Creating Original Characters

[Outcast]

Here is a link i found on how to go about making your own super hero or super villain.  :rolleyes:

http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Super-Hero

I'm just curious though, how do some of you guys do it? ^_^

Do you think of the hero's powers first? Or would you come up with a background story first? Maybe the costume of the character comes first for some?

I remember i managed to come up with sketches and doodles of original comic characters back in my high school days. Without ever thinking about any of their origins,story,background or powers yet. :P I think i came up with a name for each soon afterwards and some vague idea of what their powers will be. :)

[Carravaggio]

Sometimes I get an idea of the powerset or the character's character/personality, and how they react in certain situations. the Church grew out of me thinking "how would a strict Christian person act in the circumstances superheroes face if they themselves had such power?"
Usually the theme comes first; "Earth spirit is a young, inexperienced hero that can take on the properties of natural substances, specifically geological ones, including dirt, stone, magma and a variety of crystal."
So we have a young hero who had earth based powers and take shapeshift (a lot of themes and powersets revolve around FF powers and FFX powers). The name came after the powers, i threw a few names around, working off the geomancer, earth,nature, geo prefix names until i came up with one i liked.
Then i soon after get a mental image of the character. Immediately i pictured a costume that has colours similar to the brown and tan wolverine, or even timberwolf from LSH, but with blonde hair. I draw up a few sketches until i got a costume that i like on paper, then i construct it in photoshop. Usually in this step a lot of changes are made, cos what looks good on paper doesnt necessarily look good on the screen.
For the Circus, i dont know why but i thought an evil themed circus would be cool, so i brainstormed what sort of characters you would expect to see at a circus./carnival, then thought about how they could be made to be evil. Then i created a pecking order, ranked them and began to draw up their individual looks. the names came last, mostly cos as generic circus thugs they had generic thug names.
For the church i knew i wanted a big group so i sat down and made a list of possible names, then thought about what their powers might be while i sketched some costumes. I knew Believer would have protective faith armour, and i knew that Templar would be aggressive and have physical based powers. Some of the rest have names that dont indicate their powers at all (cardinal, redemption) while others do (messenger, Ghost)

I guess in summation, for me the process differs based on what i am making. sometimes the names come first, sometimes last, sometimes a costume idea strikes me as cool, others i think of an interesting power set of personality and build from that.

[AfghanAnt]

The way they show you how to create a super hero is completely different from the way I do it:

I design a costume (includes skin and hair color), come up with generic powers, define personality, define powers (the unique factor example mass conversion instead super strength but they have the same effect) and then I slap a name on the character but to be fair I like eccentric names like Afghan Ant or Two-Bit Toph I leave name like Thunderstrike and DeathRazor to the big companies.

[Previsionary]

Since I fancy myself a writer, my creation process is usually very different from character to character and usually spontaneous. For example, my last hero team was basically just created through free-writing and they just happened to fit together fairly nicely. Granted, I never finished the story and I lost the HD copy and forum copy at around the same time, but they did live on after that and some even have FF skins thanks to sir chuck.

Rayzon, one of my last heroes created, was basically started when I was thinking up powers for a mod I was working on at the time. Once I got the powers semi-fleshed out, I got the design down and his personality came later and with him came a super powered MJ I called Flara. :P

My most common method is to just create a basic power set and build from that. The name, personality, hero's look, and background just develop in the story. It seems way less forced if I just let the character "speak" rather than force myself to sit down and draw out all the little details. A good example of that method would probably be my last fanfic entry since it was a tangent writing.  :lol:

[Shazam]

Ah original characters, not enough of em here, lol.
I always create the costume first. Sounds strange, but until I have a physical picture of a character in front of me only then can I take it further. To be honest I have trouble taking it further after that first step, but then I'm rather fickle.

[Xenolith]

I ususally just start sketching and see what comes of it.  Usually my biggest influence is a song, though.  Omega Man by the Police, Starbreaker by Judas Priest, etc.  Those usually become my favorites.  I used to play Villains and Vigilantes way back in the '80s, and I've kept all my characters and villians, so I guess thats another source.

[vamp]

I usually have the personality before anything. Seems weird, i know, but with that I can decide the colors for the design, simplicty, and finally the name. Man, my thought process in wonky :blink:

EDIT: forgot to mention I hate coming up with names. Not very creative in that aspect of designing.

[Failed_Hero]

Difficult question, my creation process comes out of various avenues or observations.  Dark Wolf was originally supposed to be a what if story of what if Bruce Wayne used the Az-Bat's costume and it grew into a completely new character and origin.  Aegis came out of my friends observation of how come black male super heroes never get mental powers, and so the telekineitic superman was born.  Alot of my ideas come out of the phrase "Man that could have been how did they mess it up?"

Amalgam was the start of my creative process attempting to rewrite the 90's DC versus marvel and attempting to make that crappy universe actually work.  I abandoned that awhile ago a focused on creating  new characters allagories to the worlds greatest heroes of legend, comics, television and pop culture.  My most recent creation is a dig at American Pop Culture channels like M-TV and VH-1 how nobodies become celebraties by being stupid.  I thought up an alien who was part of an invasion force of a hedonist space race, had him get captured by the government and accidentally get a glimspe of BET, VH-1, M-TV, and other channels, deciding that a planet as shallow as this was worth fighting for he became the Ace Oddity the Space Ace, modeling his costumes after celebraties and more recently after Elvis Pressly, Ace is my Martian Manhunter eqivelent.   

[DrMike2000]

My favourite topic :)

Trying to turn it into an algorithm or checklist is pretty pointless.

I reckon the process comes about subconsciously a lot of the time, if (like me) you tend to think about superheroes all day and have this sort of "background process" running in the back of your head, then ideas for characters occasionally pop out into the conscious mind. This germ then evolves when you do something with them.

Draw them, write a story for them in your head, design a supporting cast, think of catchphrases, or play them in FF or CoH, all these tend to sharpen the ideas a lot. Its the old chestnut that characters do come alive in your head and start writing themselves after a little bit of attention.

For me, the initial germ has been a name, a set of powers, a role or personality type, or any combination thereof. Sometimes a real person Ive know, or an existing fictional character, modified enough to evade copyright in some way or another.