Your Character; a projection, a fantasy or something random?

[jose123911]

Hey guys! So I've always been curious on what goes on the thought processes of when people create their characters. I'm more so leaning towards the visual aspect of this discussion.

When you make your character; do you base it off your appearance IRL, a fantasy, or just something random you want to create.

I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts

[Shamo_Lomenzo]

I just try to make something that appeals to me, whose characteristics aren't too unrealistic. For example no bright green hair and dark red eyes. I don't like picking what I feel like are "special snowflake" options such as scars or heterochromatic eyes. I guess someone who can blend in to the crowd but still may catch your eye in the right light.

... I THINK MY CHARACTER IS PERF OKAY AND I'M NEVER CHANGING HIM

[ZephyrMenodora]

My character is a combination of my two kittens, Zephyr and Selene. Zephyr got FIP and died at 5 months old and I was devastated, so I rushed and adopted his sister who no one had adopted yet. Selene is gray and zephyr was white, so I stayed in that theme. This character is a tribute to him as I had no idea I could fall so much in love with a pet in such a small amount of time.

In most MMOs I play a romanticized version of myself, unless I make a female character in an attempt to get free items. Lol.

[AskaRay]

I definitely find my character attractive. And I only started playing because catboys were an option (since they weren't in FFXI I didn't play it).
Also everyone seemed to have crazy whitewashed kitties and it's like? the dark tones are so nice guys, cmon.

Yeah....that's about it

[Uhm]

A fanasy image of my real life looks? Yes I wish I was a 2m something guy with horns instead of ears... or a cat boy.
No actually that's not it, I have an over all idea of what I want to make, I see the character as it's own "being" without any real connection to me as a person. That's also why I would never change my characers looks in a major way and rather make multiple characters (only change I would make is when they decide to make faces and horns seperate).
I do make them in a way that I think is attractive.

[Ashkendor]

I just try to make something that appeals to me, whose characteristics aren't too unrealistic. For example no bright green hair and dark red eyes. I don't like picking what I feel like are "special snowflake" options such as scars or heterochromatic eyes. I guess someone who can blend in to the crowd but still may catch your eye in the right light.

... I THINK MY CHARACTER IS PERF OKAY AND I'M NEVER CHANGING HIM

I'm kind of in this camp. I never liked how heterochromia looked on my character, even as a Miqo'te. My character has always had pale green eyes because they were eerily catlike and sort of glowed in low light. I went through quite a few hair colors before I eventually settled on a reddish brown with orange-ish highlights, which I stuck with through a gender change and a race change. Now my character's hair is bright red and he still has green eyes (the limbal rings really make them glowy, too!). It's just enough "special snowflake" for me without being too out there. Compared to some characters I've seen he's fairly plain, but I like how he looks. I've actually tried several times to give him a new haircut or hair color and I just never like how it comes out.

As a Miqo'te, I went for a kind of feral look even as a female; I wasn't interested in being cute, though she still managed to be that anyway because catgirls just are. Now as an Au Ra, I purposely chose sharp features and an aquiline nose (seriously, if you see it in profile his nose is freaking huge), along with doing my best to not make him appear permanently annoyed. He also has the gruffest voice possible, to create as much contrast as I could between him and the female Miqo'te he used to be. :3

I guess it's pretty much random. When I saw Au Ra, I knew I had to change to one. I tinkered with the benchmark character creator for days trying to make something I liked and still ended up using something different from what I'd originally planned to use. xD

[Khalithar]

My character has an identical appearance to my Elvaan from FFXI (or as close as I could possibly get), I chose that design in FFXI because it was the only Elvaan that looked good and I chose Elvaan because after doing some research about the game, the kingdom of San D'oria and it's inhabitants appealed to me the most. So I chose the character for lore/story reasons and the appearance because it was the only one that looked good.

[KaijinRhada]

My thought process usually goes with making a character appealing looking, but more rugged or with atypically attractive looks. I draw, so I love sculpting characters, but I like giving them interesting features. I also tend to a colour scheme of purple, blue, and green (based off of a pair RP characters from WoW). The heterochromia came about from the fact I couldn't pick which colour looked better, so I did both and it kind of stayed that way.

To explain it how it works for me, when my characters was a Miqo'te, I went with face 2 (the growly face) for the strong features, and a long and slightly blunt nose to add more feline features to him. I also use make-up as a way to give depth to my character's face, giving his lips colour and giving him eye shadow to create an illusion of deep set eyes. He's been called scary looking, but I love face 2.

When I switched to Au Ra, my colour scheme seemed to work best with face 1, and as much as I like face 2 and the horns I couldn't get it to work. Face 1 isn't super strong, so I stuck with the deep-set eyes from my Miqo'te and gave him the strongest nose possible (every other Au Ra with this face has soft noses, unsurprisingly). I also widened his jawline so that he didn't have such a narrow face. However, I had to give him a limbal ring for the blue eye to make it pop out over the grey sclera. He's more typically handsome, but still works.

Funny enough, the hair colour is similar to what I have: violet with streaks of deep blue and dark green. Accordingly, I switch out the highlights between blue and green, with frequent change in styles.

[ShaneDawn]

I just like how my Au Ri gal looks. I doubt there are greater philosophic or psychological themes behind my train of thought on this one.

[SpookyGhost]

He's a small version of me.

He even has my name.

I am not a very creative person.