[Decided to move my statement about my creations into a bulletin post for a cleaner profile. Also as a heads up, I am going to put some content warnings (nothing NSFW, it's just thematic wise). I also added in extras to my statement for any curious folk out there!]

My Original Character (OC) Focus and Statement

I base my OCs on fantasy JPRGs, anime style wise. I generally avoid designing modern style characters because I like creating my character outfits and settings that break the norm, which is something I can appreciate about the fantasy genre. In addition, I already see modern outfits in real life on a day-to-day basis (don't get me wrong, I love wearing casual clothes and work wear!), so I personally like seeing a change of aesthetics from time to time as a form of escape. One of the common themes you'll find amongst my OCs is me making fun of popular tropes and breaking the stereotypes of stock characters in fantasy settings. Of course there will be cliches and tropes around anyway, but I do my best at making my OCs standout as much as I can.

I definitely don't consider my designs to be final for most of my OCs since I've really only focused in on concept designs, hence the generic poses for nearly all of their concept drawings. A lot of their traits I want to add are missing (E.g. Wings) because I just wanted to finish up  old and empty dollar store sketchbooks that's been sitting around for  over a decade and I didn't want them to go to a waste. My (creative)  writing isn't that good as I focus on the visual side of things; however, a brief description and a few words describing my characters  are in place when I get around to creating a new character and drawing  them up from scratch.

With that being said, you will be finding work dating back to 2016 and even before that; my pieces may not be in chronological order. I have a ton of OCs and will be editing them quite often over time, alongside with adding a number of old art pieces.

Inspiration and Influences

As mentioned, I'm heavily and overall inspired by anime, fantasy, and video games (notably JRPGs). Some of the works and artists I'm inspired by (not limited to) are: MapleStory (2), Ragnarok Online, Tales of, Final Fantasy, Disgaea, Kazuki Yone, Naoyuki Onda and Keiichi Satou (notably on their work on Shingeki no Bahamut), Fire Emblem, and The Legend of Zelda. 

I don't create my characters based off of anything in particular, I'd say half of the time I wing it while the other half is either I end up improvising it first, then attach some sort of meaning later or I actually do want to make a character based off of something. For example, I intended Naydal to be just a regular Merphan (a race of mermen and mermaids) who gets lost on land as opposed to lost at sea and finds human men attractive, but then I thought about The Little Mermaid (by Hans Christian Anderson) and attached some elements from the characters to her -- instead of Naydal (the mermaid) falling in love with a prince, she's obsessed with romance novels and is a total fan girl! Satsuma is based off of and named after the satsuma citrus. The only time where my OCs are based off of another character are the ones I made in MMORPGs I play, but with major adjustments (only minor things like hair colours are kept). A notable example is Sereina, where I based her off of my Heavy Gunner from MapleStory 2.

Visual design wise, I never use anything like picrew or any other visual simulators to help  create my characters (I'm too prideful in that area) unless it is an  MMORPG character I made (as mentioned). My designs are done mainly through my imagination  and when the situation calls for it, a lot of research and topic  exploration is involved.

I'll likely add more to this post later in the future!