Discussion Prompt #8

[meganehaven]

How does your OC's current design compare to when you first made them?
Do they look the same, or perhaps go under a huge redesign? Maybe they have a new scar, different outfit(s), or something else different?

comment below your thoughts! <3

Comments

[asuraid]

actually sylvie began out a lot more twinkie LOL, i think i had a comparison image somewhere but--yeah, twinkie. i beefed them up a LOT when i found major pectoralis on tiktok and just seeing how soft muscled bodies can be and i was like Oh(tm) as something clicked and they slowly beefened up over the years. also much thicker and black eyebrows bc i LOVE the contrast

(also the migration from they/he to they/them to they/she)

[meganehaven]

i havent done redesigns, but i do have OCs whose appearances change in their stories!
...though i do have some old OCs id like to revamp and redesign (:

Technomagic
they all look they same in their "present day" designs, but ive made decisions as to how theyll look as time passes— Solithe will have a prosthetic leg in a few years, after their capture by the Ethyrial Empire. this next one is spoilers but idc on dreamwidth, much later on Hawk grows his hair out a little after having fled the Empire for some time. ties it back in a short ponytail. Ethyron on the other hand, only 6-8 months prior to his death on the battlefield, suffers grievous injuries and is miraculously saved by imperial doctors. im always torn whether Hawk and Penelope fled before or right after his injuries lol, but tldr Ethyron has some technomagic prosthetics after his condition has stabilized.

DND - Nightmare Squad
Velaris is easy to talk about! ive talked about it too many times here before LMAO. his hair changes to stark white, and for awhile he was undead and rotting away (starting with his face, specifically both cheeks). once hes alive again, necrotic scars adorn his face and body, stretching out from his heart. his natural black hair begings to grow back too! meanwhile Einjar's changes are tons and tons of scars from his time in the high elven dungeon. interrogation and whatnot, though at a point it just came down to punishment from deep anger inflicted upon him. hell also have a new outfit once i design it after being saved by Velaris and the party!

lastly, some OCs id like to redesign:

Unnamed Fantasy Universe
Seidop, Frame, Iyvs
(Seidop and Frame are villains trying to corrupt and rewrite the world as they see fit via dark magic and the minor celestial they captured, Iyvs)

Monster Contracts
C, Lawrence, Vance, Moscesu
(made this universe when i was 14, continued being a main interest until i was 16 or 17. tldr humans make contracts with demons to have a desire granted, in exchange they become some kind of monster or other non-human. i need to make the premise more... interesting to me now??)

[meganehaven]

love the design changes u did! suits them a lot more imo :3

also pronoun changes, so real! do their pronouns change during the story, or is it just a revamp entirely? if that makes sense :o

[asuraid]

uhhh it's less of Them changing it and more of Me revamping them. sylvie themselves doesn't care what people use for them so they wouldnt mind he/him, but for ME it was so weird to have he/him used for them so i dropped it very early. over time i realized that she for sylvie felt really, REALLY perfect for them and it got me giggly kicking my feet whenever anyone used it, so in the last... recent last year actually that it got added for them to be they/she

[dray]

Woah, gorgeous art! That looks like it's been a really satisfying change!

[dray]

Character Revamp/AU day sounds like it might be a fun event to plot for people in the future! (The monster contracts one just sounds plain fun, tbf!)

Sounds like your characters have all been put through the blender! Heck of a way to change over time!

[dray]

One of my favourite OC's, Jolene Harris, started out as a randomly generated kid to RP in a small junior high school that was about to undergo a Resident Evil style take-over by horrible experiments! She got turned into a catgirl for a while, then I snagged her and turned her into a regular human (but older, more grown up) for a horror story set in a city that had gone to eldritch apocalypse horror of a different flavour. She grew up a lot but also became a lot more jaded and redneck!

[arimamary]

I think my OCs have largely looked the same. Any minn changes are because they literally grew up haha.

Kiyoshi was always a bishounen but he grew to be a beanpole with twink vibes while Keima was more like an ikemen who grew up to be buff with a nice ass 😂.

Outfit-wise, Kiyoshi's is so varied now. He used to wear the most generic teen boy clothes. After he worked as a model for a couple of years in highschool and thanks to making a friend with an interest in fashion, he started to care more about his outfits. As an adult, he wears mostly pink and white.

To be honest I have never been able to redesign a character once I have the basic specs down. Maybe add particular details like the shape of the eyes or hairstyle but it's never anything too dramatic. No change in color scheme.

That said, I really enjoy seeing designs of characters across their lives. It's really nice to see how they have changed across the years!

WAIT HOW COULD I FORGET! Because I use Keima and Kiyoshi across different itterations, their designs change somewhat. Similar vibes but modified to suit the world they inhabit. For example, in a feudal Japan story, they wear traditional Japanese style clothing, have longer hair, no piercings or body markings.

And like Aid mentioned, one of my OCs had a change in pronouns. Kiyoshi used to go exclusively by he/him and was masculine-aligned but as an adult he goes by he/they and is more gender-neutral/soft-masc. Not sure how it works in Japanese tho haha.

[arimamary]

Ohhh, thanks for sharing Sylvie's early design. There's something about buff characters that go by something other than he/him that just makes me go "gender is a social construct" in a good way.

It reminds me of this character in the Arcana Game that goes by he/him but is never address with masculine words like man/sir/etc.

I love it when authors play with gender presentation of their characters (idk if that's the appropiate phrasing).