Posted in Tumblr on August 26, 2017.
There are two ways to go about this depending upon your work. I think it’s important to know how other writers craft their characters before you fully delve into your own. It’s why your English teachers make you write essays about a character’s motivations, the metaphorical device, and how their situation relates to the larger plot at hand.
My approach to making my comics shouldn’t be taken as advice since I don’t want to limit what you want to do. After all, if everyone did what I do, we may never get a lot of creative stories and everything would read the same.
I’ll be using my own comics as base references.
Pre-established fan-fic
When writing the Overwatch fancomic TraceCast, I had to take apart who Lena “Tracer” Oxton is as both a character and how to give that sense of compatibility to the audience without sacrificing or changing too much of her character.
It’s necessary to research into a character and analyze who they are as a person in terms of: Personality, actions to specific moments, and what makes them likable to you.
Looking at past videos, she is generally defined as an almost cocky and overly-positive hero who fights for the betterment of justice. At times, she’s emotional and tries to fight for what’s right.
Due to the nature of TraceCast’s prequel setting, I slightly tuned her character to be more kiddish in some sense while the destruction of the Overwatch base may have certainly made her more mature to the world and her immediate situations.
I don’t suggest alienating your audience by doing major additions to the character such as giving her a dead parent origin story, but rather you need to say to yourself, “Is this what Blizzard would ever put in their official works? Does this make sense in the grander schemes? How would this background best relate to the character? What drives this character to go from this thing to what Blizzard officially put down for her?”
You don’t need to go 1:1 for the character, but usually limiting your creativity also expands it in an effort to explore other options that best fit them. This is how I managed to give the Team Fortress 2 Pyro a teddy bear because it was kiddish and imaginatory for the character to pursue. While it doesn’t fit the character too much, it was close enough.
Creating your own (OC don’t steal)
Making up your own original character doesn’t just come from nothing. There are a lot of inspirations you may derive your character from, such as someone you know or yourself. Other background details also need to support their motivational drive into what their initial goal that you want the audience to connect with or immerse them into that character’s shoes.
In Servers (seen above), Katie Izaki is a Afro-Japanese indie musician who is unsure about herself and her career after flubbing up with both her friend and her ex-fiance.
Originally, she was based off of a girl I knew since middle school. As Servers continued development, Katie’s character gradually changed from being fully Japanese and a pop star who has feelings for Bravo 2, to someone who still reciprocate feelings for her ex-fiance. After the slight reboot, I changed her race to Afro-Japanese (to better Americanized her) and added in the unsure career backstory as it reflects my own opinion on making comics today.
With that example, it’s best to know who you want your character to be and how they would fit in the world. Katie’s world represent the newbie delving into video games and she would later reveal further background history with Bravo 2 and her ex-fiance.
Her background history with Bravo 2 is fully reflective on interactions I had with the girl I knew since middle school. This is not only for me to fully move on from a mistake I cannot truly fix with her, but to also tell a dramatic story that helps to bring to light on human interactions in the world.
You don’t need to write stories based on people you may know, but you can also based them off of character archetypes or try to find inspiration from other stories. Using Tracer, you can take some of the personality you like about her and implement it into your own character.
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