Wow, thanks! ;u; I’m not really sure how to go about answering this, honestly. I’ll try, though.

My characters have come to me in a variety of ways, so I guess I’ll just go through the process of making and coming up with each character?

Jack: He is basically me. Hell, my name is Jack. So yeah, I just projected onto him how I perceive myself, and made him a more interesting character by creating a different past, as well as gave him some different struggles in additions to ones that I have. It’s hard to explain how he came to be, as it just sort of… happened. that seems to be the case with a lot of my characters.

Adelia: I came up with her on an effort, because I was trying to think of characters for season two and was having my brainstorming session. She was the first of the three season two characters I came up with. I wanted to branch out a bit, so I started with the simple prompt of “yandere”. I went from there and decided it would be interesting if she was Lolita and sickeningly sweet on the surface only to be extremely sadistic and twisted within. Her past was a re-imagining of Ciel’s cult-like experience from Black Butler, though I like to think that I changed it enough to be satisfactory. From there, my other ideas for her development have simply come along as I RP with her more. My characters tend to start one way, but snowball into a growth and advancement of their character over time, which in my opinion is how it should be, as real people grow through experience. They don’t remain static.

Bastien: This was the second character I came up with in my season two brainstorming session. I started with the prompt of “magic”. I wanted a magician, because I was thinking about one of my favorite movies, “Now You See Me.” I loved the idea of him performing magic tricks and illusions. I wanted him to be eccentric, and as I mapped out his design I had the idea of him being truly delusional, since I always have to pepper in a tragic backstory for my characters, haha. So that was a thing. I decided to make him a former circus performer after watching the short film The Butterfly Circus. His hyper-altruism was inspired by the ringleader from that movie. From there, I let RP direct his character.

Valon/Avalon: Ey were the first character I came up with in my season three brainstorming session. The theme/prompt I decided to start with was a genderfluid character. I also had the idea that I wanted them to struggle with substance abuse, and rolled with the gimmick that ey carry PEZ dispensers full of various pills. In fact, if I recall, that gimmick came before the idea to make em genderfluid. I then made a quick sketch, and built some details around it, starting with “why does he use drugs?”. I went through and made a reasonable past for him, and voila!

Cassius: He was the second or third character to be produced from my season three brainstorming session. I built him around the idea of a single father, and the rest simply fell into place. This is a trivial fact, but his race changed a lot in each draft. He was originally a pacific islander, then he was Russian/Latvian, and he finally ended up being Colombian, where I then gave him a reasoning behind being called Cassius, since I’d grown attached to the name and didn’t want to change it. “Passion” was a key word when creating him and his personality, and his label ended up being “The Hidden Passion”.

Jasten: This is by far the most interesting method I’ve come up with an OC through. It was completely on accident! Well, the design was, anyways. I made his design when sketching a morph of Jack and Bastien, named Jasten Fifer Shansey. He was originally planned to also be a mesh of the two in personality, and was made just for fun. Not meant to ever be an actual OC. However, I fell in love with the drawing, which was in pencil and lacking color. A week or so later, I was inspired by the novel To Kill a Mockingbird to make a character loosely based off of Boo Radley, the shut-in. Wanting desperately to make such a character, I simply recycled Jasten’s design, dropping off the last name Shansey and simply naming him Jasten Fifer. I decided early on that I wanted him to be albino; deathly pale and lavender-eyed. That way he would visually stand out. The rest just flowed out as I wrote him. Also, for some reason I knew from the start that he needed to have an obsession with skittles.

Ultimately, a lot of my ideas come through brainstorming sessions, where I sit down with my notebook and give myself a prompt. A label or a specific detail that I really want a character around: myself, yandere, magic, drug addict, single father, and shut-in respectively. From there I sketched a design to match the label. I find it easier to write details on a character if I start with their appearance. Then, I give them a name. I put a LOT of thought into names, as nomenclature is a passion of mine. Then, once I have the label, design, and name, I fill in the blanks. I try to add some quirks. Something to make them stand out above others. And the rest just sort of happens.

I hope this was helpful!