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Introduction First things first, a quick introduction coming from myself. My name is Jade Choung, but I am better known as mzzazn / mzzy on the world wide web. I am an artist that primarily focuses on digital media. My art work produced for income is of the anime/manga genre. A majority of my publicity is derived from deviantART.com. I have held the position of Community Volunteer (CV) on this popular art website in the past. A community volunteer is pretty much a moderator. This means, there's a handful of tasks given to a CV on this website, but one that last a huge impact on me was selecting Daily Deviations ('spotlights' for art pieces t

Hello, folks! The purpose of this exercise is to delve deep into a character's mind and tease out interesting eccentricities about them, the bits and pieces of unique information that make them special. Each question is designed to help think about the character more and understand them. Whether you're responding to one question or all of them, hopefully your character speaks to you all through it! PERSONALITY PROFILE    1. People don't behave the same way all the time. In fact, they generally have a mask for every social group -- friends, family, business. Sometimes they have a different mask for different groups of friends. How does your

Update notice as of January 17, 2013: I have given this guide a MAJOR overhaul. It was originally written over a year and a half ago, and since then my own views and understanding of copyrights has changed. I felt that this guide should reflect those changes, so if you read this guide in the past, please take a moment to look through it again as I have added MANY new topics, information, and sources. Unlike my first draft, I have also changed my viewpoint to neutral throughout this writing. Update notice as of July 17th, 2015: Check out DeviantArt's new article on art theft, fanart, copyrights, and other relevant topics! http://protectart.de

Basics Name (& pronunciation): Date of Birth (& age): Place of Birth: Gender:   Species/Racial Origin: Social Class/Community Status: Language: Family/Friends/Pets/Etc: Physical Description Height: Weight: Hair: Eyes: Limb Dexterity: Detailed Physical Description: Typical Clothing/Equipment: Personality/Attributes Personality/Attitude: Skills/Talents: Favourites/Likes: Most Hated/Dislikes: Goals/Ambitions: Strengths: Weaknesses: Fears: Hobbies/Interests: Regular Routine: Philosophy of Life: Attitude Toward Death:   Religion/Beliefs: Fetishes/Strange Behaviors: Most Instructive/Painful/Mem

Basic Statistics Name: Nickname: Meaning of name: Origin of name: Age: Sex: Blood type: Nationality: Ethnicity: Race: Sexual Orientation: Current status: Political Party: Police/Criminal/Legal record: Socioeconomic level as a child: Socioeconomic level as an adult: Birth date: Birth place: Current residence: Occupation: Title/Rank: Hobbies/Pastimes: Talents/Skills/Powers: Past History Hometown: First Memory: Most important childhood event that still affects him/her: Why/How? Other memories/events that still affects him/her and why/how: Past failures s/he would be embarrassed to have people know about and why: Bigg

If you’re dabbling in the genres of supernatural, paranormal, fantasy, science fiction, and horror, you’re probably going to want to make at least one of your own species eventually. And that’s why I made this short and concise form for you to fill out! This form is free to use but only for those who give credit to me. Species name: Outward distinguishable feature of species: Any notable habits/tendencies: Any enhanced or extra powers or abilities: Describe how they discover, train, and harness their abilities: Various strengths and skills of the species overall: Various weaknesses and detriments of the species overall: An

Please copy and paste this into a Word document or deviation. Then highlight the information after the colons and type over it. Setting Time/Era: Exact year or approximate time Name of Country: For fun, you could alter the name of an old country to amuse more educated readers. For example, I altered the Assyrian Empire's name for a conquering people to evoke images of brutality and Mesopotamia. Geography: Keep track of all the places you mention and their approximate locations. I find it handy to draw a rough map of the area. Landscape: Trees, soil, water, buildings... Imagine you were flying over the place in an airplane. What would you

Character Reference Sheet-ness Basically this reference sheet covers pretty much everything a person would ever need to know about your character.. and then some. -Basics- Let’s face it. If somebody were to just glance over the reference sheet, at least you can feel some reassurance in knowing that they got the bare minimum Name (Nickname): Age: Please if you’re going to give your character some ungodly, few centuries old, age, make sure to include what age they looks like. Otherwise all shall assume they appear to be a rumpled piece of leather, ran over by some sort of moving vehicle, after being regurgitated by a cat. Obvio

• Unusual Characteristics: Creating a species usually stems from the writer envisioning a character or a group with characteristics impossible for a human to have. Determine what odd characteristics you have in mind for your characters and collect them together to begin to form traits of a species. Determine any unusual markings or colorations, how they hold themselves, their tendencies, and begin to think about powers and special abilities apart from that which a human can do. • Powers: Writing normal lice of life humans isn't for everyone. Characters with powers are unique and intriguing if you can write them as such. Be carefu

