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Forgotten Characters
4 years ago
There's a certain thrill about creating a new character. Coming up with the right visual elements to complete the design, imagining what role that character will play in your world, and plotting out storylines and interactions with other characters. Sometimes, though, it doesn't work out. Some characters are duds; others just fall through the cracks for one reason or another. Whenever I think about characters that have slipped into obscurity, Dival always comes to mind.
Do you remember Dival? Of course you don't. She was dead on arrival. I posted her shortly after I opened this account, then proceeded to do nothing with her. My design goal for Dival was to see how many items of clothing I could cram onto one character. Apparently, that's not a good foundation for me to build a character around, but I didn't know that then. I cast Dival as a villain in the webcomic I was planning, which was the original purpose of this account. I even put her in my avatars on both FA and deviantART, because I clearly thought she was going to be a major character in my stories. But when I abandoned the webcomic after only three pages, Dival lost any purpose she had, and I haven't posted so much as a sketch of her since. I guess I just never really liked her.
Another character who was similarly affected by the demise of my short-lived webcomic is Tommy's sister Amanda (Mandy) Gecko. I could no longer find a place for her in my world, and she all but disappeared. Unlike Dival, Amanda did have a visual design that I liked, but I've drawn so many gothy characters since then that she's gotten lost in the crowd. That being said, it is still canon that Tommy has a sister. But if she's ever seen again, she may look very different, and might even have a new name.
There are other reasons for some of my characters fading from prominence. Let's take Yofi, for example. I created her as my token chubby girl. Though I planned to use her in the webcomic, I mainly ended up using her in a series of pics in which some sort of mishap befalls her. The intention was usually just to make her lose a shoe, but I made her look so sad in these pics that people started saying that they felt sorry for her, which made me feel bad for putting Yofi through all this misfortune. Yofi had become a Woobie, to use the TV Tropes term. ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki......Main/TheWoobie ) After that, I didn't know what to do with her anymore. Also, by that time, I had established Judy Hippo and her daughter Bree as my new token chubby girls. They were better at that role, and on top of that, Bree was better at being a goth than Amanda was. Making it even harder to find a use for Yofi is the fact that she's an elementary school teacher, and most of my stories now revolve around kinky office shenanigans. There just isn't much overlap between those two worlds.
Why am I bringing up this topic? Because I want to talk about how exciting it is to revive a forgotten character with a great redesign or repurposing. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to pull it off recently, but I have done it in the past. Austra was salvaged from a video game I planned out when I was a kid, then shelved because I had no way of making the game, and it wasn't one of my better game ideas anyway. Now Austra is one of my best--and sexiest--characters. Rugor was originally a male character in an idea I had for a Mortal Kombat-like game. He was the big, brutish, all muscle, no brain, "ME SMASH!" type of character. Later I realized that I find that archetype boring, so if I had ever made that game, I likely would have dropped him from the roster. A few years down the road, I had the idea for a story involving a large, muscular female character who is mistaken for a male, and I decided to pull Rugor out of storage and gender-swap him to take that role. I quickly lost interest in that story, but I discovered that I liked Rugor as a female. It was around then that I began to flesh out her Ogmari race, developing them as fierce fighters and capable mercenaries. I also came up with the six fingers and toes thing. I like how that makes her unique among my characters. Austra and Ru are my two greatest redesign success stories.
Sometimes the creation of a new character can open the door for forgotten characters to get a second chance. I feel like this could happen with Lindsey. Since she runs her own company, she's going to need a lot of support staff, as well as a few "freelancers" to assist her with certain less-than-ethical operations, given the business culture at LLT. I could draw from my collection of existing but unused characters to fill these roles. It'll still take some re-imagining or redesigning to make it work, but it's fun to do.
Is it possible that even Dival can be fixed with the right redesign? I believe so. I mean, in some ways, I think Lindsey already *is* a better version of Dival. Nevertheless, making the original Dival not suck would be a fascinating challenge. If you've managed to read this far, thank you! I do love to discuss my character and world development processes at length, and I'm always trying to get better at those things.
This is the official list of art I need to do for various persons, whether via trade or commission. This does not reflect the order in which I will be working on these projects.
Commissions are currently closed.
SabreXT - Two-character pic, one character slot TBD, Blarga comic.
Xenothal - Office burglar comic, pages 3-8.
Furry_Mike - Sadie vs. the shoe thief, part 9.
