Up to date as of November 14th 2021.

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Recently I've been going on a massive original character creation streak in preparation for a couple of writing projects I have cooking up. I drew a lot of them in order to visualize them better. I'm very proud of some of these designs and backstories. A few of them are alt-universe versions of existing characters I have in TH, but the vast majority of them, I drew for the first time in the last 60 days. 

Previously, I thought of my OCs as my Very Special Sons/Daughters/Eldritch-Abominations, who each deserved love and heavy development and lavish art and biographies. I still think that way about a few of them, but I've come to think differently after rapidly creating a ton of OCs and planting them in a deeply intertwined, conflict-heavy setting or two. Characters are tools. They are very fun and likable tools, but they are the means to tell a quality story in one format or another. It's the ways people interact, whether fighting, friendship or something else, that I think really make OCs interesting. Working on characters for their own sake doesn't mean as much to me as showing them in action and with others.

In addition, I realized I don't have too much use of TH in specific. I don't commission art, trade characters, play forum games, have fanartists, or have much other reason to keep around list or art reference gallery of my characters hanging around. That may change in the future, but it's not the situation now.

In that light, I will be adding only new characters that I end up drawing many times. Most of my new characters will have their art posted to my other social media (da/tumblr/twitter/whatever else I find), and otherwise exist primarily in their relevant stories. Adding 50+ characters who I would ever draw once or twice would be strenuous and not very useful. However, I will regularly add writing (as literature) or comics (as bulletins) to TH so the few people following me can follow along. Long ago I also made plans to write up self-demonstrating short stories on TH to best describe my OCs, but now I realize that would be time best spent on full stories, which would showcase these OCs better anyways. So I will be updating current character bios only when I notice something cringey or out of date (which happens a surprising amount, nevertheless). 

I will keep adding art of characters who are currently in this gallery, and still conducting art trades to anyone interested. I am preparing a large amount of what I believe vernacular parlance terms "the good shit", so hopefully I can show you something cool in the near future!

I've been posting a decent piece of art every day since March 1, which is honestly a completely above and beyond level of consistency for me. I had about fifteen finished items lying around in the half year or so I've been quiet, so I'm very happy that I managed to keep it going after that. I think I've established, to myself at least, that I'm not vanishing yet. I've wiped out a sizable WIP backlog on my hard drive, and starting on finishing a bunch of old sketches that I think were neat, but were not WIPs.

So, plans! Mostly putting this here to keep myself honest:

1) Continue the "daily streak" for one more week (7 days). The pace is a little exhausting now that warm-up time is over and I'm getting into higher quality, complete pieces.

2) April+ May: Wrap up painting the current buffer sketches I have. At least 1 per week. Some will be short comics, others will be lineless art "paintings".

2b) Go hunting for/advertise art trades. Mostly on Toyhou.se. I'll definitely be able to get 2 per week, for a total of 3 minimum pieces per week. It's entirely possible I may end up working faster than that, I'm still shaking off rust. 

3) June-ish: Find more followers on dA (i.e. start submitting to groups again). Maybe expand to Instagram. Tumblr might be a bit of a lost cause. 

3a) After I'm done drawing OC portraits (which I find less satisfying than depicting OCs in action, in comics and prose), I have a bunch of stupid short comic ideas. Focus on those for a while. I believe I can reasonably manage 2 a week. 

3b) Concurrently with the above, occasionally throw in concept arts of characters or versions of characters I haven't drawn yet, and practice on a few artistic weak spots (complex mechanical objects, perspective, animals, extreme shadow, unorthodox shading colors).

4) July: Think about next steps. The quarantine might end by this point.

I've recently discovered that, in my opinion, I'm a somewhat better writer than artist. Writing also works better with my pre-quarantine work-life balance. I might start posting short stories I've written at some point. I do have something big for writing planned, and I have reason to believe it will be some seriously good shit. But that'll be a while off. We'll see.

I hope everyone, including those reading this, is doing well.

Well, toyhou.se finally got around to adding multiple-character image support and folder descriptions so I don't have to work around those anymore.

I'm uploading on TH more since I wouldn't have to upload my group portraits and comic pages 3-10 separate times now. Which makes a difference.

I thought my recent OC headshot project would replace all my character avatars, but I just can't get to a decent level of polish/beauty with most of them. Especially since I'm experimenting a lot while drawing these headshots. Oh well, there's always the off chance I make something pretty for once for any given character.

I will get around to making my character and profile pages pretty. Some day, anyways.

What I am definitely doing now, though, is (temporarily) deleting my shakier characters and then rewriting my developed characters' bios in a special way I think it's going to be amazing, and I was surprised I couldn't find anyone else here who thought of this before.

