#oc design process

[cannon-thebellwitch]

Tryna figure out Celene’s design a bit more - especially her scars cause idk how muscles work.

Small lore drop too

[lumilasi]

Dude/Ma'am/sir/preferred term here; I love your oc designs/AU designs for LOV like Kitsune Tomura, how da hecc do you come up with all of those??? Share us your secrets

I weirdly feel like I was asked this before, but then again couldn't find such an ask, so maybe it was in tags? Anyway, glad you like them haha!

IDK how to explain it, I guess I could share some of the thought process? I dunno if it'll be helpful to anybody, but I can try! 

(long post ahead; this is kinda hard to summarize shortly, plus I wanna show some visual examples)

There's basically three categories I tend to consider & they are often connected and not fully separate things? Everything has an effect to everything, kind of. These things are Theme, Colors, and Setting/Role.

Theme = Something I might choose to base the character's design on, which influences everything from colors to outfit shapes and details.

I guess good examples for this are my Telepath twins, whose appearances from details to colors are inspired largely by their chosen theme:

Milo's theme is Moth, specifically an Imperial moth that is brown and yellow, hence his colors, fluffy collar/coat. Silas' theme is Monarch butterfly, which is why his outfit has oranges and blacks.

Colors = often based on the theme, but sometimes I can choose more freely by starting the process from colors instead, where I often consider what colors would contrast well/what colors would fit the character's personality for example.

Good examples for more color-based/colors as starting point for the design are Yaguro, Chouma and Mari. (Yes more moths, sorry lmao)

Their colors are largely inspired by their personality/story. Chouma has red contrasting his green to look more intimidating/striking to kind of further press home the point he's bad news, Yaguro's largely purple/blue color scheme with just hints of yellow is bit more "harmonious" I guess, to indicate his calmer nature despite his tough guy appearance. Mari is very bright and colorful to match her cheery nature.

(.....to be fair, their colors were also chosen cuz they looked cool lmao, but usually I have some level of conscious thought put behind it)

Setting = What kind of world the character lives in/what is their role. If it's a more fantasy setting (as my oc stories often are) giving them urban clothing/modern looking stuff tends to not work for me that well lol.

 Pretty much all characters are influenced somewhat by this, but good examples of where the setting/role is the primary influence would be, well, actually the AU you mentioned, as well as The steampunk aesthetic of Stringmaster, so these two Tomuras. I feel like this is a bit self-explanatory lol

Like said, typically these three major...let’s call them my “design pillars” or whatever, are intertwined and all have an influence over what I’ll make. Typically I have one of them as the main starting point though, (Theme approach, color approach, or setting/role approach for the design) and I add stuff from the other two. I sometimes might even make some small rules to sort of keep things consistent if characters share something, such as their being; all moth spirits have dark scleroses and fluff, all corrupted moths have less fluff than non-corrupted ones, to give one example.

Of course, naturally, my own personal preferences influence design choices a lot too; I like making long-haired guys a lot, narrower eyes and generally pretty colorful characters hehe.

Everyone has a different way to approach this though of course, so you might find a different way of doing this is better suited for you! This is, like said, just my design process, how it sorta works.