From Premise to Pen sounded like an interesting topic for this week’s photo challenge. I hope to see a ton of great entries because character designs are my favorite part of the writing process to see others do. For my entry I’ve selected four important characters in one of the stories I am writing and included with them two hand drawn images and three images I either scavenged or purchased as official art for the series.
Disclaimer: I’m not a graphical artist nor do I claim to be one.
Aurelius Waldo Echart
Malcom Atterbury as Henry J Fate - Twilight Zone: Episode - Mr. Denton on Doomsday
Build - Fit but thin
Age - 63
Eye Color - Smokey Grey
Hair - White grey, combed back
Height - 5’9”
Summary/background
Aurelius Waldo Echart was an adventurous man in his youth. He spent a lot of time journeying into the wastelands, braving the monstrous hordes, and bringing back ancient artifacts. He has always been a well respected historian and professor at New Glasfjord University, in part due to his seeming unique ability to lead teams out into the field and back on successful missions. Many regard him as the most talented man of his time, and certainly the most socially respected man to cut against the grain of society. While a great many people are wary of him few would ever publicly attack him because it would bring them more problems than it would him.
Most believe he is just a socialite with minimal magical skill and talent whose amazing feats have been the result of simple wit and physical health. These days it seems even more so the case because he ventures out into the wilds less and less as his age catches up with him. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While he is not well versed in either Circle or Green magic he has an excellent mind for Crystal magic. This has allowed him to access many of the deepest, darkest ruins of the old world and find artifacts whose power have not been rivaled since. This makes him a dangerous man with a lot of power, and the public knows nothing of this.
Privately he is a man of power. He hold the balance of power and conflict between the major regional governments using threats and force to get his way. He has caused wars and peace, he has outright killed leaders and derailed innovations that could change the face of the decimated planet. In his own way he is a dictator with a subtle hand and a huge impact, and yet he keeps it all under wraps. Not even his wife knows what he gets up to or that he alone knows the secret to controlling the hordes of zombies who populate the bad lands.
Recently he over extended his reach into the northern lands where the zombies can not reach and he is scrambling to reestablish control. First was a recent war. Glenmoth, a land rich in metals and other natural resources, has been captured and even though Frystalfal came to their aid in an attempt to liberate their neighbors that has settled down into a tentative truce.
But now a young woman by the name of Joanne Lianne Stamets has come to the University to speak about her discoveries about the zombies and his entire power structure is threatened. He must do everything in his power to stop her while remaining anonymous. It’s for the people’s own good. He can not allow the fate of the geniuses of Frystalfal happen to his own people, and he will stop at little to ensure their safety. Even if that means sacrificing most of them in the process.
Research:
I didn’t do any significant research for this character. He actually came whole cut from a Pathfinder game (Dungeons and Dragons) I ran to flesh this world out. The entire game was off the cuff and I made up villains to further the plot as I went. The moment it hit me to craft this character was when I introduced Miss Lianne Stamets to the party by having her mauled by zombies in the middle of town. The idea just made everything click together real well and added several layers of conflict from family, government, natural forces, friends, and colleagues to the story. I felt this made his character the natural linchpin I needed to throw the world into chaos if he fell.
Ole Danial Coffey
Ole Danial Coffey - by the team at J Caleb Design
Ole Danial Coffey hand drawn by me ;)
Build - Below average height, muscular but not toned, far from toned but not fat
Age - 34
Eye Color - Brown
Hair - Brown, short, messy, close kept beard and mustache
Height - 5.7”
Character summary/background
Ole Danial Coffey shuns contemporary society. He’s adventurous, cantankerous, and could give a dozen rat asses less about your social rules and classes. He never ed the military, has never shown respect for the military Arcanists, and has refused to be a dog to anyone. Where most tinkerers are wealthy men or lower/middle class women who use the best parts they can find or make he’s a lower class man who salvages anything he can use and puts it to work where he can.