 

• stream link: join.me/473-994-753
  
• status: Off
• genre: Art (OCs, comics)
  
  • age restriction: PG
    

 

As anyone can probably pick up after a few minutes of meeting me, I like to draw characters interacting a lot. Especially in comics, but also in single pictures. This is a pain in the ass to submit the same thing to the relevant character folders as it is currently and is the main reason I'm not uploading my characters' stuff often, especially for huge group pictures with 3+ OCs at once.

TH really needs the ability to push the same image out to multiple characters. It would cut down on the time and effort users spend for big drawings, and probably also do good things for server load and user bandwidth.

From now on, I'm going to just have a couple of dummy character folders for things that will involve a lot of my peeps at once...

Also, I should apologize for the incredible gallery spam here. It won't happen again now that I am have a (terrible) way to conveniently store my backlog of complex OC art.

A forum post I made about some quick ways to give life to a new character. Edited slightly to be more generalized.

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1) It's *really* hard to develop characters in a total vacuum. Characters are initially best served being compared and interacted against other existing OCs or canon characters you know of. I like to imagine how my boys/girls/neithers will fit into my existing settings' "OC ecosystems". Simply form relationships with your other characters- can be hate, love, both, indifference, etc and how do they bounce off of each other?

2) A good approach I like for making characters fleshed out fast is mentally running her through scenarios of awful things happening to her and thinking about how she would react. Or pick a good story you'd think she'd belong in and see how she'd handle things differently from the characters in there- kind of a fanfic-seeming exercise, but it has its purposes.

3) Come up with a fictional timeline/history of her education and training (this will require research!), as well as any enduring or particularly vivid relationships she's had with someone else, also and her thought process during and after both events.

4) Sometimes I like to assign to one primary principle to a character, which they live their life by and three secondary values they strive for as long as it doesn't conflict with the former. For example, The Grand Duck primarily values Devotion- to universal annihilation. His secondary values are Bravery, Pride (he is a very judgmental sort) and Power. Everything he does revolves around this and all his friends had better display these if they want to stay friends. Keep the principle secret or implied though, it seems kind of cheesy to state it outright on the profile :P Then at that point, come up with a list of ways your character displays these traits and what happened to them to create these traits. This is a cheap way to jumpstart "empty" characters, in my opinion, but is probably not as good for advanced fleshing-out of an already stable character.

Psyduck- Devotion to annihilation- Demonstrated by him doing pretty much nothing else but break things, exhorting people to break things, as well as him eschewing all creature comforts and material possessions unless they can help with his cause. Caused by a deep and moving philosophical realization one day that life is effectively random and self-defeating.

Bravery- Caused by his experiences chasing down cowardly survivors of his attacks on villages and his general insanity. Demonstrated by his general disregard for self-safety and extreme aggressiveness in the heat of battle and also  his insistence that his allies be as aggressive as he is. Is overcome by his primary principle, Devotion, in that he is ready to die, but only if it advances his ultimate goal. He sees no value in a senseless death outside of battle.

Pride- Caused by his belief in the superiority of his "annihilist" philosophy and that most people don't share his enlightenment, so they must be uneducated about the truth! Demonstrated by his utter disregard for the value of others' lives, unless they join his cause, at which point they are incredible friends and he will do anything to help them out as long as they stay Devoted (again, primary > secondary).

Power- Caused by his need to kill people efficiently and quickly. Demonstrated by the horde of eccentric but dangerous miscreants he courts and leads. That said, he has trouble respecting "worthy adversaries" if they do not at least show token respect to his personal philosophy (again, primary > secondary)

(you'll want to be way more verbose than I am being and have multiple causes/effects of each principle)

And then you now know how your character react to basic situations based on these guiding principles.

I made this in response to a thing.

So this is a rant about the "power levels" of my characters, insofar as I have powerlevels. I don't factor powerlevels too much into my writing (excepting the difference between the first tier and everyone else), but there are definitely certain groups for most characters of mine.

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The first tier of my characters includes lesser deities (anything that could be considered a true god can't interact physically at all), eldritch abominations, and a rare few humans who have been so empowered by magic they might not even be considered human anymore. They can't break planets, but most of them are either way beyond human capabilities, or have magical abilities best described as "OMG hax". They are extremely difficult to kill by most means due to regeneration, lack of anatomy or both, and have only a few weaknesses... and by "weaknesses" I mean certain things that can take some of their strengths out of play, not give an auto-win (they can still kill you anyways). Anyone of lesser power going up against these guys is going to need to know and execute a careful plan to hammer on their weaknesses without a major mistake, or else be killed very very quickly. Most Brethren (angels), most Fallen (devils), Abby Omination Sr, Persephone, Hamul are the type to fall into this category. They are terrifying to anybody with the slightest idea of what they are like and the average person could at best piss them off.

The second tier are way below the first tier but still far above average. The second tier is at the peak of humanity or equivalent to it, with incredible physical (and sometimes magical*) skill that very few mortals could match. They can (not always, but sometimes) go through squads of soldiers with nothing more than a scratch, and have a track record of walking out of events that really should have been fatal to anyone else. However, they are still human/humanoid and can be overwhelmed in a bad situation. They at least obey the rules of biology in that if you put some holes in them, they will die or nearly die. Examples include Paul Renato, Rose, Bean, The Grand Duck, etc. They are usually considered legends, but ordinary folks may still have a slight hope of competing with them if the deck is stacked right.

