Post by CableZ on Feb 18, 2015 7:55:38 GMT
So one look at my characters and you'd probably think you have the exact idea of where I got my ideas from, but sadly my design skills are not the best so I figured I'd let you in on who, where and why I got my inspiration for my characters. I'll go through as many as possible, recounting stories on how I came up with the idea, looking at both inspiration for personality and character, AND appearance.
Ah yes, my little ball of edge looking emo.
Dread Lock is an interesting character, I'll be the first to admit that he looks...dark. He has this typical sort of edgy, angsty appearance, he's CALLED Dread Lock for pete's sake.
Dread Lock's character came from a fanfic I once wrote, based around the idea of a pony devoid of all emotion and the capacity for emotion. I since lost all of the progress on the fanfic, so Dread Lock remains here as the only testament to it. A pony struggling to understand emotion, simple stuff really. He's not too in-depth, but I find him cute in his way, kinda jerky in others.
His appearance again comes from the fanfic and some weird teenage desire for him to be different. I went with a design in every way something not to do with the show, dark fur, weird hair. Actually the hair and general tone of his look is simple really. My all time favourite band is a band called KoRn, wherein 4/5 of the members generally sport long dreadlocks. I like the band, I like the hairstyle, so why not?
The simplest explanation for where Quip came from is a simple image. Now due to site rules i cannot link the image, in fact there's probably a lot I can't say about it. However I'll give a brief explanation.
An artist on Deviant Art made a series of images called Equestria divided, which basically tells the story of Equestria in a severely dark future. Things have gone very very wrong and things are pretty horrific in general. Now glancing over exactly why someone would do this, I stumbled on the image one day and something about it stuck with me. The images basically describe units, almost like an RTS manual. The image I first saw depicted the Laughing cult, which is pinkie's pretty grim sort of group in this war filled future. In this image there is a unit known as The Jesters of Baltimare (pictured below)
Show's how original I am doesn't it? I know, I hate the fact that Quip looks so...well exactly the same as this. But anyway the idea stuck with me, the look. Now the dark motif of the setting I didn't really care about, I mean it's cool but obviously I couldn't bring that here. But I became obsessed with a clown pony who wore a mask like that, I've always had a love of the masquerade and stuff like that, harlequins and all that good stuff. Personality wise there was little inspiration since I opened up the app template and 5 minutes later Quip was written up. I guess the joker is one, though I've always though that the Joker was fuelled by his evil which then fuelled his comedy, to the joker life is a joke, that's the point. The more I though about it, the more I think that Kefka, the clown villain from Final Fantasy was a good inspiration.
A guy who just enjoys everything he does in a purely manic way, he has a goal sure but that goal always seems fuelled by his personality, instead of the other way around.
Now looking at the picture of Mad Cap, you'd immediately say. "wow, nice Harley Quinn rip off bro."
Yeaaah, believe it or not, Harley Quinn had nothing to do with this character in my mind. I knew I wanted Quip to have an assistant, a more grounded pony yet one who was still bubbly and fun. However after I'd written the app, and done the artwork, I sat back and wondered aloud. "Why have I made Harley Quinn?"
I don't know how I didn't notice, I just picked the colours for her costume because they seemed familiar. THEY SEEMED FAMILIAR FOR A REASON, CABLEZ YOU MORON.
Her original back story as well, complete rip off of Harley. I felt awful, to the point I completely rewrote her back story.
This character represents my weakest moment of design, but I still enjoy the character. Still, I will always feel like a monumental idiot for the way I designed this character, I just sort of wrote in a haze, drawing on what felt familiar and ended up with Harley Quinn. The only reason I can imagine is that I wanted Quip to have this character filled side kick that could go out on her own and I guess Harley Quinn and the Joker is a small jump when you think about it. But yeah, poor poor moment of inspiration that just turned out to be theft of a character,
A'bek Thorns.
This character represents probably one of my few moments where an idea just came to me. I'll retell the story of how it came to me.]
Originally I come from Sheffield, a city in England. Now Sheffield is famous for it's steel, during WW2 it was a real powerhouse in that area and the city was built as n industrial revolution town. However it also holds another accolade, that being the city with more tree's per person than any city in the world (at least that used to be the statistic, could have changed, don't care.)
