SO BASICALLY I HAVE MERCH NOW 😀 It’s just a couple of tees over on my streamlabs merch store, but I honestly feel so elated and happy to have been able to create a tshirt design I love ðŸ˜
I’ve already purchased one, and so has thwaz and ferm ;w; My heart is gonna explode I swear. ðŸ˜
I make $4 on every women’s tee design, and $6 for the men’s shirts! The rest is cost to streamlabs for printing, materials, storage, and back-end web hosting costs. (which is really really a good price to be fair)
Thanks for listening to my ‘ad’ 🤠I CAN’T WAIT FOR MY SHIRT TO GET HERE!
Below I will outline a few things to keep in mind when creating an original character for the first time. These are all my opinion and none of these things are ‘rules’, just things to keep in mind while creating characters you want to be aesthetically pleasing.
Simplicity
on simplicity
An over-complicated design can lead to an OC that is difficult to draw and write and ends up not getting used, or rejected for commissions / art trades. Keeping things simple has several benefits with very little drawbacks. For example, if your character has an eye-patch, you will need to remember that daily things like driving, or depth perception, will be difficult for them with the eye-patch on. They will bump into things, or accidentally bump/hit people on their blind side. If you have to keep track of several things like this, (such as cat ears + extra hearing, night vision, special powers, etc) you are more likely to forget details when drawing or writing about them later. This leads into my second point, keeping practicality in mind.
Practicality
on practicality
Characters with a lot of piercings + metal tend to not fare well in cold environments. On the same token, very long hair is also cumbersome for movement and getting wet. Consider your character’s daily routine and ask yourself if that character trait ‘fits’ with that person’s lifestyle. Sporty characters often wear their hair up if it’s long, or keep it short on purpose and for easy maintenance. The same goes with coloured hair, if your character doesn’t live in a fantasy environment with everyone having strange natural hair colours, it’s worth considering the cost of maintaining hair streaks and dyed hair.
It might be the case that you love to see characters with eyepatches, tattoos, piercings, funky hair, bandanas, etc. It’s totally fine to love and to use these traits, but it doesn’t work for every OC. If you tried to wear a bandana every day, you might find it hot and uncomfortable. Characters may wear bandanas regardless of the discomfort for several reasons, like working in a dusty/dirty environment, or they live in an area where anonymity and privacy is a concern for them. But generally, people don’t wear bandanas for just ‘looking cool’. (it’s a fine and valid reason if you want it to be, but consider the character’s personality as well.)
Symmetry
on symmetry
As a part of keeping things simple, try to keep things symmetrical as well. This is less about a character’s hairstyle and more about clothing choices and other details. (I’m guilty of having done this myself.) In general, people’s socks are the same colour, any arm bands / wrist bands are usually the same style and pattern, it can bring a sense of completeness to a character and keeps images from appearing too ‘busy’. It also is easy to draw your character from different angles without struggling to remember which side each detail is on. Just like anything, a LITTLE asymmetry goes a LONG WAY.
Uniqueness
A unique hairstyle is a great way to have your character stand out without having too many details. Above I’ve shown a few different examples of bangs / fringe / back as well as eyebrow thickness and shape. There are several ways you can mix and match different combinations of these 3 to create your own original and unique hairstyle and have your OC stand out without a lot of unnecessary details.
Other things to consider when creating your OC include:
age
height
weight
education level
universe
interests / hobbies
style
Final Thoughts
If you are not an artist, or have trouble putting your thoughts into words, I recommend using one of several online character creators to help bring your character visually to life. You can also consider making a collage of different things you’d like to see on your oc and consider asking an artist or a friend for advice.
This is not a comprehensive list and I expect it to change over time, but experiment and find things you like! If there’s something you absolutely love in an OC, ‘steal’ it for yourself and make something unique out of it! The best OCs are the ones that you can tell the creator loves immensely.
YES it’s finally all uploaded! What a relief, ahaha
god if it didn’t take forever to do, but it looks awesome all sorted and tidy. there might be a few things left out, (like furry art or personal gifts, but this is very easily 95% of everything I’ve drawn) and I’m glad I have my own little domain name and everything too. Special thanks to grotlover99 for the help (he did all the hard stuff to make the site exist)
I think it’s about finished now! I might try to sneak in some more retrowave elements and make the 18+ warning page a bit more creative, with splash of pixel here and there, but for now I’m really super happy with it!
tomorrow’s schedule: years 2015-2019!
the site should have everything I’d like up by the end of this week.
just testing out the post settings! by default, the site’s text is white, which makes things a little hard because the post background is white also. So I need to temp-change it in order to write or I need to hope I don’t make any typos. been having a lot of fun, and grotlover2 is helpin me lots, so it’s a journey and a headache (for him) :>
that’s all. just wanted to test this feature out! I am thinking about making the site have a black sidebar and white content, but it’s gonna take some testing to see if it looks any good. mobile is also important to look good since I am a narcissist apparently and wanna check it on my phone all the time cause I’m proud of the site!
hibiki from dumbell anime
I also reaaaaaalllyyyy dislike how the wordpress post font is serif and I CAN’T CHANGE IT IDK HOW AAAA
