same as zinnia ^^^ i dress in t shirts jeans and hoodies and like.. nothing else but i feel like that would be a boring thing to draw all my characters in unless its an alternate outfit or fits their personality. ive been trying lately to make characters with different fashion types but sometimes its hard finding references for specific outfit types i have in mind... and im absolutely TERRIBLE at designing outfits myself.
outfit design trouble goes doubly for designing male characters. if i google male fashion or search for inspiration on pinterest or elsewhere it all looks very similar. outside of very niche subcultures, theres definitely not the variation and diversity that women's/more "feminine" fashion has. its hard for me to find something i think is fairly unique AND fits the character
Want to suggest a question? Feel free to DM me!
I figured that since the "weekly show me a character" thread has been alive and running for a couple of years now, I could give a shot at doing similar with development questions! I'll post a new prompt each week both on this starter thread and the comment section! Feel free to post answers weekly or combine previous ones into one post - whichever feels the best for you.
Week 43: (Pick a character) How do they feel about big gatherings like parties? Do they enjoy having a lot of people around them or do they prefer less (or none)? How likely are they to approach people they don't know?
Previous weeks 2021
Week 1: (Pick a character) What would you consider to be the most impacting event in their life (that isn't their own birth or death) and why?
Week 2: (Pick a character) What makes them feel the most confident? Is it more internal (being good at something, succeeding in things etc) or more external (being praised, getting their skills acknowledged by others etc?
Week 3: What is your favourite part of character creation and why? Does it depend on character/time/your mood/etc?
Week 4: (Pick a character) How does your character generally react to failures, both their own and the failures of others?
Week 5: Do you have distinct "favourite" characters among your ocs, or does your current favourite change? Or do you consider them all "equals"?
Week 6: (Pick a character) If someone were to attack them out of nowhere, how would they try to defend themselves? Or would they try at all?
Week 7: How do you feel about your characters sharing traits/interests/etc with you? Do you try to avoid similarities or do you embrace them?
Week 8: When you create a new character, how much of their story do you work out on the spot? Do you prefer to get all details done at once or prefer to add more little by little?
Week 9: Which one of your characters would you consider to be the most "unexpected" character from you and why? The reason can be anything from their story to themes and even the design.
Week 10: When you're creating a new character, how much do you think about their family/guardians? Are they usually an active or a distant presence in your characters' lives?
Week 11: What was the first original character you posted online like? Do you still use them?
Week 12: (Pick a character) How do they feel about positive attention? Do they thrive in it or does it make them uncomfortable? Feel free to talk about the nuances of "positive attention" or attention in general if you want!
Week 13: What's the most drastic non-visual change you have made on a character? Why?
Week 14: Pick your oldest and your newest character on TH. Would they get along? What would their chemistry be like?
Week 15: What is your process when it comes to naming characters? Do name meanings matter to you? Do you pick a name with a "purpose" or based on a "feeling"?
Week 16: (Pick a character) What is their love language? Does it depend on people? Have it changed throughout their lives? Is it a combination of several types? (Suggested by PicklePantry)
Week 17: Pick your current most and least favorited characters. What do they have in common? What's different? When were they posted on TH? Do you think they still reflect your current tastes in character design and/or story?
Week 18: Have you ever learned a tip/trick related to character/worldbuilding development that changed the way you view your works? Or do you have some specific tips/tricks that you consider to have been particularly helpful for you?
Week 19: Have you ever had OC related "advice" that has done more harm to you than good? If yes, how did you end up learning out of it?
Week 20: (Pick a character) What's one memory they wish to never forget (and why)?
Week 21: What kind of compliments do you enjoy the most when it comes to your characters? Is it about design? Certain story elements (backstory, personality, trivia etc) or maybe about people finding them easy to understand?
Week 22: What do you find to be the most important aspect when you create or buy character designs for yourself? Is it the colors, clothes, silhouette, simple design to draw fast or something else?
Week 23: Pick two characters you'd consider similar to one another, either in design or story/personality. What would you consider to be their main differences?