*Most of my magic users can back it up with at least fighting skill, if not muscle. Strong mind, strong body, right?

The third tier are simply above average beings - experienced or talented warriors, magicians, gadgeteers, etc. They can do several things that most people can't hope to do, and either are among the best at a major skill or strength, or have a unique, easily applied set of talents. But in most aspects of life, they are pretty down to earth in their capabilities and can be beat by a specialist. The third tier includes Rue Wesson, Colleen, Nemain, June Berylns, ALiCE, etc.

The fourth tier are fairly normal folks. Any unusual abilities they have either a) merely the result of several (or many) years of practice/training that anyone else could do or b) are difficult to apply without preparation. Cizin, Elle, April, etc. They are realistic in that under the same circumstances, you could well be them.

These tiers are loose and broad, of course and only measure the extent of raw power and supernatural capabilities. Actual fighting ability can wildly vary in a tier (Leucine is Tier 1 for very good reason because of potentially-history-changing healing skills, but she'd get wafflestomped by most other tier 1s in a duel), and resourcefulness or situational factors can easily make one person shine a lot more than a higher tier.

Take Cizin, who is tier 4. Cizin doesn't have any special abilities, only a general lack of scruples and pretty good mechanical/shooting skills. He's not particularly athletic and hasn't gotten particularly good at killing people, on account of generally avoiding killing people. Let's put him against several tiers of other "gunslinger" archetypes (aka shooty people) from another of my settings:

Bianco- Tier 3 (a superhumanly strong archer and outlaw) Cizin vs Bianco- could go either way. Despite being totally jacked and ruthless, Bianco isn't particularly creative, so Cizin could outsmart him and shoot him in the face, which will kill Bianco like it would any other person. Or Bianco might track Cizin down by smell and ventilate him clean through cover with his greatbow. Or one of many other possibilities.

Terna Wong- Tier 2 (a world-renowned general) Cizin vs Terna- Cizin is in trouble, because Terna has a lot more firepower, balls(ovaries, whatever) and experience. She is far from stupid and can absorb bullets under some conditions. So, not looking good for him. That said, he could frustrate her by proving extremely difficult to find if they're in say, the woods. Or by laying traps and whatnot. It may be a decent fight, even though the difference in strength is great enough to expect a curbstomp.

Dove-Tier 1- (believed by some to be a biblical angel of death) Cizin vs Dove- Cizin is fucked and it will be immediately obvious. Dove can kill any human instantly and will need to be "killed" many times in a row without a chance to counterattack. Maybe Cizin could possibly win if he had like a year to prep for an ambush. Otherwise, he would shoot her once, which would drop her instantly, and then she'd get back up and splatter him, then walk away without looking like there was a fight to start with.

Really, only the first tier is overpowered in the animu sense, and usually with a very good reason- generally, they were either born extradimensional monsters that scoff at human world physics, have experienced over a millenium of warfare honing psychokinetic talents, or survived magical augmentation that literally ripped apart other test subjects' souls from the sheer power. They are by far the exception. And even they have solid limits.

For the rest of the tiers, I kept in mind several sources of inspiration- "street level" superheroes (Batman, Spiderman), Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, western shootouts, etc- it's a thing I noticed, that tension only results when characters are vulnerable. Even with superpowers. Some superhuman durability can be nice but never getting hurt or having force to throw around in excess can make characters difficult to relate to. Real people bleed- even if they have incredible devices or talents at their disposal, the one thing that everyone will have to confront at some point or another, is mortality. Plus seeing skill and ingenuity win a battle is frequently more aesthetically pleasing and cathartic than plot armor (aka luck) or sheer strength.

I also believe in clearly defined limits and drawbacks to powers, but only because I deeply value internal consistency and making a character's skillset a lot more believable and faceted than "lol badass guy lolololol" (not that I am accusing anyone of that). Plus, it lets things get spiced up. For example, many Fallen have psychokinetic abilities that are reliant on sight, and they don't have telepathy or whatnot that can sense people without visual contact. Not as much of a problem because they can regrow their eyes if blinded, but it *is* an avenue for a well-informed mortal to potentially challenge them, and I think it makes Fallen a tad more human despite their regenerative powers- hey, they are scared of being blinded too! :P

I'm going to be checking/updating toyhou.se less frequently. If someone feels the need to contact me for some reason, it's better to do it through my deviantart.

• stream link: join.me/780-705-231
• status: on
• genre: Art
• age restriction: PG-13 (nothing straight-up NSFW, everything else less extreme goes)
• duration: At least three hours.
• what are you doing right now?: Drawing OCs who need updated or new references.