by Pash'nar on May 29th, 2012, 3:45 am
I'm pretty confident my own personal biases play a part in the PCs I create, though, of course, not necessarily the NPCs I have created in the past. I tend to think like Min, though—I end up with an image of a character in my mind long before I write down and describe them—but I am a very visual person. Seeing things is important to me, especially when it comes to character development. Perhaps that's also a reason I prefer to draw my characters ... I never can find some equivalent person, famous or otherwise, to represent the people I create in my head because they are unique, separate, from the real world I live in.
Do I focus on making hot people? Uh, no, not really. I think that sort of thing just happens or it doesn't with me—I have characters in the past who were far from dreamy in my imagination, and not just because of scars or disfigurements. There is more to appearance than that, I think. Personality and internal workings also shine a light into appearances, though they are more like icing than the cake. If the cake is tasty, but the icing is bad, I still won't eat it.
That metaphor makes this pregnant lady hungry. Silly me.
Mizahar-specifically speaking, I wanted there to be a contrast between Pash's ethaefal form and his earthbound one. In my mind (and this is perhaps why I struggle to draw Pash's ethaefal form still), his appearance under Leth's sway is by far more attractive than his Svefra form. There is definitely a great divide there, in my mind, in wow-factor. However, I also see the celestial nature of his appearance to have one of two effects: a charming one or a distancing one, depending on the personality of his audience. There will always be those who Pash can charm because of his ethereal nightly form, but there will always be others who relate with the salty, earthbound one closely and without intimidation. I don't necessarily picture him as entirely swoon-worthy as a Svefra regardless of his face, tan, tattoos, or body. He just doesn't always have that winning personality. People who step on your toes and piss you off on purpose aren't always the most attractive people, in the end. However, buried under all the "arrgg!" is someone who is probably handsome when they bother to be nice. Bothering is the hard part, though, as time goes on, maybe not as hard as I thought.
So, I guess I wrote all of this to say that for me, in character creation, personality ends up taking the drivers' seat to appearance, and yet I struggle to separate the two. One compliments the other, form and function are hard to pull apart in a final design.
Ugh. That was long-winded.