Show me how your OCs have changed over the years!

Here's some of mine!

Then and Now (main four)

The older drawing was from a little over three years ago, maybe? It was cool to see how these characters have changed. All four of these guys are in my folder, RED SOLO (humanoid)!

Then and Now (Benjamin Dallas)

Benjamin isn't the main(est?) character in my story, but he's always been a favorite of mine. The older drawing I know for a fact is the first art I ever made of him! There are a TON of visual differences. However, the name of his first album, Within Earshot, has always stayed the same. (He's also in the folder RED SOLO (humanoid)

I've had a few who've gone through designs and redesigns over time. Mine are mostly roleplay characters so they don't generally stick with me over the same story - their premises and designs change according to the setting available and my own tastes whenever I decide to use them.

Juliet Wright/Hinrich Naumann (2010) vs. Julia Wright/Henry Newman (2017- present day)

Juliet/H. was a concept that went into play a couple of times back in the days. Their main point had basically been "How long can I keep my characters biological gender a secret from the other players?". S/He never ended up as amounting for much - mostly just running about victorian London as Hinrich, raising a top hat in an exaggeratingly gentlemanly fashion and flirting with anything female that came on "his" way in a fake german accent.

Around a year or two later a game master of mine took a fancy on hir and we gave hir a proper backstory. Like, HEY LET'S UP THE STAKES she's got proper family and a husband now! The marriage became a marriage of convenience once we realized that it would be more fun if she had a "partner in crime" in the whole crossdressing-business. Husband was a good friend of hirs who also happened to be gay. They'd act as each-others beards and he'd be the one to get her mens clothes when she started crossdressing, mostly because he found it amusing to take his bff-wife around bars and horse races without anyone being the wiser. For whatever reason that roleplay never happened, though.

Skip another few years and that very same game-master decides to make a roleplay series set in the 1940s. With two people (me and a mutual friend of ours, most of my roleplays are 1-on-1). So the old concept of "Hey I wonder how long until -other player- finds out?" gets dug up again, game master thinks it would be fun and we get to work revamping the character.

Thus we get to Julia/H.

The marriage of convenience carried over from the original concept. The nationality switched from englishwoman-passing-for-a-germanman to immigrant-germanoman-passing-for-an-englishman. My game master insisted on hir as having knowledge in the fields of intel gathering and espionage, so as to tie hir to the plot. Thus I added around 20 years to hir age, to give hir the time needed to have accumulated these skills, making hir appearance more butch as I did so. She gained a rather complicated backstory involving a minor conspiracy to have hir working in the military under hir male persona but considering the sheer LENGTH of hir character page I think it was worth it for the resulting roleplay.

(Also, the answer to the "How long until the other player-" question turned out to be "One year and seven months" irl time and in the end I had to "come out" to the other player myself)

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There's also Alaya Vipin Engel, whom I haven't used for quite some time for any stories or roleplays.  She started out as this recurring generic asian chick I'd use to practice drawing mechanical wings, thus the name. When I started using her in roleplays I dropped the wings, replacing them with a pair of mechanical arms and an eye. Thus, for a while she was a sci-fi freedom fighter and a sci-fi weapons tester scientist. Neither stuck. Her final version dropped the "cyborg" angle immediately and is the one presented on her profile. What's always stayd consistent is her being an asian of some sort and the "shaved except for a ponytail" hairstyle.

so Zathura originated as a naruto akatsuki oc from a rp i was in on gaia way back in the day

They grow up so fast 

I actually made a folder a while ago to document the changes of my oldest ocs 

https://sta.sh/21e8688kpr08?edit=1 

I made some of them back in 2013 when I was 12, way before I even knew what ocs were. I found some terrible pictures I drew back then which inspired to made that folder to compare them

Shiba..... Shiba's been through some changes with me. 

