It's really a tossup between my sweet paladin girl from my Pathfinder games, or my weird winged rabbitthat can set things on fire, who gets points for being both weird and cool.

Though Ariel wins by default for me, just because I made her. Kaxi, I bought her for a closed species RP group. :P

@Death Candy

Oooh, your Disney art is cool! Thanks for sharing~

@StardustSea

Probably Niv. Because everyone's got kinda girly dudes (check) or the traditionally handsome dudes (not really check? I seem to like characters that are sort of a bit funny-looking), but not everyone has GIANT RUSSIAN WHO HASN'T COMBED HIS HAIR SINCE KHRUSHCHEV WAS GENERAL SECRETARY!

...he's also got giant, ratty wings, but I seem to have problems getting people to draw those lol.

...damn, now I just want to write instead of finishing these essays...blargh...

@MK

I walk her around the house so she doesn't get stiff. I cook, do laundry, wash dishes, run errands, give her her meds, give her a shower, clean around the house. And a few other things.

Batman and I play random games. We pretend to be fighters or adventurers. Then when she plays alone she doesn't sit still.

@Thank you meme. I'm fixing them up though. I finally got Maleficent's sleeves to look cooler. You're welcome.

All of your character designs look so good!

@Death Candy
I love her design!
Sorry I couldn't draw her dress (it's so beautiful!) but, here it is!:

And an alternate: https://i.imgur.com/dd5kY8c.png

@Mikael
Aaah, of course! I love his design as well! It was hard to pick who to draw that one time, hahaha.
I love drawing textured hair though, it's so much fun (traditionally, at least, it'd probably be more fun digitally if I had a tablet, hahaha), I actually sometimes draw hair too textured, when I'm supposed to draw flat hair, ahahahah.
That commission's really good by the way, I love that art style!

My favorite design of my OCs is... I actually thought it'd be easy to choose but I'm having a really hard time.
Anyway, I guess Gunner, 'cause I think his hair is real fun:

Anyway, that drawing is pretty old (and I sloppily colored it for 5 minutes) but my most recent drawing of him is traditional so I don't know, I'm also real bad at consistent design since I'm still trying out multiple different styles so let's see once I get consistent.

Thank you so much, by the way! Now I know my strong point, hahahah.

@Chrysothemis
I love them both! They both have really nice hair, hahaha.
I love Ariel's braided bangs.

@mementomori
I'm definitely guilty of the girly dude thing, ahahahah, also, I adore his design so much! It's very recognizable in my opinion.
Even though he doesn't comb his hair, it still looks better than mine, hahahah.

---
Also I pretty much only said two sentences for everyone except Mikael, I am so sorry, this made me realize how bad at talking I am, aaahh-

OMG! That's so beautiful! Thank you! That's okay if you didn't draw they whole thing. It's difficult even for me.

You're welcome! I probably could've finished it faster if I just copy-pasted the pearls but I decided to go the hard way and draw them all individually, good job, me. >_>

Sorry I haven't been around as much; I've been pretty busy, and you might not see me at all tomorrow.


@mementomori

Aha, yeah, a lot of people do have feminine dudes and handsome dudes. Kinda the same way a lot of people have cute girls and tomboyish girls, I guess!

You've really got me thinking about it, since I have a ton of male characters, but even though I have some dudes who might be feminine in some ways, they tend to be more bishounen-type than traps. (I don't think I have traps at all.)

I have a handful of cutesy boyish types, more rascally or outgoing boyish types, and a couple dudes who are built (but they do not translate well to my simplified noodly-chibi art). I have lots of average-looking guys too. *strokes chin* The latter rarely get art, but they do get more fleshed out stories since I tend to invest in writing for them.

Definitely no giant Russians on my end, though I have one regular sized one who's a werewolf. He's an old OC though, so everything about him is getting revamped (as is the way of many of my old OCs).


@Death Candy

Ooh, I see. Yeah, my aunts used to do that for my grandma, sans shower.

Oh, Batman must have an active imagination. Does she like pretending with toys?


@StardustSea

Ahhh, your art is so cute! I really like how you drew DC's character, especially her hair and face! She looks naked under that cloak though, LOL. The colors look so nice in your art; I think it's largely due to the fact that the line art isn't all black.

Yes, I noticed Gunner's textured hair right away and it was part of why I really admired your art off the bat! *high-fives* We are "textured-hair brethren". XD

I really like how you did the colors for Gunner, and of course his hair and eyebrows. You make me want to draw, but good grief, I have no time!


All this talk has got me thinking about my tendencies in terms of my OCs' appearances and hair styles.

I think my ratio in terms of race is 2/3 or 4/6 ratio of Caucasian-based to POC characters (with many, but not all races being fictional.)

