[Talk] Faceclaims

Do you use faceclaims for your characters? If yes, what kind and where do you get them from? Or do you prefer to work purely from a written description?

I have used.... one single faceclaim for a character ever and that's because you made me ahaha. Luckily my character looked similar enough to the SM female Veteran model already! Maybe I chose to use her because of that restriction. Don't remember! But I'd drawn her before, as I've done for all my important characters. I think my process is fairly organic- figure out their personality and a few physical traits I know they should have, then draw a few versions of them until I land on something that feels right. Then I rewrite their physical description based on what I've drawn. :)

Yeah, I have a small collection of art I use for characters. I typically peruse /tg/, dA, and Pixiv if I can't find something I vibe with in my folder of things. I also add to my collection around once a week or once every other week just to gather some more ideas. Figuring out physical and personality quirks goes kind of hand in hand with finding art I like. If I had any artistic capabilities I'd probably try making some stuff of my own, but I don't even know how to make minor edits in photoshop so I will just keep collecting B)

I also have a very large folder dedicated to drawing inspiration from art haha, something in the line of... 30GB? That I've collected over the years. I wish I had the ability to think up characters entirely from imagination; and I sort of do, but they are always these "ghosts" of what they could be, it's never grounded enough for me to really picture them. So I do need art and atmosphere first! Often my characters come from a flash of inspiration when I'm going through pictures or watching media, or reading other books, even.

After that, I like to practice drawing them until I eventually settle on a concept! That takes a lot of time because you definitely need to write them out a bit first. But it's fun!

I usually have a "vibe" for characters. I usually know their personality before I know what they look like, then search something based on those looks.

If I like the character well enough, I eventually establish an artwork with slightly different features as I do find it a little rude to steal someone else's art for faceclaims just for myself dw I'm not judging people. For smaller things I usually mind less but when I like a character to the point that I talk about them a lot, I will start creating their own appearance. This has happened for a few of my characters now.

I use pinterest for most of my faceclaims. Sometimes I just straight up google, others have been in my folder on my desktop for literal years.

About my own character, I have to say I was significantly inspired by one of Reborn's characters, Gossip Gardevoir. That is what inspired me to create one, also working on TV shows, but centered at first on fact-checking. A jolly, friendly character who likes adventures as much as she enjoys good things, hot springs, Berry Juices, ...
But not without defaults, showing tendancies of impatience when things don't go as planned, and of making poor choices.
Physically, regular looking Gardevoir, albeit taller than the average 1.60 m, and often wearing clothes (summer hat, explorer suit in investigations, ...), and never going on the road without her microphone!

Never, ever and I never will. I can just use picrew. I'm creative enough to make my own designs instead of borrowing from existing stuff.

The only time I ever did was some Digimon rp that never started back in 2012.

I used to use faceclaims I found that fit the general aesthetic of characters I had in mind. Now I can draw - at least a bit - so I just make my own character art so I always get pretty much exactly what I want.