So when I was on the bus, we were going down a street that like every other street was just lined with tree's. It got me thinking about a city that went truly overboard with the idea, something like an Aztec city hidden in the jungle, man made stuff just living with nature. I thought what kind of creature would live in that area and while most people would think of Deer or something, I went to goat. I have no clue why, I just though of these massive regal yet rugged creatures and I never think of Deer as rugged. I was thinking of Ibex, the massive horned goats that can basically walk on vertical cliff faces.
So that's it really, magical goats, I mean the horns lend themselves to magic anyway. It's where the entire concept for the Ibex race came from, and I'm aware it's been done before. People are better at this than I am, and I ain't thinking I'm the first to think of the Ibex because in fanon, pretty much every quadruped race has been done. Still, I enjoy it, and I'm proud of it.
(more to come)
A long time ago Grandpa Sugar wanted someone to play his character Ruby Shores' long lost brother Baritone. Being a fan of music and a friend of Sugar, I jumped on the chance to play this jazzy pony. The main inspiration from this character came from music, the multiple ways jazz is used fueled a mix and varied yet singularly minded personality. It was a collab between me and Sugar, I came up with the look while we both agreed on a certian style. There isn't much to be said about him, he came from simple roots
Aero Tempest
Okay so Aero comes from an iffy background at best. He comes from a thread me and a person called Xellia (he disappeared a while back) did. In the thread, some of our characters travelled back in time (though at this point I've sort of retconned this) to a strange new place that is very similar to Equestria. In the thread they end up facing some kind of dark force.
It's here we meet the pegasus captain Aero! Now the reason Aero was made is that this was my first major thread (still one of my longest) and I wanted the thread to have a major impact on my character log. So I made this rambunctious and lively Pegasus. The wing blades are an old idea in mlp circles, but one I liked. However I didn't want to make them just an abject advantage, so I decided to flip it and make it more of a hindrance in the long run. The circumstance of his time travel are somewhat tragic and unwanted, which leaves him stuck in the present. however He eventually falls in love with the greatest mare ever! The inspiration comes from all over really, I can't play it on one character. I wanted a fun and energetic pony who was a little more grounded than Quip. He kicks flank so I also wanted to give him some awesome armour. It took a while to design Aero's armour (his helmet was a pain) but I took inspiration from more ornate and fantasy designs and combined them with the traditional ones. So he has bright golden plates that I think look quite good, along with the blue cloth similar to a tabard.
I suppose this armour could be a drawn comparison, though I did not use it as any reference.
Dread Lock.
Ah yes, my little ball of edge looking emo.
Dread Lock is an interesting character, I'll be the first to admit that he looks...dark. He has this typical sort of edgy, angsty appearance, he's CALLED Dread Lock for pete's sake.
Dread Lock's character came from a fanfic I once wrote, based around the idea of a pony devoid of all emotion and the capacity for emotion. I since lost all of the progress on the fanfic, so Dread Lock remains here as the only testament to it. A pony struggling to understand emotion, simple stuff really. He's not too in-depth, but I find him cute in his way, kinda jerky in others.
His appearance again comes from the fanfic and some weird teenage desire for him to be different. I went with a design in every way something not to do with the show, dark fur, weird hair. Actually the hair and general tone of his look is simple really. My all time favourite band is a band called KoRn, wherein 4/5 of the members generally sport long dreadlocks. I like the band, I like the hairstyle, so why not?
Quip Crack.
The simplest explanation for where Quip came from is a simple image. Now due to site rules i cannot link the image, in fact there's probably a lot I can't say about it. However I'll give a brief explanation.
An artist on Deviant Art made a series of images called Equestria divided, which basically tells the story of Equestria in a severely dark future. Things have gone very very wrong and things are pretty horrific in general. Now glancing over exactly why someone would do this, I stumbled on the image one day and something about it stuck with me. The images basically describe units, almost like an RTS manual. The image I first saw depicted the Laughing cult, which is pinkie's pretty grim sort of group in this war filled future. In this image there is a unit known as The Jesters of Baltimare (pictured below)
Show's how original I am doesn't it? I know, I hate the fact that Quip looks so...well exactly the same as this. But anyway the idea stuck with me, the look. Now the dark motif of the setting I didn't really care about, I mean it's cool but obviously I couldn't bring that here. But I became obsessed with a clown pony who wore a mask like that, I've always had a love of the masquerade and stuff like that, harlequins and all that good stuff. Personality wise there was little inspiration since I opened up the app template and 5 minutes later Quip was written up. I guess the joker is one, though I've always though that the Joker was fuelled by his evil which then fuelled his comedy, to the joker life is a joke, that's the point. The more I though about it, the more I think that Kefka, the clown villain from Final Fantasy was a good inspiration.
