Character picture - At what point do you find one?

[Ellri]

Ok, we're bored, so we thought to start a bit of a discussion...

Almost everyone uses images of some sort (drawn, photographed, whatever) for their characters. Sometimes alone, sometimes with text on the side. Our question, and topic for debate is simple:

At what point in the process of making your CS do you acquire such?

[Wade Wilson]

@Ellri That's a tough one. I typically choose my picture at the start of creating a character, as then you can somehow tell what kind of personalities you can have with them and a lot of possibilities open up. It also helps as inspiration if you've run out of ideas. You can always skip past the image part and decribe your character, as then you have unlimitied possibilities and you can shape them however you want.

[ArenaSnow]

Half a year after the CS is made. If lucky.

Not really kidding, as I have a bit of a problem when making characters.

When I make them, I treat them as unique individuals; and I make them so that they have elements of their character that can't really be duplicated. Each time I make a character I basically "generate" someone (something?) new. It's not always visible in the CS as I keep most of that stuff in my mind and use it when in actual RP.

The result of that thinking is that while I can shape words to fit my purpose (usually, I do sometimes end up lacking the right word) I can't draw worth a damn and images always have something off that doesn't connect with my mental image. And if something is off, I ditch the whole thing. Best I can do is find abstracts of my thoughts, and sometimes I can't find that much.

So ultimately, I end up going with a text description (although I'm not that great at those either, they at least somewhat reflect my mental image) and hope I someday find the right image for the character. Or get to be a lucky bastard and find someone who makes it to the particular theme of the character. Which has problems in and of itself (as it's not me making it) but it's a step up from an image designed with something else in mind entirely.

[AlteredTundra]

Ok, we're bored, so we thought to start a bit of a discussion...

Almost everyone uses images of some sort (drawn, photographed, whatever) for their characters. Sometimes alone, sometimes with text on the side. Our question, and topic for debate is simple:

At what point in the process of making your CS do you acquire such?

@Ellri

Always at the beginning.

When I'm doing a character — be it original, for a fandom RP, or my own personal use — I find getting a picture after I get the concept down, in more ways than one, helps me establish what kind of character I want to make. More often than not, the kind of picture I get will help me determine if the character I'm making will be a hothead or a reserved tatician. Whether it's for a character that's going to be used in a real life setting(School, workplace, home), I will find a face claim that fits what I have in mind. After that, only then do I finally get to the lesser details such as likes/dislikes, fears, hobbies, odd quirks, and everything that will come naturally by me looking at the picture.

[Dinh AaronMk]

I never do.

I like to stick to a written narrative description. That way readers can hold their own organic interpretation of my own character based on what I have written and there can be a little more individuality.

That said, I can draw myself so if I really want to I can and may draw them. Just not during or for the application process. It may be a year down the road I'll work up the effort to draw a character, provided the RP even lasts that long. That said though, the only characters I have drawn only exist in one RP since that's the RP that's lasted long enough for me to simply bother.

[Vilageidiotx]

Yeh, I've never done this either. Different side of RP culture I suppose.

[Ellri]

We generally work out image first ourselves, but sometimes we need to fix it up afterwards... and of course the image just doesn't pan out. Or the character doesn't quite match our plan. Or something like that. We tend to have more images than we have characters, at least.

Sometimes, an image will just give us a character like that. Other times, the character has to be worked so that it fits an image.

We're not beyond changing a picture so it fits our concept - its not really difficult to tweak hair color, eye color, skin tone, etc.

But sometimes, there just ain't an image that fits a character. That is when those textual descriptions you mentioned higher up here come in handy. It takes skill to do a textual character image that shows fully what a character is like, and even then there's no single answer the way a regular image tends to have.

[FacePunch]

@Ellri Alright, real talk. Does more than one person own this account? What's with this 'we' stuff? If you don't mind me asking.

[Dinh AaronMk]

@FacePunch

Clearly he/she/they/it is the Queen of England.

Explains the royal 'we' and the self-referential plural as opposed to the singular.

[Ellri]

we have Multiple characters, multiple personas we use. Why should only one speak at any given moment, hmm?

They're all constructs based on circumstances. Some are more used than others, some are less complex, others more.

