So I have started a project where I put all my Original Characters that I've ever had Ever on strips of paper in one jar. From there, occasionally I will draw out a slip and draw the character, reflecting on their history, their design, their story. Kind of just deciding if I can re-incorporate some of the ideas I had going, maybe where I'm at if they're a current OC, what went through my mind as I was creating them, etc. I also think it's a lovely gift to my younger self to be drawing art of my old ocs, because MANY of these were created before I could even draw! I put abridged versions of these stories up on cohost, and will put longer, more thoughtful reflections here!
This one’s even older than the last one, or at least a contemporary of her. R.J. wasn’t fleshed out even a little bit. I still have some of the writing he came from. Let’s take a look at that, shall we?
“R.J. was seated at a baby grand piano in the corner of the room. Long thin fingers twitched upwards to stop the ticking machine that rested on the glossy brown surface. He didn't seem to notice me as he retrieved a small metal cylinder from the top of the piano along with a metal punch. He hit a key on the piano, then punched a hole in the side of the tube. He set the apparatus back down, started the metronome again, and played five more notes.”
R.J. is the barely-seen husband of the main character of this story I wrote as a freshman in high school called “Deception”. It was about a woman, Alice (who maybe we’ll eventually see later in this series), who gets chosen by the government to design a device to shoot down asteroids in a steampunk setting. R.J. was designed to just be her concerned civilian husband, an average guy who makes steampunk instruments. I remember being extremely inspired by this picture on deviantart of a "steampunk ipod". Looking at it over a decade later, its still cool but not as awe-inspiring as it was to me back then. I liked the idea of a device like a music box but where you change out the music box tubes for different songs, and it can store a few songs in it. So that’s the device he’s trying to make in that excerpt.
Here’s the only existing “art” I have of him, which I made with some flash based anime character maker. You’ll find at least a third of the OCs in this series have their original art as this same character maker. It wasn’t even good, but in the pre-picrew days this was mostly all I had.
So this series I’m supposed to reflect on the design and character aspects and how I can recycle them or learn from them. This one is interesting because genuinely he’s one of my only 30+ male OCs. He’s in his early thirties if I recall. This was at a time when I was young enough I thought 31 was middle aged. And kinda like the previous OC I featured, Matty, he was kind of designed as an everyman, and didn’t really have a lot to help him stand out or work with. Maybe there isn’t a whole lot to learn from such a minor OC, but I know for sure 13 year old me is so excited to see him “in the flesh”. I’ve got free time this weekend so I’m going to do more redraws for this project soon.
As always, with my blog posts, feel free to email me to leave comments. Or just comment on socmed wherever I link this. Plenty of avenues. If you want something specific to respond to, maybe I can start asking questions for you, dear reader, at the end? So here goes: Do you have any OCs who are unassuming, regular guys? Tell me about them!