Sometimes I like to hear other peoples' thoughts when it comes to creating characters, so I figured I'd randomly share some thoughts of my own today. So if you're the type who tunes into FA exclusively to fap and stuff, carry on, amigo! Nothing to see here. :) Buuuut if you're interested in character design, then stick around! Because if you’re a fellow artist and you’re hanging out on this website, well congratulations! YOU TOO, are a character designer.

Designing a ‘sona can be a harrowing experience. What if you reached inside of yourself to pull out who you really are, and...there’s nothing there? Or you don’t like what you came up with? Having overcame that fear though, I’ve learned that designing characters is an iterative process. Most of Drex's personality traits are an honest commentary on how I think of myself and my place in the world, for better or worse. Drex has a lot of my genuine optimism and desire to try and make the world a better place, and one of those ways is by sharing that optimism in a world that could probably use more of it. He also harbors some of my real feelings of loneliness and isolation, constantly battling the things that make him different. (Not lonely in the sense that I’m lacking people around me who care about me, but that my needs and wants are so different from everyone else it makes me feel like, well, a literal alien.) Drex is, simply put, the most deeply personal character I've ever created. As such, I tend to be a little more protective with him and how he is portrayed because in a way, I feel like Drex has become an extension of me. A vulnerable part of me, perhaps, but a part of me that I felt compelled to share.

One of the most useful things that I’ve heard from one of my character design mentors is that every aspect of your character design should matter, and somehow speak to the characters’ personality. What colors they wear, the stuff they carry around with them, how they do their hair, what food they like, etc...there should at least be a consideration for what these things SAY about the character. In other words, don’t give them a cool necklace just because it looks cool. Give it to them because their parents were jewelers (or whatever) and the necklace reminds them of a promise they made to their mother on their death bed.

I don’t think character design is necessarily all about the character itself either, by the way. I believe that the world your character lives in also matters. That’s why I tend to put more stock in having backgrounds and having a universe that they live in more than a lot of artists. I want to emphasize that these characters *live somewhere.* If you were to have one takeaway one piece of advice, it would be this: people are products of their environments, experiences, and the people around them, and that is where our actual stories stem from. Our physical appearances are, in the grand scheme of things, fairly superficial.

(Oh boy, did I just spoil one of the major themes of Wastelanders?)

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.