So I’ve had a number of instances where my characters have had anatomical quirks develop in the various art I’ve gotten them in. Part of this is related to using the same characters in different canons (and thus different things happening) and not being rigid enough or communicating properly, but sometimes it’s more significant than that down to biology and coloration.
The problem is that I don’t always catch these mistakes right away, and then they propagate into new art, entrenching further. I’ve had a few terse discussions about these from artists who are upset about this and I really can’t blame them.
Last year I started getting Refsheet.net portals online for my chars, because my aging back was tired of carrying a ream of paper refs at cons! In my defense, when I started going to cons, smartphones weren’t a thing, credit processing was intermittent at best for merch, and “reliable internet access in Dealer’s Room” was said in the same tone as “warp core” and “lightsaber”. However, refsheet has been discontinued by the creator. Between this and moving between various sites for long periods only to see most of them go down or get enshittified over time (Hi there, “DeviantArt”!), I kind of want to put them on a site I control.
Now, granted, full control evades me at this time as I don’t have my own hosting hardware or connection, but part of the reason for this WordPress site was to have a lower-upkeep system to document my own thoughts and such that I could move between locations as needed. My own home online. Maybe even throw up a docuwiki or such for the backstory and lore, in the future.
For now though, I need to get character references ironed out before Anthrocon. But as I’m not an artist myself, this is itself a concern. Like, I get general ideas for references, like making sure the anatomy and markings are correct, but past that, I’m unsure what else would need to be boiled down. At this point I’m not looking to commission new reference sheets.
So far I want multiple views (front/back/side?) of the chars as best I can, as well as general noticeable details like scars, common accessories, or appearance features. Tattoos, common clothes. Gross morphology as well and colors as best I can manage with swatches and GIMP. Otherwise…maybe a bit of lore like age and physical size, as well as likely some subpages for ‘common alternate forms’, because many of my chars are either native shapechangers to some degree, or often end up in alternate forms.
I’d probably throw these together as sort of collages first in GIMP, but from there we’ll see what happens. But I do need to get a solid handle on this.
blogsquawk@vershaft.com for email if you have thoughts.
-Arrow