Week 24: (Pick a character) How reliable would they consider themselves to be? Would other people agree with them?
Week 25: (Pick a character) What would they consider to be their greatest passion? Alternatively, what is something they find to be "their own special thing" that they delight in doing?
Week 26: When you're reading someone's character profile, where do you start? Is it the overview? Trivia? Backstory? Something else?
Week 27: If you had to name exactly one movie that has had a huge impact on you as a creator, which one would it be and why?
Week 28: How did you discover original character communities/the general concept of them on the internet? If you don't remember, what would you consider the most fun aspect of ocs for you right now?
Week 29: (Pick a character) If they had to pick an animal to describe themself, which one would they pick and why? Would you describe the character with the same animal or would your own pick for them be different?
Week 30: What's the most bizarre/interesting/weird piece of trivia you have learned while doing oc research? Did this trivia find its way into the character or some other character later on?
Week 31: (Pick a character) How do they express their anger? How does it appear to others, and how does the character themself feel about their own anger? Does their society encourage or discourage certain expressions of anger?
Week 32: What's the biggest story and/or personality related change you have made on a character? What made you want to change it?
Week 33: (Pick a character) What do they do on their free time? Do they have hobbies or have they had any in the past? What's something they wish they could put more time into (such as learning a skill, participating in some activity etc)?
Week 34: (Pick a character) What kind of impression does their appearance tend to give to others [in their worldsetting]? Is it an impression they want to give to others? Are they aware of the way people perceive them in the first place?
Week 35: Have you ever created a character but refrained from actually posting about them publicly? If yes, why? And if no, could you ever see yourself in a situation where that could happen?
Week 36: (Pick a character) What is their most treasured item and why? If they don't have any feel free to talk about the reason for it!
Week 37: (Pick a character) Who is their most trusted friend and why? How would the character describe this person? And if they don't have anyone they trust, feel free to talk about the reason for it!
Week 38: (Pick a character) What's their preferred sleeping position? Are they a calm or a restless sleeper, and do they like sleeping next to others or prefer sleeping alone?
Week 39: (Pick a character) What do they typically smell like? And why? Do they use a certain perfume, cologne, or deodorant that makes them smell a certain way? Suggested by soyyemilk
Week 40: (Pick a character) Where did they grow up in? Did they live in the same place/area most of their life or did they move places? How would your character describe the place they consider their childhood home (or the closest thing to it)?
Week 41: Which one of your characters would you consider the hardest to draw? If you're not an artist yourself, what would you imagine being the hardest?
Week 42: (Pick a character) How open are they about their feelings? Do they have anyone to talk to if they're worried? Are they more likely to talk about positive or negative feelings with others?
Previous weeks 2020:
Week 29: Which one of your currently posted characters has gone through the most changes throughout the years?
Week 30: Which part of character creation do you tend to struggle with the most?
Week 31: (Pick a character) What are they afraid of? How do they handle their fears? How do they respond to other people's fears (friends, strangers etc)?
Week 32: (Pick a character) How does your character feel about change? Do they welcome with open arms, or are they afraid of it?
Week 33: How do you go about making a new character? What kind of things do you like to keep in mind when planning their story/personality? Do you consider your other already existing characters when planning new ones (avoiding stuff already done with one character etc)?
Week 34: (Pick a character) What do they consider their greatest achievement? How about their lowest low moment?
Week 35: Do you have story elements or certain character tropes/cliches you love to use in your characters? If yes, what are they? If not, have you ever noticed common elements despite trying not to have them?
Week 36: (Pick a character) How do they handle money? How do they earn it, if at all?
Week 37: What kind of settings do you prefer to use in your works?
Week 38: What kind of villains do you prefer to create? Does your preference differ from what kind of villains you love to see in fiction?
Week 39: (Pick a character) Do they have any goals/dreams/aspirations in life? What are they? If they don't have any, does the lack of them ever bother them?
Week 40: Are there things in fiction you love to consume, but prefer not to create yourself?
