Forums » RP Discussion » Character inspirations?

I sometimes look at some characters here on this site and I wonder how they thought them up. Some people get inspirations for characters in many different ways; in real life, movies, games, etc. Sometimes an idea just pops into their heads. So where do most people get their ideas, its something I'm curious about.

EVERYTHING.

I can give a better answer later.

A single word can inspire me to make a character a certain way. A name I see in an article. A story about some random act of kindness or otherwise! Lots of things. Sometimes I can have a dream that's so vivid and full of twists and turns, complete with a fully thought-out plot, that I take the characters from my dream and put them on paper.

I can draw little random designs and they'll inspire me.

Or I can see a photograph of someone dressing up and get inspired.

There's just so many different ways to get ideas that it's hard to really list them all! I just kind of keep an open mind.

1. Personal interests.
Things that I like to do are things I like to have my characters like too. Pearl for example is a witch who combines knitting (which I lovelovelove to do) with magic. Often times, my characters' designs are based on things they do and like.

2. Bought designs.
Artists like to create designs and sell them. Albe came to be only because I bought one of Degu's mystery eggs, and they labeled the hatched gryphon as "Guardian of the Sea". I took the physical appearance and title and built the remainder of Albe's design that way.

3. Myths, legends and genres.
This is also kind of tied into the whole interest thing. I read a lot, fantasy novels and the like, and when something strikes my fancy I research that particular subject and either work with that, or add on to it and create something of my own. Animals I'm fond of can be turned into characters, and so on.

As I said earlier, pretty much anything. Some characters were created for particular RPs (or other similar things), and I either modeled them around my "part" (Laluli, Shanique) or thought up something that fit and ran with it (Nyn, Sal). Some just sort of happened with no apparent prompt (Julian & Frost, Myst) or because I had a loose idea of something I felt like doing (Willow, Kyra). Green Mike came from a dream I had awhile back. Calvmic came from the second drawing I did using a manga tutorial. Novalyyn developed from a persona I had for myself. Gregor started as an NPC that I got attached to.

And of course, some have more mixed beginnings (including some of those already mentioned). Chaser, for example, was created for a particular RP, but I focused on making a character that balanced between the sides of good and evil.

I LOVE this question. Or rather, I love answering it.

Arien Chase came about because every restaurant has a bottle of Tabasco at their tables. And I kept wondering who would be so obsessed with tabasco sauce that nearly every restaurant would be required to have it. Thus Arien, my tabasco-loving prankster was born. He can't go a meal without slathering it on his food (to his companions' disgust).

Sterling Argentum is my old fart-of-a-guy, supernatural hunter. I made him as a joke because there were so many young hunters that I thought there needed to be an old hunter to offset them. I didn't really expect him to be as popular as he ended up being. (Though lately he's sort of "retired".)

And one more, Clutch--my Artificially Intelligent car, was born from the idea of what if cars could drive themselves. And then of course it HAD to have a personality (not unlike Marvin the Manically Depressed Robot from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), and presto-change-o. Clutch was manufactured.

That's just three; if you wanna know more specifics about others, just ask!

Most of my characters are influenced by movie characters. Once I have created a character I just think of ways to add to that character to make them even more intresting.

Andrew Mercer/Max Coogan
I took some inspiration from Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver and The Narrator and Tyler Durden from Fight Club. The idea of him having an alter ego (Max Coogan) was something that I came up with on my own.

Charlie Shepherd:
The character that I really took inspiration for this character is Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, the main part being rich and a serial killer. I also took Charlie's determination to get what he wants and his hatred for almost everyone from Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood

Dwight Cromwell
His backstory was taken from the human noble backstory from Dragon Age Origins. However instead of him becoming to a warrior, I decided that the character would just be like everyone else and would only do good because it is something new, not because it would help other.

Holly Shepherd
I had an idea of a character in a steampunk world. At the same time I also had an idea of a girl as a theif. I surprisingly managed to give her a personality despite the fact that I'm not confident in creating female characters. I can't really think of a character that I based this off, this is the only character I created that took no influences from other characters.

really the only char i was fully inspierd to make from another char was Kiya and shes basically Jo Harding from twister but just with another name

Games and movies mainly but I also come up with some myself. However the majority of my characters are based on ones from games or such.

