Forums » Art & Creativity » Character Creation Methods and Help

Hello friends! Danna here to help you all with character creation.

SO this was also submitted for the event but I just realized that it could honestly PROBABLY be more than just an event piece I typed up, so I'm gonna post it here too instead of just submitting it for the 2020 RPR event!

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So, when I'm personally crafting my designs and ideas, I like to sit down with a set number of rules that I think might really help to share.


I'll include links in this too so you can all try your hand at my method of Character Crafting :>

• Moodboards. Sometimes when I want to do something and go crafting, my brain doesn't always work. This is where mood boards come in! Mood boards or aesthetic boards, lump together certain elements to help you get a general feel for a character even if they don't exist yet! I'll include an example in a spoiler below really fast and the ways I go about sorta working with them!
  

  EXAMPLE 1 Example 1 above seems to have a general theme! The theme is something akin to urban/floral grunge so when I see this set up, I almost consider a modern day witch who has a darker night life. Maybe she runs a back alley coffee shop and then goes clubbing into the wee hours of the morning. This set up is good when you have elements that sort of seem to vibe together under a certain THEME or AESTHETIC grouping.

  EXAMPLE 2 Example 2 is a little more chaotic but it works as well. What I do for things like this is I have a general idea for someone: So say I wanna make someone that lives a life of travel but don't know where I wanna go. So I start collecting things that sort of speak to me and before I realize it I've centered on bright, poppy colors and things that would suggest that the person is outgoing! In a matter of time I've constructed someone who is a visually energetic being that adores travel and putting themselves out there. I don't always recommend this method of mood board creation for the simple fact that if you don't have a clear idea in mind, the board can get cluttered and what makes sense at the moment might not make sense to you later, but thats ok because you can always change thematic ideas around later!

  EXAMPLE 3 Finally the three color spread! This is for when I'm just having a really rough go of an idea or even just wanna have a quick toss around of ideas! The general idea is that I split the whole board up into three rows- horizontal or vertical doesn't matter- and then I sort of color code them. I've done so here with blue/red/brown in a way. So while its obviously not a huge spread of ideas sometimes less is more and you suddenly have three potential characters to work with. Blue could potentially be Fairy that moonlights through the city, defending strangers against bad dates and making sure they get home alright. Red could be a demon who has shunned their true nature in favor of becoming a college professional artist. Brown could be a wild child elf scouring across the world in search of hidden secrets and adventure. Really there's no limit to this and the three tile method works for jumbled aesthetics too, but it might get confusing if the color schemes for the three tiles don't sync up.

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  The method I use to get these moodboards can be found right below this sentence, its free and super fun!
  https://perchance.org/moodboard-generator
  
• Pin Boards: This is a recent thing I just got into thanks to the wonderful Alluvial, and really I don't know how I never did it to begin with. I use pin boards generally after I've already rough drafted out a full image of the character in question in my head/have a general idea of what I want that character to look like. Sometimes once you snag a face claim the pieces all fall perfectly into place!
  
  Pinterest is awesome for collecting clothing ideas and references that your character might be seen parading around in.
  
• Faceclaims: Lets face it, sometimes it just plain helps to have a face for people to look at to get a genuine idea of your character and what they look like. There's no shame in it and there's no shame in NOT having one. However I've found that face claims make it all the more easier sometimes to really get into the mental mindset of how you wanna RP that character!
  
  My suggestion for faceclaims is look at indie bands or models, sometimes google doesn't offer up the best of results but that's where Pinterest comes in handy as well. Sometimes people will pin whole galleries of one certain individual and that'll really help you decide if they're a good fit for what you have in mind!

SO that's not all of it but its some of it! I just wanted to share my own personal tips and tricks and I hope that this helps someone out along the way~

Good tips Tar Pit! I pretty much do this but not so much in as an organised way. I have a Pinterest board for ‘characters’ and break It down into a few types like ‘artistic’ and ‘realistic’. I usually gather together what my character concept is and decide the look I want for the character.

I agree totally with what you say about faceclaims. It’s a key to a good character profile and helps flesh out the characters to make them complete.I also get not having an icon on a certain type of character but like to upload a pic of something inanimate like flowers or scenery or artwork. Also the RPR 2.0 feature to upload the background to give the character no icon is good too. I can’t understand why anyone would just leave a character with just the default ?. That says to me the character is incomplete no matter how good of a written description is included, and it’s been my experience when I tried rping with such ? characters that the writing tends to be as incomplete as the characters.

The moodboard is interesting. I usually just ‘wing it’ with a character and adjust as I go. I may try out your method on this.