A guy who just enjoys everything he does in a purely manic way, he has a goal sure but that goal always seems fuelled by his personality, instead of the other way around.
Mad Cap.
Now looking at the picture of Mad Cap, you'd immediately say. "wow, nice Harley Quinn rip off bro."
Yeaaah, believe it or not, Harley Quinn had nothing to do with this character in my mind. I knew I wanted Quip to have an assistant, a more grounded pony yet one who was still bubbly and fun. However after I'd written the app, and done the artwork, I sat back and wondered aloud. "Why have I made Harley Quinn?"
I don't know how I didn't notice, I just picked the colours for her costume because they seemed familiar. THEY SEEMED FAMILIAR FOR A REASON, CABLEZ YOU MORON.
Her original back story as well, complete rip off of Harley. I felt awful, to the point I completely rewrote her back story.
This character represents my weakest moment of design, but I still enjoy the character. Still, I will always feel like a monumental idiot for the way I designed this character, I just sort of wrote in a haze, drawing on what felt familiar and ended up with Harley Quinn. The only reason I can imagine is that I wanted Quip to have this character filled side kick that could go out on her own and I guess Harley Quinn and the Joker is a small jump when you think about it. But yeah, poor poor moment of inspiration that just turned out to be theft of a character,
A'bek Thorns.
This character represents probably one of my few moments where an idea just came to me. I'll retell the story of how it came to me.]
Originally I come from Sheffield, a city in England. Now Sheffield is famous for it's steel, during WW2 it was a real powerhouse in that area and the city was built as n industrial revolution town. However it also holds another accolade, that being the city with more tree's per person than any city in the world (at least that used to be the statistic, could have changed, don't care.)
So when I was on the bus, we were going down a street that like every other street was just lined with tree's. It got me thinking about a city that went truly overboard with the idea, something like an Aztec city hidden in the jungle, man made stuff just living with nature. I thought what kind of creature would live in that area and while most people would think of Deer or something, I went to goat. I have no clue why, I just though of these massive regal yet rugged creatures and I never think of Deer as rugged. I was thinking of Ibex, the massive horned goats that can basically walk on vertical cliff faces.
So that's it really, magical goats, I mean the horns lend themselves to magic anyway. It's where the entire concept for the Ibex race came from, and I'm aware it's been done before. People are better at this than I am, and I ain't thinking I'm the first to think of the Ibex because in fanon, pretty much every quadruped race has been done. Still, I enjoy it, and I'm proud of it.
(more to come)
Baritone Shores.
A long time ago Grandpa Sugar wanted someone to play his character Ruby Shores' long lost brother Baritone. Being a fan of music and a friend of Sugar, I jumped on the chance to play this jazzy pony. The main inspiration from this character came from music, the multiple ways jazz is used fueled a mix and varied yet singularly minded personality. It was a collab between me and Sugar, I came up with the look while we both agreed on a certian style. There isn't much to be said about him, he came from simple roots
Aero Tempest
Okay so Aero comes from an iffy background at best. He comes from a thread me and a person called Xellia (he disappeared a while back) did. In the thread, some of our characters travelled back in time (though at this point I've sort of retconned this) to a strange new place that is very similar to Equestria. In the thread they end up facing some kind of dark force.
It's here we meet the pegasus captain Aero! Now the reason Aero was made is that this was my first major thread (still one of my longest) and I wanted the thread to have a major impact on my character log. So I made this rambunctious and lively Pegasus. The wing blades are an old idea in mlp circles, but one I liked. However I didn't want to make them just an abject advantage, so I decided to flip it and make it more of a hindrance in the long run. The circumstance of his time travel are somewhat tragic and unwanted, which leaves him stuck in the present. however He eventually falls in love with the greatest mare ever! The inspiration comes from all over really, I can't play it on one character. I wanted a fun and energetic pony who was a little more grounded than Quip. He kicks flank so I also wanted to give him some awesome armour. It took a while to design Aero's armour (his helmet was a pain) but I took inspiration from more ornate and fantasy designs and combined them with the traditional ones. So he has bright golden plates that I think look quite good, along with the blue cloth similar to a tabard.
I suppose this armour could be a drawn comparison, though I did not use it as any reference.
i was kinda excited to feel like im back in 2015