So, I went to sleep pretty much right after my last post, and guess what I dreamed about? Making characters!

I can't remember much of it, of course, but I do remember ending up with a sassy, energetic, borderline-crazy woman, nearing/roughly middle age, who has a pet ferret.

Come to think of it, I actually know a real woman who partway matches that description... just a bit less in-your-face energy and adventure-y. Different styles, too.

This seems like fun, my characters are also 'oh I like that one, I shall call thee [inserg badass name here] but that's only with a select few of my characters. Take Jaiden for example, calm, collective, strong willed, stubborn and andrenalin loving speed freak that can dodge multiple bullets at once. I will admit his character was slightly influence by Neo from The Matrix but I LOVE THAT MOVIE!

Daniel lane is, if you can't tell from his picture, Dante from Devil May Cry but mostly re-invented. His personality is all the same and so are his guns but his fighting style and devil trigger has been changed. His story is pretty much the same but he searches for Vergil rather than waiting for Vergil to come to him. Also he was my first character

Now, a character that I created all by myself was Shawn and Daemon. He was meant to be a vampire but I decided to change him, and so I thought "if vampires Are damned to purgatory, why not create a vampire who's fate is different. So the thought of a prototype angel came to mind, the first of many but his vampire like features and thirst exiled him from heaven but when he dies he gets beamed up to cotton candy land xD

I could tell you more but it'd just bore ya

With me, I just get the idea of a certain character I want to make and then go form there, letting my imagination flow! All of my characters are a part of me, some small(like Daimonas or Melina) and some are huge(Kuro or Luna or Moriah)! I just think of a basic platform of how they look then put a personality and make a history to match that personality. I see it as a method to the madness, there is always a reason why people act the way they do.

With my character Kuro, she started out as a character I was making to put in a Fan Fic for my favorite anime, FullMetal Alchemist. But when I started to think more of her, I tweaked her history and then created the Kuro I have today! Originally, she was a experiment, but not with her body but her soul. She was suppose to have her soul connected to the main character Edward Elric, but I decided to change her to being an experiment with human genes and animal genes, the creation of the almost prefect solider. I say almost prefect because she still has her emotions and is stubborn but she does have a sense of duty. I can go on forever with these because I love Kuro so much! That sounds very conceded because most on here call me Kuro. He he.

All my characters started out small, nothing much to them but after roleplaying with them a couple times, I started to form more of a idea on them and I can see how they tick in my mind so much better. It's like meeting a person for the first time, after a several times of meeting, you start to figure out how they tick and see more of them.

I feel like I should try to be more social on here so I'll pick my own brain and try to sort out where I came up with all the crazies that live in my brain.

Estele and Stella are an anthro wolf and human kid respectively and obviously based off Mr. Kipling's Mowgli stories.

Kikuto my weird hyena is partly from the hyenas from the awesome comic 'Digger', what little I know of real hyenas and my trying to make sense of all the forms of gender identity the internet introduced me to.

Victor Hart is a study of mental disability and antisocial plus my old fondness for 'kid runs away and survives in the wilderness' books(ie. My Side of the Mountain).

Mike Anchorson and Caleb came about from a doodle I drew of a random wizard person. And when I draw stuff I almost have to make a story to go with it. Also I was lacking in middle ages fantasy characters.

Dandelion was at first a fairy like those in old stories I used to read about but after RPing him he's changed a lot and now I have yet another universe in my head. (I should not try to count how many universes are in my head, there are too many).

Isabel started out as a persona/fursona for a forum because 'all the cool kids' had one and I wanted to be like them. My first animal of choice was a cow. That proved too hard to draw so I made her a snake. Over time she became a lizard and then could switch from snake to lizard because I couldn't pick one over the other for her to be.

G'oooo'h is a slightly more literal interpretation of a child raised by animals. Baised off real feral children with a good dose of fantasy to keep things from getting too depressing. I wanted to try and play a character that couldn't talk again.