Week 41: What do you usually do if you can't connect with a character you have or you can't make them work quite the way you'd like?
Week 42: (Pick a character) What kind of things get them excited? How are they like when excited?
Week 43: What type (human, feral, anthro, monster etc) of characters do you have the most? Have your tastes changed at any point?
Week 44: Do you have any fears or insecurities as a creator? If you do, are these more based on your work itself or the way other people will react to it, or both?
Week 45: Do you tie your interests/hobbies to your character in any way? Why/why not?
Week 46: Do you prefer developing your characters on your own or by interacting with other people (be it RPing or discussing)?
Week 47: What kind of questions do you prefer to be asked when it comes to your characters or setting?
Week 48: What kind of conflict do you like in fiction? Is it a conflict of interests? Morals? Based on lies or miscommunication? Something else entirely?
Week 49: When you get an idea for something you'd like to explore in fiction, are you more likely to make a whole new character for it or use the idea for an already existing character?
Week 50: How do you use your characters? Are they something you collect? Part of a story? For RP?
Week 51: What kind of layout do you use for your character profiles? What makes you like it?
Week 52: What do you do when you feel like you have ran out of ideas or you have hit a creative wall with your work?
Week 53: Do you like to look back at your creative works or do you prefer to just keep on going and paying little attention to what you have made in the past?
The personality. History is easy, but personality? I know how they act, but I can't put it into words.
It's always personality and the small stuff like their skills or likes and dislikes and such. Like it got so bad I deleted those parts of the profiles and don't even bother writing them anymore orz
i definitely find the small things the hardest! i can do a basic personality. i can do a basic backstory. but those little things that make a character three dimensional are the hardest and usually come w/ time for me. it's p rare i'll have a fully developed character in under two years as they usually build up rly slowly over time :0
i find that i need to build the world around a character before anything abt the character comes together as well, which includes settings and relationships ;w;
the small things for me aren't like... idk. likes/dislikes/hobbies, it's tiny things that are considered irrelevant like what stores they shop at, what sauce they'd get w/ their nuggets, how'd they'd react upon finding $1000 in a wallet on the side of the road - u know? that stuff takes time to make a character realistic and i find it the hardest part of developing someone
It's either personality or first visual design for me. But more on the latter actually... since I tend to use my ocs for writing, I have this attitude that what they look like hardly matters so I give less importance to design than their role/backstory (which comes much easier for me).
Design and Name. I am unskilled in art so I work with what I can so that explains how design hits me a lot, but names they just never come to mind except in a few rare cases.
Personality is tough for me, but it also is something I can work on over time, and give a natural feel to it that way(or that is the intent at least!)
There‘s three thing I mostly struggle with, being names, outfits and personalities, kind of?
with names I find that if I name a character right as I name them their fine but once they hit a certain spot in development I’m like “does this fit?? is this good? What if it’s not good??” And then they don’t get named for months haha.
outfits is kinda the same reason as other people said, like Ive worn the same general outfit just with different colours and stuff for the past 3, almost 4 years- I just ditched the hoodies I was wearing because they started to get really worn out, so very little variation there. for inspiration sometimes I look at people in public and it’s still mostly like. The same kind of outfits just with a little variation. How many people wear T-shirts/graphic tees in my area? Its more likely than you think. I also look at stores and stuff and it’s like. heres a bunch of different women’s clothing and as for men’s it’s like uhhh here’s a Hawaiian shirt?
im slowly trying to get more original ideas, though like with some of my Pokémon OCs if they replace the role of a protag I just. here’s the canon character’s outfit! Your good for now maybe I‘ll give you an alt outfit after.
as for personalities characters act different in my head and such but like. End up with the same traits? I think this might be less of struggling to make them and more of describing them? i think I mostly just struggle with putting stuff into words since for the longest time my OCs have been in my head
edit: I think one of the reasons I don’t struggle with backstories as much is I usually have a role for a character when I make them and then I just go off from there. Like why are they here? What made them want to do this? Kind of thing. this is kinda why I avoid adopts since I struggle to develop a character who doesn’t have a role in something
oh god, absolutely outfits. I have exactly no fashion sense irl and designing outfits for my ocs is a waking nightmare. especially since I have a lot of ocs who are supposed to be very fashionable fhjdkss
I was going to say one thing until I read cryptocorvid's and I have to agree, outfits are way more difficult than I thought. I love simple clothes but I can't slap the same outfit on everyone, and I'm not very creative at outfit ideas. I'm always extremely grateful to custom artists that can handle things like that because it boggles my mind thinking of that and color palettes.
