How do you create a character image?

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Kaycey

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Personally I use real pictures for my characters, and have perfected my own method of finding said pictures.

I'm just curious how everyone else does it. I mean, the picture has to fit the character you're creating, along with perhaps capturing the general mood of the play..
 
I am fortunately able to draw my characters.
I do however have a long character design process usually starting from basic shapes that fit the general je ne sais quoi for a character. Like for a strong stable character I might start with strong stable shapes (like a square or a triangle on it's wide end) and repeat them through the designs as I progress until I get to a place I like and start a final image or even just a character sketch.

I think it's interesting people might want to find a mood in the images they have to find! I haven't seen a lot of roleplays where I felt the images folks used actually matched the setting or mood of the game. I actually think it would be nice if I saw more appropriately moody images. :D
 
I WISH I could draw all of my characters. O__O But I am a combination of too lazy to draw and self-hating so that never happens.

I mostly use real life pictures of actors, models, and professional photography!

If I am doing an anime-style roleplay I'll use anime pictures or art.

And if I am doing something turbo fantasy or sci-fi and I am having a hard time finding a real lifey picture, I'll search around for art that fits the mood and personality of the character.

When I am SUPER LUCKY I put in a character portrait request with an artsy person! 8D
 
I prefer real photos or as drawings as close to realism as possible. I would draw my own characters, but I'm too slow of an artist and I rather focus on the character sheet and roleplay than rush a character sketch.

Though, I mostly prefer writing out how my characters looks in detail than rely on a photo. I can rarely find photos that match what I imagine my character to look like, especially the rare times I do anime, sci-fi when playing as an alien, or anything that has to do with creatures or beasts.
 
When it comes to medieval fantasy and sci-fi roleplays, I'll go for digital paintings of the non-anime variety.
For modern, post-apocalyptic, and sometimes historical roleplays, I'll use real-life photos. Generally, I'll go looking for a picture with only a couple different vague ideas of what characters I might want to play. I'll find a dozen or so pictures, compare similar ones, and pick the one that speaks the most to me. At that point, I'll create the character with the picture as inspiration, instead of the other way around.

That being said, I've recently started drawing my characters. Not a lot of success yet, but better to work on it now than be stuck forever.
 
I can draw my own character but in the end my lack of confidence stands in my way and so I always ended up with anime style work or preferably semi realism ones.
 
I generally google image for something that matches the character.
May it be anime or RL will depend on the trend the other CS's already have.

I really do wish I could draw or use a program to generate my own characters.
But I lack the artistic skill, and any program I find has been very limited.
So I have to settle for the picture and then either notes or additional pictures detailing differences.
For example adding an extra picture for what hat they may have.
 
I almost always use real life images for a character. If something needs to be modified or made to fit a roleply's theme, I just use a photo editing site/app. Pixlr and Fotor are my personal favorites.

As for how I find the images themselves...Modeling sites, google, sometimes Tumblr, and a couple years' worth of image collecting. I have more than nine thousand images on my flash drive, and most of those are art, references/maps/graphics for roleplay purposes, or people I or a friend might want to use as a face claim at some point. What can I say? I have too much free time.
 
Being still out of practice for drawing and lacking a lot of confidence to post any pictures I make I tend to either scour google images for a picture that matches very closely to what I have in my head or scour for doll makers until I find one that has the right kind of options then make my character there to put it somewhere in the ball park though obviously it makes different body types harder to convey so I still try to put in some kind of description or mention if my character has a body type outside the norm of the fandom I'm making them for.
 
I also have a heavy heavy preference for real-world people to use as faceclaims for characters.

I would draw them myself if I had the artistic talent and patience. I can always envision what the characters look like but my ability to draw is not much better than a five-year-old. Actually, I'd say that five-year-olds probably draw better than I do.

Most of the time I use Google, and that often gets me a result that I like. Every once in a while I'll flick over to Pinterest or Model Mayhem.
 
Yeah way to lazy to do photomanips most of the time but every once in awhile I'll dust off photoshop and make a nice charrie lookin' boss.

Here's my favorite of my photomanips - A Pixie character named Chonsie. I made her sister too but I sadly never got around to saving her pictures.


DaydreamerRae's DeviantArt Gallery


lol but to answer the actual question - mostly i Pinterest cool pics that I think fit my character.
 

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No rule, realy... I fish for pics on DevArt, on varius pic sites, sometimes even just google for specific types of pics, for instanse I type in "cowboy pictures" or "alien pictures" or "vampire pictures", or any type I need for the char I'm making (youd be amazed vhat nice pics can pop up sometimes), one thing I dont like to do, is use real ppl for character pics. Just not my thing, feels wrong.

Never had any artistic talent, so I dont draw pics.