With the exception of Gavril and his undercut, it's usually my art characters who have fun, colorful, and flashy hairstyles, but the majority of my written characters tend to have plainer hair colors and hairstyles. (Gavril is an exception since he was created for an art RP community, so he has the best of both worlds.)

My mentality when I create RP characters tends to be different from art ones, which reflect their appearances. There are always exceptions, but I enjoy writing for characters who might be average at a glance; who despite their individual interests, talents, and personalities, are essentially the type who'd be pegged as side characters to a story, rather than a protagonist.

They come from a mentality of, "if a side character's story was fleshed out, what would it look like?" while keeping in mind that every character is ultimately the protagonist of their own story. Many don't stand out in appearance or personality or attributes in their world; in their social group, their friends don't necessarily revolve around them as the glue or the apparent leader. I really enjoy writing for these characters, as I find their stories to be intriguing and relatable to me, aha.

For art characters, I just want to play with colors and come up with fun outfits and designs.

My art and writing are starting to merge as my talent grows in art though; some interesting-looking RP characters have definitely started to appear.

^ That's all so interesting!

I honestly don't have a ton of PoC, and it bothers me a lot. It's mostly because everyone is...Eastern European/Russian. So you get a bunch of people from the Central Asian former USSR states and some Turkish folk, but that's...pretty much it. Other than that, there's one Central African lady and her brother (from Zambia or thereabouts), a Latina, a couple of North Africans and...that's it. Oh, and a couple indigenous folks from North America. But...yeah. It's sad.

My cast also skews heavily male. Because...reasons. One of the main 4 OCs is female, at least.

In terms of appearance, there are only...I dunno maybe two or three conventionally pretty/handsome ones. The rest are...weird. Either you get giant hulking strongmen types (so not sculpted/buff, just...large), or very bony and gangly and awkward, or...well, generic. A lot of them are missing fingers and eyes and ears and have bad scarring. Two of the main OCs have the running-joke giant nose that runs in the family. The female OC (who is cursed with The Nose) has hair she barely bothers to wash (well, she washes it, but shampoo is too much effort) that she hacks off with whatever sharp thing she can find when it gets in the way and wears nothing but holey jeans/tactical pants and heavy-metal t-shirts that have started to flake and brown-out with age. So...not feminine. At all.

And the one girly dude is mostly just girly because he grew up in Louis XIV France and every aristocrat back then was super fab. Never decided to change. Likes gaudy patters and all sorts of embellishments. Used to be a status symbol to have all that, now it just sort of makes it look like he raids 13-year-old-girls' closets for clothes. He does know how to dress himself in modern fashionable men's clothes but it's all so boring and drab and he only does it when he needs to make an impression.

And a lot of my characters just wear uniforms 24/7. Lots of haircuts done by that old infantryman in the basement who's deaf and has one hand so they decided his "retirement job" is that he can cut hair, because why not? You don't need to look pretty. You just need to not have hair in your eyes. People generally don't go for the offered "hot shave" afterwards, lol.

Though, you do get variation in uniform. Like, the giant Russian half-angel's uniform is basically 60% (bullet and knife) holes but he doesn't particularly care because he's impervious to cold. (And if it's hot he's dying so less clothes are better.) Then on the opposite end of the spectrum you have his bff who changes uniform twice a day because everything has to be perfect and it's tough to keep a uniform perfect when your main job is stabbing people. It's more about personality than what people actually wear, I guess.

/ procrastination rant lol

I'm sneaking on before I go off for the day. XD


@Meme:

Ah, well, I think as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us, our shaping of our own fictional world will expand. Most people start off with characters they can immediately relate to (in appearance, gender, sexuality, race, etc.) or characters with traits or appearances that they desire or admire.

That's one reason why your Russian guy stands out. Not a lot of girls write for the more rugged male characters, and girls seem to be what dominates the RPing/writing community from what I've seen.

I need to work on writing better side characters outside of heavy tropes and stereotypes. I'd like to practice on having older characters (like 50s and older) and those with different lifestyles and perspectives that are still valid and engaging.

Most of my PoC is Asian, with many being Eastern-Asian, though I have a few Middle-Eastern-influenced characters.

*high-fives* Aha, I need to work on writing for women, but most of my characters are dudes too! I just enjoy writing for them more? Also, they're easier for me to draw.

Sounds like your characters come from the same types of stories. Genre and tone do play important roles in shaping characters, as well as their world/environment (and of course a ton of other factors).

Your comment about stabbing people reminds me of Mordecai from Lackadaisy (webcomic) who stripped down to his underwear to kill someone because it would've stained his clothes if he didn't. XD

StardustSea wrote:You're welcome! I probably could've finished it faster if I just copy-pasted the pearls but I decided to go the hard way and draw them all individually, good job, me. >_>

Nice. I copied pasted them. lol I was lazy.

@MK: Yes Batman pretends with lots of things. She even talks tummy and cat.