I dunno, I don't want my characters to be like me. I want them to be their own persons, strong with their own weaknesses. Their own inspiration, I guess. I love my characters, =D.
I don't really base them off myself much normally, but I'll admit I do add a wee bit of myself to them in some ways, even if it's just one personality trait (such as being a bit slow on the uptake for one or two of them). I find it helps me make them lifelike, and yet they end up taking such a life of their own, it feels like they're doing all the work anyway half the time. :D
I usually have a bit of me in each of my characters. Most of it is just from my knowledge and experiences though. I love making characters that have medical knowledge because I have medical knowledge.
Like Super, there's almost always some aspect of myself in my characters, whether it be some sort of quirk or something similar. However, that's nearly always it. I plan guys, girls, I try for different personality types and motivations, all that. I like love character creation.
I think always in some small aspect. Sometimes I make the character my Id: not neccesarily who I am, but who I want to be. When I come up with a villian I can make them twisted and evil, which isn't everyday me, but is perhaps a magnified version of my dark side. Female characters...I'm not sure. I've come up with quite a few. What does that say? Maybe nothing. I ask myself weird questions all the time, and one of the most common ones is "what if I'd been born a girl?" so maybe female characters is my way of exploring that question. In short, I think I always show a skewwed version of my own image.
I write on what I know. My characters are the exaggeration and embodiment of people who've been influential in my life. With a few fictional elements to add a bit of spice. If I had a character based off of me he would be boring. Probably because I would find the notion of playing as me sorta redundant.
I play male and female alike, none ever share any physical characteristics with me/ aside form maybe hair or eye color on one or two of my characters.