier with her.
Ooh neat topic, definitely something to think about!
I typically design based on personality. Serious, mature female characters go well with long hair, usually with a dark color. More energetic female characters I draw with short hair, larger eyes, etc. Either that, or I was too lazy to draw and color long hair XD
My character from Laifu is actually a persona of myself haha
Since the genre of the comic is comedy/slice of life, I use a simple sort of style... Which is an excuse, because I'm just too lazy to create a beautiful character XDD
There isn't really a reason why I design my characters the way they are. If i find it as a good design, I will work with it. and from another thread I talked about how simplicity for character design is important to me. I like to make my designs "distinguishable" if possible.
Examples:
most of my characters started off as doodles - i made several prototype comics (just trying out some possible plots, and trying to get a feel for these characters
after some time, i realized what i liked about those two, and their dynamic and the more well rounded they became, the more the design changed to something that fit their personalities 
and now they look like this:
FOR INSTANCE: i stopped drawing xalem in turtlenecks, bc he isn't just a nerd, he's also immensely creative and slightly insane and doesn't really care about normal clothing choices, so i gave him a dog collar + tie combination^^ kendrion's mark used to be a slightly darker brown, but the mark is a very important part of why she is who she is (at least at that stage of her character at the beginning of the story), that's why it's now completely black - i also used to give her more feminine traits (earrings, lipstick) but i dropped that, bc she wouldn't really have time for that. she's a busy person^^
Because I was inspired by Motoko Kusanagi and Joanna Dark.
Because her age is believable for the experience and tasks she performs.
Because I wanted her to represent a Norwegian in a sci-fi setting.
Because in the military they have a dress code, and because on the moon she needed to blend in but unfortunately the space shuttle got shot down before she could change.
Well I have recently started a comic with myself as the main character - I know, I'm such an egotist. Anyway, I wanted to make it as simple as possible but with enough detail that you would be able to easily recognise me. The only difference is that my character is reaaaaaally short - like South park short - and I'm tall but anyway he's from https://tapastic.com/series/Fo-Funsies and this is what he looks like:
When I joined Tapastic I was already working on another project for quite some time : Cold Hell, this is a harsh universe where my heroin has a violent past.
She is young but serious looking (and the tone of the comic itself is serious) plus due to the weather all my characters wear mostly heavy coat and all..
(she is the one with the blue hair)
Plus, since a project for a numeric label we have some rules to respect : no graphic sex or nudity.
...I joined Tapastic to "take a break" from it (I'm still drawing it but I needed a way to change my mind) and came up with SCAVENGER that is kind of the opposite : I want it to be funny and action packed (in a shonen way even), my heroin is sexy and cheerful and I wanted no restriction hence :
(I know, there is still the NSF restriction haha)