Due to the nature of my novel, all of the characters are generally expies of some sort or another (it actually started its life as a stealth pitch outline for a sequel to a show called Re:Creators, and was later adapted into an original story by changing the cosmology and the returning characters). One of the first concerns with any of them is differentiating them from their original DNA, so to speak. There was also, however, a meta-element - since all of these in-story are somebody else's creation, part of figuring out who they were was figuring out what, for example, a Japanese author would write for a military SF show about mechs. So, taking a look at them:
Atria Silversword
Atria started out in the stealth pitch as a returning character, Selesia, who was a magical knight and mech pilot. Atria is a mech pilot, but not a magical knight. Instead, I based her personality on the officers I had met while doing my MA as a civilian student at the Royal Military College of Canada - she is an officer through-and-through (if she met Selesia, I don't think they'd get along very well - I think Atria would find Selesia a bit flighty, and Selesia would find Atria a bit too bloodthirsty). The short hair came from my illustrator, Foxtail, and it made much more sense for a mech pilot than the long hair I had originally envisoned. Since her creator is Japanese and she's from an SF setting, it seemed likely that she would be coded as caucasian, so that's what she is.
Princess Stellaria (aka Stella)
Stella's DNA was the other returning character, Meteora. Visually, I aimed for a contrast (Meteora has short white hair, Stella has long red hair). Also, personality-wise, Meteora was a librarian, while Stella was a support mage specializing in area-of-effect combat spells (that said, I think if she met Meteora, the two would get along famously). Her crisis is different than anybody else's - she's been in the real world long enough to have made a life here, and her powers are long gone. But, she's still got all of those combat support mage instincts, which leads her into feeling useless when, in fact, as a quantum physics grad student she is the ONLY person with any real idea of why anything is happening. Since she's from a JRPG, there seemed to be an equal probability that the character was either meant to be a caucasian or Japanese with red hair, so, as I recall, my instructions to the illustrator were to split the difference.
That's the two with the DNA of returning Re:Creators characters. The others are all mine.
Captain Infinite
Captain Infinite is an expy of Superman, so part of the visual design was to make him look like a superhero from the 1930s. But while the appearance was unavoidably a palette swap, there are dramatic differences in the back story. "Captain" is not a superhero name - it is his rank in the US Army 42nd Rangers in WW2, during which he landed at Normandy and fought his way into Germany. Further, time in his world has been allowed to pass normally, so he is 102 years old, and all of the people he ever cared about have died. This actually makes it so that when he discovers he is fiction, he handles it really well - the main thing he experiences is being thrilled just to have friends again who treat him like a person, rather than some god among men.
The Destroyer
So, this was an interesting character to design. The Destroyer is a devil king from a bad anime. What I told my illustrator was that he should look as cliched and phoned-in as possible (which has to have been a weird thing to try to pull off). There are still some character spoilers to come, so you'll forgive me for not saying any more.
Jenny Calhoun
Jenny is an expy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Specifically, she's what happens if you take a character like Buffy out of her story right after all hell has literally broken loose, and she discovers that she's fictional right as the massive dose of PTSD emerges. Some of the differentiation from her original DNA is visual - she's got brown hair instead of blonde - but most of it is in terms what and how she fights - she's a knife fighter who hunts monsters in general.
Jack Death
In-story, Jack Death is a literal rip-off of John Wick. Basically, a B-movie company decided they liked what they saw in John Wick and wanted in on the action (but figured that all anybody really wanted to see was the gunfights, so that's all his movies are). So, by design he looks like somebody else wearing John Wick's suit. Personality-wise, however, he's got an interesting journey - because he comes from a world with nothing but gunfights and killing, he is encountering compassion for the very first time, and it confuses the hell out of him. So, while he hides it well, his crisis upon coming into the real world is actually deeper than just about anybody else's.
Daiki Yamato
Daiki Yamato is an expy of Naofumi from Rising of the Shield Hero, and characters like him. The visual design is meant to differentiate him from Naofumi to a degree, but not to stray too far away. My instructions to the illustrator were that he had to have this guarded approach, with a bearing not dissimilar to a veteran soldier. The Black Sword that is bound to him is, I'm guessing, under the cloak (he was the last character done and we were literally racing to get the cover art finished in time for the serial to go live). He hasn't picked a side yet.
And those are my main characters.