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1. Introduction It's fun to see your character in another person's style. For those of us with a heavy affinity with characters, it can be easy to get lost in the desire to want to see your character drawn by many people. Or perhaps you know of two or more characters you want to see in a certain scene. Artwork makes a wonderful gift for friends, too, and a new piece sitting in your notes can be just the thing to bring up your spirits. Most people operate on a budget for entertainment purposes (and commissions for personal use would fall under the entertainment budget), and it can be hard to get your fix of commissions when you have little t

- - - - - - - - - - UPDATE for January 2020: I created this guide in 2011, so you'll have to take it with a grain of salt since dA has updated a bazillion things since then LOL. It now looks like many codes don't work in Literature submissions anymore,  (or disable the "Eclipse" version of the site and show the old site instead), so some of the demonstrations here only look like regular text.  But they should display properly if you copy/paste them in the comments.   I'm so glad to see how many of you wonderful people still utilize this resource, so I wish you the best and encourage you to go ahead and experiment to see what works and what do

~Valuable Character Bio Creation Advice And Information~ • NONO: The BIGGEST nono for bios is putting something like “unknown” or “N/A” in a bio category of a character. First of all, why did you even include that category in your bio just to pass it up? It’s an eyeroll for a serious writer to see these things in bios. Even if the character or other characters don't know their name or even their age or parents, it should ALWAYS be listed in the bio. These are things that everyone has (unless they are a robot). • CATEGORIES: I have included a blank bio form with all the categories I find to be necess

PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE THIS PAGE WILL REMAIN ACTIVE FOR PURPOSES OF EDUCATION AND RECORDS, IT IS OUTDATED. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE NEWEST VERSION. 7 Steps to Creating a Great Protagonist Anybody Can Write a Novel   Chapter 3 “Characters” – Section 3 “The Protagonist” With Links to Supplementary Material So I've talked about a couple types of protagonists, and how to create them: Heroes and Antiheroes. As well as what types of Character to Use or to Avoid. But not every Protagonist will be a hero or antihero. Today, I'm going to discuss what universal attributes make a great protagonist, that will drive your

~Something’s Missing~ • NOTE: This is a generally speaking list, again, directed at the major characters of stories/books/movies/television of the modern times. I know there exist characters with these traits; I just think they are rare and should be brought more to attention if you're looking to expand your character diversity and add realism. • Humility: This is the big one that I think a lot of characters are missing. Lots of the mains I see today don't even have a shred of this or if they do it’s forced into them. How about writing a person who’s naturally humble? These people are amazing. They don’t

A bullet pointed list of things to consider when composing • Personal struggle: It’s kind of obvious that my art and style have improved and changed in the bit over a year that I have been making reference sheets and that I could compose more elaborate digital references for my characters, but I prefer constancy in this particular instance. a character reference sheet. • The name of your character should always be listed somewhere, whether it’s in the title of the piece or on the image itself. • The entire idea of the reference sheet is to show who your character is. It makes more sense to do a standard standin

~Basic Bio Breakdown~ NAME: You should provide the character’s full name, even if it’s not what they go by. If they go by something else, include it in the same category like so: Joshua “Josh” Nickelson. AGE: If your character is in a timeline where it’s simple enough just to list one age or a range of ages for them, then by all means, please do so. If you have a long, complicated series or a lot of time that passes in your book, show a birth year for your character instead—something we can measure things to. APPEARANCE: This should contain everything there is to know about your character visually withou

Brief introduction to your character: "(A quote from your character)" Name First name: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Middle name: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Surname: -Meaning: - Pronunciation: - Origin: Alias: -Why this alias?: Nickname(s): -Why this nickname?: Title(s): Characteristics Canon/Story: Role: Age: How old do they appear? Mental Age: Gender: Race: Nationality: Ethnicity: Blood Type: Birth Date: Birth Weight: Birth Length: Manner of Birth: First Words: Symbol: Sexuality: Religion: Native Language: Spoken Languages: Relationship Status: Chinese Zodiac Sign: Astrological Sign: Tarot Card: Social Secur

1. Know what you're writing. It's easy to get off track while you're writing. Thus it's always a good idea to know what you're writing. As soon as you have a good grasp on what your story is about, you'll find yourself writing quicker. This includes the main plot, a majority of the subplots, and where all the vital plot points are going to be. 2. Know what inspires you and stay around it. Now this doesn't mean that you should go through an entire personal evaluation. It just means to keep track of where you get inspired and what caused the inspiration. For some, it could be listening to music of some sort, while for others, it could be w