Character visualization

If you're anything like me, the characters in your novel tend to change a lot.  At first my female protagonist has long brown hair and blue eyes, then out of the blue, I began to see her as a girl with short blonde hair and green eyes.  It gets monotonous because I just wish I had a picture next to me I could look at and visualize the characters, but if you're like me, you suck at drawing.

Now one thing I really like doing is playing MapleStory.  Over the summer I found a MapleStory simulator called BannedStory which lets you customize your own character using any accessories in the game.  I suddenly thought why not try making the characters in my story using this method.  I did and it gave me something to work with on my rewrite.  Sure, these are super-deformed anime characters, but with a little imagination it's not hard to imagine them as real people.

That's Timothy, my protagonist from last year.

And this is Amiil, this year's MC.

I actually came up with most of my plot and characters just by playing around on BannedStory.  Here's how to use it.

1.  http://www.maplesim.com/app/

2.  Click "Start the Simulator"

3.  Click "Start" button and wait for it to load.

4.  Select "Character Layer" in the "Add new layer" dropdown box.

5.  Use the toolbar on the left to add skin color, face style, hair style, and clothes.

It may help to be a little familiar with MapleStory, but it should be pretty easy to navigate around.  When you have a character you like, just go to File - Save Image.  You can save it as either a .jpg or a .png

Another website I've used that does a similar thing, if anyone's interested:

http://www.tektek.org

Click "Dream Avatar", then Start.

My MC, Danil Llewelyn

My other MC, Elja Helmsdottir

I just simply draw my characters freehand. It works better that way, and I get the exact look I want.

I draw characters throughout the year, and go back through it October or so to see if  I have any inspiration from the previous years for a story. If I have a few pictures in the same genre, it has a good chance of becoming a story for NaNoWriMo.

How is interesting!
I've taken to copy pictures of actor/ess and using them as a base.

And I hired an artist to draw them....

I see them clearly in my head and they rarely change in appearance. Actually, I had the image of a tall red headed boy wrapped in flame and thought now WHERE can I take that!? 90K and the 2nd volume later I'm still working that question out...

I actually cast real actors as my characters . I find that helps a lot, especially if they're actors I'm familiar with, because I can easily imagine them "acting" my parts, helps with mannerisms and things. For example, I've cast Viggo Mortensen, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Selma Blair as my main characters this year. I just print out pictures of them and stick them on my wall for reference .

The people who were at the Halloween get-together heard me ramble about this at length, but the tool I favor is the character creation screen of the Sims 2 (with as many add-ons as I can get, and I've got a lot). If you're good, you can get your characters to not only look but act like your story characters. And you can boot them up any time if you forget what they look like or to give them a new outfit or three. The danger, of course, is that you'll get sucked into the game. But we've all got way more self-control than that, don't we?

Oh yes, the game is also an awesome tool for house/store/other building creation. You can get the floorplan just right, build it, decorate it, and set your characters going in it (just for a few minutes) to see how livable it is.

Of course, all this is much better done to while away the endless days of October, while waiting for NaNo to start. But it's a delicious diversion any time.