Which leads me to Shad who has come and gone from my list of characters. He's a mute and a jerk. Two traits that make him hard to find RP for. He's one of my older characters, much older than Isabel who was my first character made online or William my first RP character(from a Redwall fan site, who is long since retired).
Shad started out as a neopet and was based off a detailed story someone else had made for their characters. I borrowed some traits from that and made my own universe for my 'pets'. Neopets gentics are strange. Which is why my cat thing could have a rabbit-ish kid with a bat-thing. Over time the characters changed from neopets to humanoid animals to humans. I switch between human and anthro animals at will when thinking up stories about them. Because of this I decided that Shad would, due to back story involving his dad and other characters, be randomly dumped in different dimensions which would change his appearance. I did this to hand wave why sometimes he's a rabbit and other times he's human and more so to be able to use him in different settings.

Since he can speak and he's a jerk this hadn't worked out as well as I'd thought it would. I need to do some revising with him again I think. He's one of those character's who has looped back on his own past and who's future branches depending on which of several ideas I want to go with for him.

Sorry if my rambling is confusing. I've been making up characters in my head and making up long stories about them since I was a little kid(about 10ish). Some of my characters are nearly as old as I am thanks to me playing fast and loose with time, especially with the older characters.

My oldest characters are alien twins Steven and Christine who's last time escapes me. They are based off a few seconds of 'Escape to Witch Moutian' which I only vaugely remembered having seen as a little little kid. When I made up Steve and Christy I didn't know the name of the movie or what it was about, only that there were twins with powers and a mental link. I took that bit of a warped memory and gave them shape shifting powers with a few limits. They could only change into animals and couldn't be the same thing as the other. I mostly made Steve into a cougar which could according to my twelve year old self jump from tree top to tree top as he followed the car when my family took long car trips to places.

Before making Steve and Christy I had a idealized adult/teen version of myself follow the car on horse back. The girl on the horse didn't have a name nor did the brown horse she rode every where. She had no personality or anything, she's was pretty much just a background character. I was and am a strange person.

My character Zen-79-3974 or Era is based off the 'child' main character from the web comic 'Hero: a story'. There are few similarities between them and if I get around to using Era there will be even less.

To me, anything can inspire a character, from real people (For a mech game, one of my characters was heavily inspired by Ricky Martin), to real phenomena (I once based a character off of the idea that it's possible for one object to pass straight through another if their particles were aligned just so), to other fiction (a 4e DnD shaman based off of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure). It's safe to say that, under the right circumstances, anything can be made into inspiration for a character.

Ooh! I like reading the response to this one. Lots of interesting inspiration.

Adanya came because at the time I was in college going for Anthropology. In a culture class we were learning about Swahili and the urge to create came in. It was all fascinating and I wanted to write about what I was learning.

Aiticima was at first inspired by Orions in Star Trek, and when she moved from sci-fi to fantasy and became a goblin I was inspired by the idea of witches that require balance and pretty heavily influenced by xxxholic manga way of it.

Lear was gifted to me, and I was told he was inspired by a thief character from Final Fantasy. I played him with the feel of 'prince charming.' He has definitely changed in five years, now the only inspiration for him is the life he has lived and what has come of it.

Everenne was my love for tragedy. I wanted to play a sad and broken man. Age, weakness and flaws.

I get inspired so many different ways. One character came about just by tinkering around with Hero Machine. Started with a basic idea, then with a combination of "it'd be cool if..." and "well if they have <this>, then they should likely have <that>...", the personality sort of came from there. Another character started with a video game--Tony Hawk's Underground. Tinkered with character-creator, and between the visuals and the voice options, ended up with Tanya.

Other character inspirations have been media like cartoons, movies, books, and such, usually coming about because I find the setting interesting, and ponder what someone would be like who actually lived in it, though usually with little to no connection to "canon" (for example, another character idea came from the cartoon show Gargoyles, though she came from Los Angeles instead of Manhattan or anywhere shown on the Avalon World Tour; I like playing around with canon, but not tying myself to the "main" canonical characters or settings when I can avoid it).

Some ideas are just things I want to explore, like the page for my two Yautja characters, based on the first two Predator movies and the Aliens vs. Predator novelization of the comic arc of the same name. I like the idea of a truly alien culture that aren't just humans with rubber foreheads, and wondered what the rest of the culture could be like, what other individuals could be like.

That, I think is, is ultimately the crux--no matter what the inspiration itself is, it's a delving into the minds and mentalities that really churns out my characters. Imagining what this or that person, kind of person, or whatever else could "really" be like. Imagining what goes on in the mind of a space alien, "mutant", a woman who chooses to cover herself in body art and modifications.