But when I have a character all ready to go and I'm working on the profiles? It's personality. Their personality and voice are usually the obstacles I run into. There are plenty of times where I have a great character, but I have no idea what they're like. Or it could be that I have an idea of what I want them to be but just can't write them out for the life of me, like as if the voice and the personality disconnect. It's those traits that help me bring them to life, so I think that's why it's the most difficult for me.
naaaaames, 100% names. I can't help but want my character names to be meaningful and sound nice, so it takes me forever to pick them. I have developed multiple characters' entire personalities before naming them and just called them Shark Lady or whatever the entire time, lmao. I do the same thing Endercoil mentioned with roles too (though I guess a lot of my characters aren't in plots at all so more like... high concepts? pitches?) so I don't tend to struggle with personality or background much. just gotta build around that concept.
interestingly my wardrobe is 99% t-shirts and sweatpants but I actually enjoy / am decent at designing outfits? I guess I mostly make ocs in fantasy universes so there might be more options there than with modern realistic stuff. tho I think there's still a lot of ways you could show off a character's personality with the same basic outfit! are their clothes comfy but ill-fitting? tucked in and immaculate? visibly worn in places? etc. even for settings with a uniform you can show off a lot of character individuality in how they wear it. that said I probably need to practice this more myself haha
- Coming up with different body types. My style is just too simple to do that.
- Personalities because I base most of my characters of myself and use them for vent which is why I’m so attached to them, and whenever I leave the “very very shy”, the “big chaotic” and the “wholesome child beb” archetypes they instantly lose my attention and I don’t enjoy writing them as much. I have been able to get around this with some of my good characters, like Stanley, but it’s rare, if they don’t follow the three archetypes they’re probably a villain.
- MALE DESIGN I SWEAR TO GODDDD!! A good example of this is the bois, out of the five of them I designed Callumn, Stanley and Oliver myself while adopting Jiro and Kole. But guess who the best designs of the bunch are? Jiro and Kole!
- Smaller details about a character aren’t really hard for me, but rather take a LOT of time and I have to be very attached to the character to add them. A lot of them are also based off inside jokes. However, it is probably my favourite part about writing characters because it makes them super cool and unique, plus it’s always fun to make up weird stuff that your character likes or does lol
- Backstories sometimes because I’m not a great writer and all my stories sound the same hhhhh
- In general, everything apart from design when it comes to characters that aren’t in Cute Crew. Sometimes I get super excited and enthusiastic about a story that isn’t Cute Crew but it’s usually only for about a month and then it goes away ooF
Edit: and names, I forgot about names. Everyone is called TBN in my house.
backstories... i can think of personalities if i set my mind to it but i am not a writer and my imagination can only go 2 inches. also i hate world building... i cheat and all my ocs exist in a vast metaphysical space of multiverse worlds and there will be no explanation as to how they can exist in the same room. they just do. i prefer to think more about character interactions than a character's backstory; i think its just more fun.
also, names are kinda hard too
Oohh,, i gotta say it's usually writing them down. I'll usually have a basic summary and idea for em but then when I've gotta nail em down deeper, i would be stuck on how to progress them forward. It sucks for me cuz, i wanna see this chara story complete personally but aaa there's plotholes and missing segments of their backstory. I also have a hard time figuring out on how to further develop an oc cuz i require prompts to like,, even have a sense of direction for it. I'm glad arpgs exists tho, since it gives me a bit of prompt to work on building characters