[NuttsnBolts]

First part of my CS creation usually gets me thinking about the type of character that I would like before I proceed any further, much like a theme or skill set that they would be associated (eg, cybornetics, sniper, melee based, etc). Then I'll venture on the vast internet and rummage through the countless images that I can find (while realising Pinterest is becoming a godsend for these situations) to look for a character image that I would believe to fit my desired idea. Usually I'll gather half a dozen images and work out which one represents the character the best, both in looks, and how they would work within the RP.

My reason for using an image is that I find it easier to imagine that pictured person within the world that the GM has created, so when I have the image that I want I tend to design my CS both with my ideas in mind and around that displayed picture.

So in reality what I find tends to influence the type of character I create because I gather the image early on.

[Wade Wilson]

we have Multiple characters, multiple personas we use. Why should only one speak at any given moment, hmm?

@Ellri

Hm. First I thought it was a Gollum-like thing, but after that "hmm" at the end, all I can think of is yoda.

[El Taco Taco]

Almost always the beginning. I usually have a decent sense of one important facial feature, hair colour, body type and will search for that.

If I'm in a fantasy or sci fi game, I'll usually character build as I'm painting, since I rarely play humans in those settings.

[StarWight]

I create mine after I've decided things like Name, age, height, weight, physical description. Then I purposefully try to find an image matching my characters description as closely as possible. If I find an image I like, I will photo-edit it so that I can use it, I used to do that a LOT more than I do now.

[Ellri]

We found out how difficult it can be to find a fitting image again yesterday. When you need a specific gender,age-group, species, alignment and occupation...

[PlatinumSkink]

I start with checking out the world. What kind of character do I want to play? And then I create the rough drafts of the backstory. Yeah, what kind of past has this character had? After that, if the roleplay expects an image, I'll look for images that suits the rough personality and background which suits the character I want to create. This without having done any kind of work in how the individual looks physically, because the image will take care of that. After an image has been found, I let the image influence the fine-tuning of everything else, so people can look at the image and think "Yeah, that fits together". Yupp.

Then again, sometimes I find an absolutely wonderful image and is like "THIS ONE I WANT TO MAKE INTO A CHARACTER" and then it all starts with an image. That's only if I find the image first, though. This second version is especially common when I'm creating NPCs, because then I'm not as picky on what I want the character to be and simply search the net for inspiring images and let these images influence everything. Haha.

[Royzooka]

With me it works in either one of two ways which are the following:

1. I write what they are about before finding a picture yet I do have a certain idea of what they would look like roughly. I tend to write characters in all aspects which do create unusable characters which hardly fit into anything though that happens more in the second way I create characters then my primary way. A picture does paint a thousand words but sometimes fleshing them out before getting a picture helps me more than with one as it limits me to the build they most likely have, the age and so on.

2. I find a picture online randomly and a character starts to come to life in my head where I proceed to write the character out. First in a basic form and then I begin to flesh it out. This is the less used route but when it happens I make sure to get all I can down before the idea leaves my head. Time to time I have been out and about where I see an image via phone or something but can't do anything about it. I have some unique characters I have never used or ever get to use because of this.

Unless I am joining an RP my characters are set in some way or they aren't. I rarely make characters for genre based RP's made by others so I adapt them or if I have to make them. They are usually set in the way I want them which as an example set for a gang based RP, a horror RP, Supernatural and so on.

[R0bE0]

I sometimes don't find a picture. Though when I do, it's almost always near the beginning.

If I'm not using a picture it's because I have a clear idea of the character appearance in my head, and cannot find anyone that would be able to suit the role. So naturally if I have a character concept I try to find a picture as soon as possible before my mind comes up with a mental image, and thus makes it difficult for me to find a suitable picture.

There have also been times that I have created a character concept based on an image given. So in those cases finding/having a picture would be the first step.

[tsukune]

Unless it's required by the GM, normally I won't bother with finding pictures and prefer sticking to text description. I feel that no matter how hard I try, none of the images I can find out there is able to depict the exact appearance of my characters - unless I draw the characters myself.

However, when I have to find one, it really depends on what I have in mind for the character - sometimes I get one before I start working on the CS, sometimes it's during the process of filling up the application, sometimes it's the last step after I pretty much finalized the sheet.

[Kimiyosis]

I literally have hundreds of pictures. The problem I have is finding a picture that I want for my character.

Generally, it's a habit now to create a character using the picture as the foundation and create the name as a template, and wrap the character around that.