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27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
Looking at my character designs for non-humans, I seem to really like the cool colors on the spectrum-- Ki'Rana's hair has green streaks; Maiza's skin is blue; Thiare has violet skin and blue hair; Lyric's skin is pale green. I need to create a character with red or orange skin somewhere in here. *s*
Though I have recently realized that I fell into the whole Least Common Skin Tone trope (obligatory warning for TV Tropes and getting trapped for days in it, etc.). Will be rectifying that.
It depends on the story, as to whether appearances play a big role. In my book Memories of Her Singing, Qinvara is a dimension-traveler with fully black eyes; her eyes are brought up more than once because they're an extreme oddity in most any world she goes to and she has to take measures to hide them. I'll toss in short descriptors sometimes-- mostly hair and eye color, height-- but I don't usually go for the paragraph-long elaboration on exactly what someone looks like and what they're wearing.
How I design them: I'll generally get a feel for a character's 'voice' first and their appearance follows after that. And some of it is "this would look really cool when I ask Mandy to draw it". :-)
Looking at my character designs for non-humans, I seem to really like the cool colors on the spectrum-- Ki'Rana's hair has green streaks; Maiza's skin is blue; Thiare has violet skin and blue hair; Lyric's skin is pale green. I need to create a character with red or orange skin somewhere in here. *s*
Though I have recently realized that I fell into the whole Least Common Skin Tone trope (obligatory warning for TV Tropes and getting trapped for days in it, etc.). Will be rectifying that.
It depends on the story, as to whether appearances play a big role. In my book Memories of Her Singing, Qinvara is a dimension-traveler with fully black eyes; her eyes are brought up more than once because they're an extreme oddity in most any world she goes to and she has to take measures to hide them. I'll toss in short descriptors sometimes-- mostly hair and eye color, height-- but I don't usually go for the paragraph-long elaboration on exactly what someone looks like and what they're wearing.
How I design them: I'll generally get a feel for a character's 'voice' first and their appearance follows after that. And some of it is "this would look really cool when I ask Mandy to draw it". :-)