First ever publically posted design, revamp, second revamp, and final design (believe me, there were more in between, but it's best those don't see the light of day

Scott.. my baby boy.... I've had him for a little over three years now, through redesigns and all sorts! So here's a quick compilation of how much he's changed- it's longer than I thought it was going to be

And this was the very first digital drawing I ever did of him! (watch out, it's bad! Like! Really bad!)

Here's another old drawing, tinted orange and I don't know why (he has a poorly drawn knife so watch out)

I redesigned him around April last year. This art is still pretty bad!

Then there was a ref. Big and bad and full of useless notes. It was on his old Toyhouse page which is now private, as well as on his Art Fight page, if any of you know what that is

And now?
Well, first, look at his icon in general.
Then look at this orange, firey boy.
Then look at his current ref! (in his gallery)
He's changed so much! And I'm proud of him! What a good boy

sorry if the pictures don't work, i have no idea what i'm doing

Mikhail is my oldest character; he turned eight just last week. 

He’s been through a lot. He started out as a flamboyant (I can’t even remember if he was gay) demon who was heavily influenced by Black Butler because that was really the only anime I cared about. He had over-the-top enemies, a sadistic older brother, an innocent young brother, and a completely different master/creator. He was also very, very white and had blue eyes. 

I don’t even know when he started to change. But I do remember hearing someone talk about how Korea was right next to Russia/Siberia, and I decided to change his design. And over time, as I got better at writing, his personality stopped being so shallow and he became more bearable. He developed past the horribly angsty and sometimes horrifying plot lines to being more (I hope) realistically traumatized. He even has a human form, which I use more often than his demon version. 

As for art: I admit that I used to use google images to use fan art for him when I was younger. I only ever got two pieces of art for his old design, fortunately. And now I’ve spent over $500 on him. :|

Ryn's not my oldest character but has gone from being a shitty RPG maker character character to a prospective Serious Novel Character & back to being a shitty RPG maker game character again over the course of his 5-ish year existence. His character has changed because what I need from him as changed.

He started out as a side character, so he was pretty much just really tropey and silly and he didn't even have art I just used the RTP facesets & he was that mage guy with the blue hair.

Then things got angsty when I started having a closer look at him and his story was tantalizingly edgy the more I thought about it. 

in ~2016-2017 I decided I didn't like high fantasy (which was only initially chosen so I wouldn't have to make/download more tilesets in RPG maker) and transplanted him into a modern fantasy setting. I ended up with a bitter, tortured young man with no narrative who wasn't attractive enough to make him appealing & sort of lurked on the periphery of my character pile for a while. Nonetheless I still managed to get attached to him, to the point I felt like I needed to change him from being a side character to being a protagonist. None of my other characters seemed to be stepping up to the plate, so I just picked him.

Unlike a (bad) RPG party member who rarely speaks & just makes puns sometimes & throws fireballs at all the random encounter battles, a protag needs things like motivations & you have to like them at least a little bit, for at least some reason. 2017 Ryn is such an incel the only thing I wanna do is laugh at him, but 2018 Ryn develops things like charm and a backstory and nicer hair and now we're cooking with gas. I indulgently just make him hit basically all my favorite tropes b/c fuck trying to pretend I'm a serious artist anymore I just want to have fun.

In late 2018 I realize I'm probably never going to be bothered sitting down and writing a novel so I embrace the fact he's probably just going to be wheeled around TH forum games and not a lot else. I amp up everything about his story to ridiculous levels & I exaggerate everything about him to make him more fun to play with in this context. I'm also messing around with him as a main character in a newer, just as silly, RPG maker game.

This means he's gone from being a weird caricature to being a nuanced human person and then undergoing maximum flanderization, which... idk just see for yourself

start of 2018	start of 2019

see technically they are the same person & have the same face but 2018 ryn's moves are weak & his hair's not independently sentient. Everything that's changed about him has changed to fit my whims at the time. He'll probably continue to mutate for as long as I continue to care about him. I love current-Ryn more than ever so I doubt that'll stop anytime soon.

Blair also started out as the same character, and he's the one who ended up with OG Ryn's repression & blue hair in the divorce