forum Does anyone base their characters looks off real people?

Started March 11, 2020 by @areasell group

tune

I have always based my characters looks off of real musicians such as Stewart Copeland of the police. Does anyone else do this also? I don't know if I just lack being able to make unique looking characters or what!

Yes, and I say without guilt that alot of them can look like my friends and rivals :P
(I dunno, it makes me feel like I know them better that way)

Yeah. I actually made a character whose looks are based on someone I've seen in real life.

Are you kidding? I base damn near ALL of my characters off of real people or people I know. My rule of thumb is to take the personality of someone and make them an even bigger asshole, my "self-insert" included.

I've never really based my characters' looks off of any real people; usually I'll just draw some rough versions of what they look like till I find something I like. But I know a lot of people do take inspiration from celebrities or people they know.

All. The. Time.

Literally all of my characters have Pinterest images that I base their looks off of lol

My protagonists are based off of me and my brother, partially in personality, almost dead-on in looks. One character of mine dresses like Alex Hirsch (creator of Gravity Falls - red checkered flannel shirt, black jeans, suede boots).

One of our characters, Nate, looks like Daniel Radcliffe but only like a specific set of photos of Daniel Radcliffe.

I based Azrael off of what I thought my Trans sister would look like (I have never seen her before in my life)
I based Allison of an crush of mine
I based Vozreal off of Markiplier

I have a whole group of characters based on some of my real friends in highschool. I changed the looks of most of the characters. Except when I started it was because me and a friend were designing characters based on ourselves. So their design stayed.

Also some of my protags wear exactly what I wear sometimes. One wears a denim jacket with a fur collar, black jeans, black kicks a dark blue New York Yankees t-shirt.

(I know this is based off real people, but I cant find anyone in real life like this)
I based Azrael's personality off of a mix of Wendy Corduroy (Gravity Falls), and the chilled out stoner vibe

Most of my characters are based on real people, or other characters that already exist.

Most of my characters are based on real people, or other characters that already exist.

(Which is probably because I belonged to an rp site that required faceclaims, tbh)

A few bits of mine are based off of real characters. Like Rheya, my doggo, I based her off of her hair, and being short lol. She's a basenji. And some just come from my head, but off of other things? Does that make sense? I think I'm just rambling lol

I have one character that's literally based on my sixth grade crush but he'll never know that
As much as I love coming up with my own OC, I do get lots of inspiration from other characters.

Oddly enough, nearly all of my books are based on dreams I've had and all of the main characters are 50/50 based on me. It's weird, I know, but that's how it's always been. It's like giving myself an adventure I can't have in real life, if that makes sense.

Oddly enough, nearly all of my books are based on dreams I've had and all of the main characters are 50/50 based on me. It's weird, I know, but that's how it's always been. It's like giving myself an adventure I can't have in real life, if that makes sense.

Ooh I know 100% what you mean. I've written stories based on my dreams, the characters included and everything. My most recent short story's main character is is basically, well, me, because that's who it was in my dream

Ooh I know 100% what you mean. I've written stories based on my dreams, the characters included and everything. My most recent short story's main character is is basically, well, me, because that's who it was in my dream

I thought I was part of that rare percentage that uses dreams as book content! Glad to see another Dream User! :D

yannika and teigan are based off instagram models

i nearly always start with a photograph of a real person as a sort of frame of reference, and sometimes my characters end up diverging wildly from that, but sometimes the real person remains my headcanon. for instance, taj reed has been my semi-faceclaim for august from the beginning (and now you see why i'm sometimes a little gratuitous when talking about how attractive august is. lol)

I have reference imageboards on Pinterest. Which has made me realize that some characters are more difficult to reference than others. (Brandee is the most difficult, followed by CJ, for the record. Kieron gets a bunch of photos of professional strongmen for physique reference—him big—plus a few faceclaims; Naomi—the longest-standing character of the lot—is mainly trouble in regards to her scars and tattoos, despite a fairly complicated character design).