WolfenXX - Bobbi stands tall, part 1.
SaltirePhoenix - Tammy and Theo.
Do you remember Dival? Of course you don't. She was dead on arrival. I posted her shortly after I opened this account, then proceeded to do nothing with her. My design goal for Dival was to see how many items of clothing I could cram onto one character. Apparently, that's not a good foundation for me to build a character around, but I didn't know that then. I cast Dival as a villain in the webcomic I was planning, which was the original purpose of this account. I even put her in my avatars on both FA and deviantART, because I clearly thought she was going to be a major character in my stories. But when I abandoned the webcomic after only three pages, Dival lost any purpose she had, and I haven't posted so much as a sketch of her since. I guess I just never really liked her.
Another character who was similarly affected by the demise of my short-lived webcomic is Tommy's sister Amanda (Mandy) Gecko. I could no longer find a place for her in my world, and she all but disappeared. Unlike Dival, Amanda did have a visual design that I liked, but I've drawn so many gothy characters since then that she's gotten lost in the crowd. That being said, it is still canon that Tommy has a sister. But if she's ever seen again, she may look very different, and might even have a new name.
There are other reasons for some of my characters fading from prominence. Let's take Yofi, for example. I created her as my token chubby girl. Though I planned to use her in the webcomic, I mainly ended up using her in a series of pics in which some sort of mishap befalls her. The intention was usually just to make her lose a shoe, but I made her look so sad in these pics that people started saying that they felt sorry for her, which made me feel bad for putting Yofi through all this misfortune. Yofi had become a Woobie, to use the TV Tropes term. ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki......Main/TheWoobie ) After that, I didn't know what to do with her anymore. Also, by that time, I had established Judy Hippo and her daughter Bree as my new token chubby girls. They were better at that role, and on top of that, Bree was better at being a goth than Amanda was. Making it even harder to find a use for Yofi is the fact that she's an elementary school teacher, and most of my stories now revolve around kinky office shenanigans. There just isn't much overlap between those two worlds.
Why am I bringing up this topic? Because I want to talk about how exciting it is to revive a forgotten character with a great redesign or repurposing. Unfortunately, I haven't managed to pull it off recently, but I have done it in the past. Austra was salvaged from a video game I planned out when I was a kid, then shelved because I had no way of making the game, and it wasn't one of my better game ideas anyway. Now Austra is one of my best--and sexiest--characters. Rugor was originally a male character in an idea I had for a Mortal Kombat-like game. He was the big, brutish, all muscle, no brain, "ME SMASH!" type of character. Later I realized that I find that archetype boring, so if I had ever made that game, I likely would have dropped him from the roster. A few years down the road, I had the idea for a story involving a large, muscular female character who is mistaken for a male, and I decided to pull Rugor out of storage and gender-swap him to take that role. I quickly lost interest in that story, but I discovered that I liked Rugor as a female. It was around then that I began to flesh out her Ogmari race, developing them as fierce fighters and capable mercenaries. I also came up with the six fingers and toes thing. I like how that makes her unique among my characters. Austra and Ru are my two greatest redesign success stories.
Sometimes the creation of a new character can open the door for forgotten characters to get a second chance. I feel like this could happen with Lindsey. Since she runs her own company, she's going to need a lot of support staff, as well as a few "freelancers" to assist her with certain less-than-ethical operations, given the business culture at LLT. I could draw from my collection of existing but unused characters to fill these roles. It'll still take some re-imagining or redesigning to make it work, but it's fun to do.
Is it possible that even Dival can be fixed with the right redesign? I believe so. I mean, in some ways, I think Lindsey already *is* a better version of Dival. Nevertheless, making the original Dival not suck would be a fascinating challenge. If you've managed to read this far, thank you! I do love to discuss my character and world development processes at length, and I'm always trying to get better at those things.
This is the official list of art I need to do for various persons, whether via trade or commission. This does not reflect the order in which I will be working on these projects.
Commissions are currently closed.
SabreXT - Two-character pic, one character slot TBD, Blarga comic.
Xenothal - Office burglar comic, pages 3-8.
Furry_Mike - Sadie vs. the shoe thief, part 9.
WolfenXX - Bobbi stands tall, part 1.
SaltirePhoenix - Tammy and Theo.
Seeing these characters that were put on the shelf only to resurface is fun
You definitely have so many good characters so seeing the ones that are forgotten is a treat.