Do you have a video game, tv show or other piece of media that you REALLY want to make a fan character for but don't know to make a good one? Well you've come to the right place! In this book, i will be showing you some basic steps on how to do just...
Before starting ANY of the design process, it's important to take into consideration a few things, those being:
-What specific things that each and every character has in the media you're creating an OC for, like for example: a certain way of naming the characters or wiether they use warm colors or cold colors, stuff like that
-What the overall idea you have for the OC is
AND
-Where the character lives, what they do most of the time, etc.
I will be using one of my own fan characters, rue as an example!
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Rue is a fan character for the little nightmares games and he is the son of six and mono in an alternate timeline. He's 7 years old, is half blind due to a birth defect and he loves animals; however due to everything going on in the world, he's in very poor living condition and his parents are extremely protective of him to the point that he has never even seen any of the monsters they're protecting him from and he's almost never scared.
When designing rue i took all of these important design notes into consideration:
-The character designs in little nightmares use a lot of dark or dull colors (though that could just be because of the lighting all throughout the games)
-The games are implied to take place sometime in the past (around the 1950's or so)
-All the games' protagonists have something on their head that covers up their face (or at the very least, their eyes)
-Most of the characters wear long-sleeved shirts and stuff of the sort so it's likely that the weather is very cold where the games take place
-There is a strong eye motif throughout the games
As you can see: i tried ticking off all the things on the list, all while keeping to my original idea of the character. I gave him a traffic cone hat just because it was the first thing i could think of but it clearly shows off the fact that he has very protective parents due to the fact that traffic cones are often associated with safety and caution (the bandages on his legs could also show off that fact too) and the fact that the cone has only one eyehole alludes to the fact that he's half blind and therefore doesn't NEED two eyeholes and the baggy, oversized sweater can clearly tell you that he doesn't live well. The rest of what i described about him can easily be shown through how he acts
Basically what i'm saying is that a good design tells you exactly what the character is all about without you having to explain it yourself! However it's important to not go overboard and to only focus on the most important parts about the character!
Oh! And i'm sure you may be wondering how to make a good fanchild OC after i mentioned that rue is a fanchild! Don't worry, that part's coming up soon!
