by Schuyler » Mon Apr 04, 2016 8:47 am
Aww, everyone has such beautiful characters & art! ^-^ <3
How do you come up with names and personalities for each character?
Names are a huge deal for me! For starters, I usually won't even consider picking a name until I have at least a vague idea of the character's personality, so unless I connect with them immediately, new characters often get left unnamed for a while. Once I decide to give someone a name, if nothing just comes to me (which it usually doesn't,) I will then spend literal hours researching angels/demons/deities/mythology, translating words into various languages, scrolling through page after page of baby name sites, whatever it takes to find the perfect name. xD
Every name has to have either a special meaning to me or a connection to the character's personality, features, role in the world, etc.; it has to be a name I can pronounce and consider beautiful; and it (usually) has to be something rare or unique: it's a pretty safe bet that you will never find me giving a character a "normal" name, ex. John or Amy, even if the character is a human in the modern world.
And if it's a character I adopt "secondhand," unless their current name fits all the criteria above, you can probably assume I will be changing it sooner or later. They just get the benefit of not going unnamed before I get to them, since I usually let them keep their old names until I find something I like better. x3
As for personalities & backstories, I actually don't put nearly as much work into those as I do with names, lol. In fact, most of the time I simply look at the character and determine their personality based on the first impression I get from their design and how the artist decided to draw them. Then I just fine-tune and tweak the details as time goes by and I get to know the characters better.
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Names: Schuyler, Schuye, or Nárë/Narwë
