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Posted: June 24, 2012

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Your OC is too pretty

~TheGrzymReaper Jun 24, 2012

Rant incoming. Wear your rant helmets.

_{(This also applies mostly to literature, profiles and art with bios in the description.)}

It's hard not to notice a trend of mary-sue OC's and "drop-dead gorgeous" characters. I'm not really here to talk about mary-sue's, because you can have a pretty character who isn't one.

What bothers me is how our modern day ideals translate over into fantasy, where perhaps most of the characters are actually kinda ugly. Take for example, The Elder Scrolls series. In Oblivion and Morrowind, the faces could be genuinely scary because of graphics, but in Skyrim, you can actually add dirt onto your character's face. While I can't compare The Elder Scrolls timeline to real life, it's pretty obvious that they don't have a lot of cosmetics, plastic surgery and soap. It's okay to have an ugly character because their other good qualities can make up for it.

I used that example in particular because I'm very familiar with it, but there are plenty others that this can apply to. Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Pokemon, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Disney, the list goes on.

I can't really say the same thing for anime, though, because some drawing styles within anime can't really pull off ugly. (Not saying that they can't, as I used to be a huge anime nerd.) It just helps when you don't describe your character as "the most beautiful guy/girl the world has ever laid eyes on".

Why do good looks matter so much? Is it because people associate the OC with themselves, and therefore they can feel pretty? Is it because they don't want their OC to be rejected by other people? Someone please tell me because I need a good counter argument. I can't handle all the pretty. I want personality.

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~ShadedCorners Jul 3, 2012 Professional General Artist

Ideally, I like drawing gorgeous characters, because I like gorgeous. I just do.
In my stories, however, I don't think it usually affects the other characters. In which case, the beauty is simply used to make part of the plot visually pleasing as well as intellectually stimulating. In other words, as far as my stories are concerned, this is like asking, "Why did you put an expensive red leather cover with gold lettering and and inset rubies on the book you wrote??"
I'm very much obsessed with the inside and outside of my characters, and I want to take both to their utmost limits

~JollyGolightly Jul 2, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

I make my OCs as smokin hot as I possibly can
But just because a character is "pretty" that does not equel perfect mary sue status
And "ugly" doesn't mean relateable, hell, I think im alright looking. I dont TRY to relate to ugly
Why is pretty so bad?

~TheGrzymReaper Jul 2, 2012

Well, you're into fashion design. It's your job to make people look pretty.

~JollyGolightly Jul 2, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

This is true.

=Cnids Jun 29, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I think it's likely just a matter of people drawing what they (or others) want to see combined with the "I wish I looked like this" mentality. Most OCs are an idealized version of their creator, an ideal love interest, or some other form of fantasising.

I'm not really a good character designer, but when I do make them I try to focus on making their designs thematic, interesting, or appealing rather than just outright attractive. Most of them are sexless or genderless (lots of robots), so conventional attractiveness doesn't even play a part most of the time. I find that having a sexless character actually forces you to be a lot more creative with them because you can't sail through on good looks alone.

I've got one character (well, partner's character technically) that I draw sometimes and he's supposed to be conventionally attractive. However, the attractiveness serves a character/profession function as it allows him an advantage in obtaining the trust of others (who are then usually assassinated).

I've actually been really trying to push myself into drawing more "unattractive" people lately by accentuating certain features. It's also made me realize that drawing attractive people is a lot more easy than drawing "normal" people. I know you don't want to wade through other people's OCs, but to illustrate a point, I recently redesigned this guy [link] from his earlier form here [link] and tried to focus on giving him heavier features rather than his previous "delicate youthful" appearance.

Example from my inbox: Looking at characters like this [link] is great sometimes because yeah, they're attractive, but after a while I just find myself getting bored. Why should I care about yet another ridiculously attractive character? I find a character like this [link] or [link] or [link] more engaging.

~TheGrzymReaper Jun 29, 2012

Interesting word choice. I do find those characters you've shown me to be more engaging. There's something about having unique features, such as a larger nose or a crooked smile that makes a character become a character. They're a step above the rest because they make you think.

I also agree that drawing attractive characters is very easy, and so I have a lot more respect for artists who can draw those who are normal or unattractive. Also, might I add that the piece you showed me that you redesigned looks lovely. I can definitely see the differences that you made.

~JigokuNeko Jun 29, 2012 Digital Artist

um...compensating for real life? i'm guessing few people are drop dead gorgeous or have a drop dead gorgeous gf/bf in real life so it's a kind of pretend game, a kind of fantasy world to unwind in. OCs are often projections of one's wishes and express sides of their creator's life and experiences. Most people long to be "special" hence the Mary Sues.
also, social conditioning. though people are naturally drawn to beauty, they are also hammered with impossible photoshopped beauty images all day long.

~Hunchdebunch Jun 29, 2012 Student General Artist

I try to make my characters beautiful in their own way; in my opinion, characters (and likewise real people) are beautiful for what makes them different from everyone else. In a group of characters I've been working on recently, I don't try to make them all drop-dead gorgeous; I just try to make them interesting to look at, and most of all fun to draw!

~MADG3ni0us Jun 28, 2012

I actually find this funny because the like one thing i disliked about skyrim was I could not for the life of me make a good looking male character. I always get mad in games when all the male/female characters look ugly. Personally I prefer when the characters look at least average or all characters look average. I think it's because I tend to just really like kool looking character designs. Not to mention most things like movies tend to only show good looking main characters.I can't actually say for sure why I dislike ugly characters more though it actually feels almost like an unconscious decision.

~TheGrzymReaper Jun 29, 2012

Lol, you think it's hard to make good looking Skyrim characters?

Try Oblivion, it's ten times harder. The faces in that game can be truly terrifying...

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