Forums » Art & Creativity » Character Art Origins?

Well I do all of my own art because its not possible to find a picture of EXACTLY how my character should look unless I do it myself!!

So I was wondering...who else here does their own character art? I've seen several people who do, but I've also seen a few that looked like it was a generic picture used as reference. If you dont do your own art, who did, or what is the origin of the pictures you use. What would you change if you could?

---

Oooh, also if you do your own art, why not link to a gallery, mine is of course Helix-Wing on Deviantart.

Also maybe if you do your own art and you're willing to help others get custom art for their characters or just an icon picture say so. I'll do art for free if I reeeeally like you, possibly an icon for free if I dont, but I definitely do commissions and they're not very expensive (info on Deviantart).

I make most of my own, although recently I've joined an art exchange group where every month we are assigned someone else's character to draw, and someone else is assigned yours. But you never know who until the end of the month when you get a pretty pretty pic. I adore it! It is incredibly exciting and fun to give and receive. Plus it forces me to make at least a little time to stop coding and actually do art now and again, which can be refreshing.

I do use an old pic out of a D&D manual just for reference for my illithid character. I've always intended to draw it some custom art, just never quite found the time yet.

Lately I've been on a face kick, where I am trying to draw as many faces as possible just for my own study. I've done a number of the characters on the repository, actually, since there's a huge range of characters to be inspired by for art here, and hope to do some more in the future. So maybe a few lucky souls will get some random gift art in the coming weeks. Other than that, I occasionally offer commissions to RPers, but right now I am way overbooked.

I have more than one deviantart accounts to divide up my fun personal work/minor commissions from my more professional work, but the one that the RP related stuff usually ends up on is Riverthorne

I also draw my own character art (although right now I only have my icon and one character's image on this site), because I feel the same about it. Characters are only right the way their creator sees them, and I myself wouldn't change anything about my characters. Not intentionally, at least (who knows what changes in style can do to character designs...).

http://paashthesneasel.deviantart.com/ That's my deviantART page, not much to look at if you consider that I almost never ink and colour art of my characters (I don't submit uninked/uncoloured art anymore) and I rarely even think about fan art... but it's my page. Without me, my page is nothing. Without my page, I am nothing.[/soldier]
(Just in case you guys really want to ask me to draw your character(s), you should know I take my time. A lot.)

I often don't ever have a picture of a character, I just use my mental image to, hopefully, communicate what I'm trying to say. I do like to doodle, though. If I use a character a lot, I will often try to draw that character eventually. The problem is that I'm not a great artist, and I never really feel like I can adequately portray a character, so words serve me better. I also really cannot color things.

Sometimes, usually just for fun, I'll also use dolling services to come up with rough approximations of a character. I've done that a couple times as placeholders on this site, but they may wind up being where they are for a while because of the aforementioned inability to draw a picture I'm satisfied with; I get kind of ehh about the one I did do every time I look at it. xD I've been a doodling kick recently, though, so I've been drawing a lot. Sometimes I also have to draw to work out exact details for a character rather than work it out first and then draw.

I don't tend to commission because, as noted before, I prefer to let my words do the work when it comes to RP. Nothing wrong at all with pretty, pretty pictures, but I don't go out of my way to acquire them.

My talent at the arts ends at stick figures, so I don't tend to draw my characters, hehe. I've commissioned a few pieces now and then, especially Furcadian portraits, but for the most part I rely on description to get across what they look like.

I did used to dabble in Livejournal-based RP, however, and most games over there seem to require "PBs" - 'played-bys', a visual representation of the character to go in the journal icon spots. Some games seem to take 'real' people exclusively, some drawn, while others take anything they can get. It was never my favourite way of doing things; I abhorred those games that took real pictures of people, in particular.

I have always drawn my own characters. I hate just ripping an image, because nothing ever exactly looks like my characters because -I- am the one who made them!

My Deviantart Page

I would love to draw some characters for people, and I work off of text descriptions just fine. However, I currently don't have any room to do anything for free due to financial issues, but I don't charge much at all so if anyone is interested you can def. take a look. >w<

It is one of my favorite things to draw original characters, because there are so many interesting and innovative characters out there!

I draw my own art as well, though I usually use an avatar on a forum or a dollmaker at first, and build from there. I make so many characters to roleplay with that I just don't have time to actually draw them all. Depending on how much I plan to invest in the character, they sometimes just get a basic description and a name.

Of course, the dollmaker images are usually heavily edited, and I do make pixel dolls of my characters just for fun. I keep meaning to find some good profile bases.

I tend not to do art for others outside my shop on Ernya and my freebie thread on Gaia, though. Available slots keep the workload manageable, so I don't kill myself.