Born to a lower class family Danial started behind in life, and I don’t mean in the emo woe is me way. His family couldn’t afford for him to go to school, food was always scarce, and for the most part they all had to pitch in at the family business to survive the harsh reality of living within the confines of the city’s protection. His parents owned a junkyard and that is where he spent most of his childhood growing up and learning how to disassemble broken tinkerings and recycle parts for those with the coin to buy them. Through this work he was able to learn how to use and build with various mechanical pieces and control crystals. Because small control crystal shards were considered valueless he was able to hoard as many of these as he wanted and build amazing and intricate works of art and mechanical grace which the yard became somewhat famous for. His family eventually profited off these works and fame. His family grew in size and he was inevitably pushed to the side as he reached adulthood and moved on to work for himself.
Through his work at the junkyard he became talented at reprogramming, overwriting, and restoring codes and his talents were noticed by the local gangs who recruited him for work. Not necessarily criminal work either in the traditional sense. More like raid work. It’s illegal to go out into the bad lands and bring things back in the traditional sense. Yes, there are exceptions but those are few and far between and almost exclusively set up for the filthy rich to profit from. He was hired at a young age to help the gangs break into old ruins by reprogramming control s and by security so they could find rare and unusual artifacts to sell. He never became wealthy doing this but he made his way through until some problems arose between him and the leadership and they split ways. There’s still a little tension there between him and the leadership but they mostly stay out of each other’s way unless they desperately need a favor.
From here he moved on and began a career as a freelancer. He’s part investigator, part tinkerer, part mercenary, and part body guard these days. Based out of the cheapside of town he’s that dingy man who everyone knows of and half of everyone is terrified of. He takes what jobs he can and isn’t afraid to delve into the bad lands and get his hands dirty performing the most insane of tasks. His family barely talks to him anymore due to his reputation and he is a fairly lonely man.
Research:
For this character I mostly studied a few of the heroes I have come to connect with as an adult. Characters like Harry Dresden, Roy Mustang, Monroe from Grimm, and both Mal and Kaylee from Firefly. I wanted to understand not only how their hero’s journey unfolded but also what were the key components that drew me to them in the first place. In the end a few key elements stuck out to me.
1: For the most part the characters came from backgrounds with hardships that forced them to strike out on their own and either succeed or fail, and the characters at least held on.
2: They have rocky to non-existant relationships with their families.
3: While not all of them are outright leaders they all know how to take command and, with the exception of Harry, cede it when necessary.
4: Most important is that these characters are all intelligent in their own way. While none of them are world class geniuses they each excel in a field and use that to their advantage by creating unique solutions to their problems in a MacGyver-esque way.
I also did some research into the hero’s journey and Dan Harmon’s story circle for this character because he will be the main viewpoint character for the story. The story circle itself allows us to plot stories around the character growth of a character and that makes it something we need to understand for every character who grows as a story goes on. It is most important for our lead characters though. I have an entire blog post I am working on dedicated to this that we will hopefully see very soon.
The book Forensics, A Guide For Writers by DP Lyle, MD has also been an immense help for part of this character’s profile and his future endeavors. It’s part of the Howdunit series of research guides for writers and details how forensics is handled in a variety of situations. Some of the subjects covered range from criminal psychology, to arson, to identifying wounds. I highly recommend this book for anyone writing any kind of story with violent components.
Joanne Lianne Stamets
Old Photographs of the Sami people - http://www.whitewolfpack.com/2015/12/rare-old-photos-of-indigenous-sami.html
Build - Tall, somewhat broad shouldered with wide hips. She looks more powerful and intimidating than she actually is. Not particularly muscular.
Age - 31
Eye Color - Deep blue with light blue ripples
Hair - Golden Blonde
Height - 5’11”
Character summary/background
Joanne was born to a noble family in the nation of Frystalfal. They are among the least wealthy of the nation’s nobility and have never had a problem with that role. Her mother is the kind of woman who extols the virtues of art and leisure and believes that all women should share those values. Her father is more of a hands on man who loves to get down and work with not only his main job as a royal tinkerer but also with the war machines the military uses, and any contraption a random commoner seems to be having trouble with. Between the two of them Joanne most takes after her father.
She is a fiercely independent woman who strives to push the boundaries of her knowledge and capability. From a y9ung age she broke fiercely from family tradition and stuck to working with the hired help in the gardens and even sought electives and additional courses for the more mundane work of farming. She didn’t stay doing this for long though. As she aged her mother wanted to see less and less of her disappointment of a daughter and shipped her off to a boarding school in the northern reaches of the nation.
On her trek north she discovered the lush forests of the land and heard rumors that there were no other natural formations in the known world. Entranced by the beauty and majesty of the forests she made it her life goal to discover why these trees only grew in so few places. She spent much of her teen years in these forests taking samples of the wild life and learning from the Green Witches. Once in college she took every class she could on the subject of plant life and eventually mycology as well and began giving talks about the subject.
Without her mother’s knowledge this eventually led to her going on expeditions to the badlands of the south where she was able to test the soil and plant life and make some very important discoveries. Excited about this prospect she scheduled a tour of university talks to spread the knowledge that the bad lands could be reclaimed, and that people could thrive where the environment was now deadly and hostile.
Research:
Like all of the other characters we have seen so far I didn’t require much research for this character, but I did require an absolute ton for her profession. I have spent maybe thirty or forty hours watching Paul Stamets talk about mycology, dive into jungles and caves in search of mushrooms, and discuss the proper ways of using mycology in fiction, like in Star Trek: Discovery. Before anyone asks I do have permission to use his last name for characters. He’s quite fond of this as long as the science being used is sound.
Further I’ve been doing research into herbs, and other plant products used in northern climates to flesh out her abilities. Books like Medical Herbalism by Hoffmann, and Healing Mushrooms by Tero Isokauppila have been a large part of this process alongside many of the videos Tero’s company Four Sigmatic produces. YouTube has been another help with this process. There are tons of videos to be found on the histories of folk medicine in northern climates. Celtic and Scandinavian lore has been of special interest for this because I like using those as root cultures because I am most familiar with them.
The World!!!
The map of the known regions as drawn by me
I saved this one for last because it is the most important character in many kinds of stories. World settings can and sometimes should grow as if they were living, breathing characters all their own. In a sense they are the culmination of the many histories and actions of everything occupying them. You could almost say that they are omni-characters. Yet they are different and that is why the format for this is different than the previous three.
The world itself is as of yet unnamed. It experienced a near apocalypse several centuries back when the people of Frystalfal developed a super chemical weapon that eradicated most of the plant and animal life south of the frost line. The weapon was designed to genocide everyone and use their corpses to clean up the mess so they could rebuild. It did not going according to plan. The zombies they created did indeed chase after the toxin they laced the magically induced rain with, and most of the plant, animal, and human life did die from it, but with no one there to clean up the zombie mess and finish the detoxification process the land just turned into an endless cycle of stabilizing and destabilizing where multiple zombie apocalypses have happened since.
There was a plan though, something to clean this up, right? I mean who in their right mind would half ass a plan so bad? In truth many real world bodies fail to think things through this far, but that wasn’t what happened here. With resources having grown artificially scarce from this the people of Frystalfal did like the Romans did and the higher intelligence people stopped breeding while the lower intelligence ones over bred. Before they could establish a clean up crew the society destabilized and fell into a civil war that destroyed their history of technology and magic. Over a few generations they fell back into the relative stone ages and had to relearn their ancient glory using the scraps of their history and now lost written language to do so.
Understandably there are tons more details I could go into for this but for the story itself these are the most relevant histories for the world’s character. If people want to know more I can discuss that where it is more on topic.
Research:
This is where I have put in the most research. For this I have studied things from weather patterns, mycology, biology, magical apocalypses with Pillars of Eternity being the closest comparison to this, the book Fantasy Art and RPG Maps, a lot of Rome’s various histories especially involving their civil wars, a little bit of Greek history, some Scandinavian history, and the history of the genocide of the celts. I’m summarizing this specifically because any of these topics are worth entire articles on their own, and several of these are subjects that would require to do them proper justice.
I hope you have enjoyed this week’s photo challenge, and I look forward to what everyone else is going to post.
If you particularly enjoyed any of these characters or would like more information on how I design and implement characters let me know in the comment section below. I look forward to any and all .
Comments (2)
I love it. He looks like the babadook.
That is amazing! I hadn't seen nor heard of it before. After looking it up I absolutely love it.
Thank you =)