I do occasionally get art of my characters from friends, though, which always makes me happyface. X3

Yeah, the PB thing really keeps me from getting into LJ games. My character looks like my character, not Random Actor And/or Scene Kid. xD

I always do my own character art these days, and I love drawing friend's characters as well, when they inspire me. About two years ago, when my art really wasn't good enough yet, I did often use random pictures I found through google to represent my characters, but those never looked quite accurate enough (not to mention that it's a bit disrespectful towards the original artist). That drove me to draw my own characters, and two years of arduous drawing of the same characters over and over again has now brought me to a level of skill that I'm reasonably happy with. At least I can portray my own characters without feeling entirely ashamed of my work.

Anyway, I think a well-written description is better than a picture, but I like to combine writings and visuals to make a page look nice and eye-catching.

I've got a dA gallery: http://ethelle.deviantart.com/
Recently I've been thinking of doing small, cheap commissions (or maybe just art trades) for character busts, like this one I made for a friend (for free, obviously): Vah'Snah (also my first encounter with 'anthro' art, although this isn't really anthro art as it is an actual race (Ohmes Khajiit) in TES lore). So, if anyone is interested in an art trade, don't hesitate to ask! 8D

Wow I love all these great artists here!!

Personally I cant stand it when I ask for what a character looks like and get a photo. I dont know, theres just something weird about it to me, I start wondering what that actual person would think if they knew their picture was being used for this. Drawings of course dont have feelings, so I'm not as weirded out when someone gives me a generic anime character for their appearance.

Good or bad art-wise though I love to see a person's actual drawing of their character, its the best.

@Ethelle: I thought I was watching you on DA already, glad I checked!

I do some of my own character art--usually the first piece as a ref. But I'm a total glutton when it comes to commissioning! There's just a huge thrill about asking for someone's representation of my char. Sometimes it's really great, sometimes not. But it's always a fantastic surprise. My character Ferrow has several hundred bucks worth of art, I think, and I'm proud of every piece. Ports, however, I generally do myself.

My galleries:
http://vorpalmuse.deviantart.com
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/vorpaldragon/

I myself don't like when people link to generic anime drawings... I mean, it's "close to what the character looks like", not "the character itself". I manage to have my own personal fun looking at what the people typed in on photobucket to get that image; it often turns out to be "cute dark goth anime girl" or something like that...

I don't mind if the person didn't draw the art themselves; even if it was a requested/commissioned piece from another artist, that still means someone actually put effort into displaying this specific character. Taking an image off of the huge image bank on photobucket is, to me, not only cheap, but even INSULTING: to the character drawn, the character the player thinks it looks like, and to the original artist. [/rantmode=0]

That being said, some people don't want to ask "better" artists to draw their characters because it'd cost money. Kinda makes me think I'll have to get down to business 'cause of my taking requests. (oh boy)

For the first pic of the character, I make my own, but after that, I ask some of my friends if they would like to draw my characters and show them my pic as a reference.

I do all of my character art... I am unfortunately one of those people that has a hard time paying attention in classes and end up drawing the entire time. Sooo my "notebook" is really more of a sketch book. I also end up creating characters based on a visual idea that I really want to draw, like horns or something.

My deviantart page is Space-moose

I do that too, except for species. So far I have species for wings, spikes, claws, long tails, long ears, and fangs.

I've lately been swept up with hellspawn... of which I have five milliopn roughly
All created due to thinking of a cool name or a cool horn design!

I agree with helix. I did a photo once, and I just felt totally weird about it ever since. I'm sticking to my drawings thank you. I mean what if that person found themselves being used online. Probably be weirded out.

There are actually some people who don't mind. They photograph themselves or are photographed and provide the images online for use as stock resources. A few users on deviantart even outright state that photos of them can be used for roleplaying characters.

Now, if only photo-using roleplayers would stick to those people and not keep trying to use friggin' Bella Swan. >.<

I'm not sure if unsuspecting photo-takers being ripped for roleplaying annoys me more or less than celebrities.

I think people saying "my character looks like [insert celebrity name]" is pretty annoying in itself, since it's just... not creative, you know? They could be describing facial features, height, frame and such, but instead they're simplifying to the extreme. It's like people saying "wears that kind of clothing"; show, don't tell...

Then again, celebrities are kind of a "public domain" thing; everyone knows them and they're used to seeing their image put to use. Amateur models, not so much...

I suggest a motion stating that celebrity pictures as reference for characters are annoying, whereas amateur model pictures as reference are frustrating (or any other fitting word illustrating contempt or outrage).

I agree that the use in and of itself of a celebrity photo isn't a bad thing, I just wish they'd pick, y'know, celebrities that are actually good celebrities. If you want a pretty Hollywood girl, use Audrey Hepburn., not what's-her-face from the Bachelor.

I think my problem is the same with using pictures of an anime/manga character or a character from a video game- I already know this person, they have a set background, personality, etc. And that's usually more realistic/believable/personally appealing than the character they're being used to represent. The comparison in my mind, sitting there going "oh, come on, Gary Allan would never do that, why'd you have to use his picture for this?" drives me a little crazy.