Looking for references and advice~
I have been wanting to rework a lot of my OCs for a while now, and am finally ready to buckle down and do it, I want to do this because a lot of my characters, male and female, are starting to look.. a lot alike, similar cloths, features, ect. And I want to diversify my characters. Ive been seeing that post about how happy it makes people of minorities to see characters that resemble me and that was the final push I needed to make up my mind to DO this, theres no better time than the present.
However, I’ve ALWAYS wanted to diversify my characters, with different skin tones, ethnicities, clothes, ect, but as a very very white person myself, I’m so nervous about messing up and making something look offensive or use something in the wrong way. I know there are references out there with different color swatches with different skin tones going from light to dark, but I cant find one with more than like, 5 different variations and I have a ton of OCs. Theyre for my storyverse, where theres three different ‘races’, Humans, Ferace (animal people, resemble saytrs but are much more varied in what their animal half may be) and Silvkin (Plant people), so while they don’t live on earth, I still want skin, feature and culture diversity, (Im going to stay away from religion atm, as I havent developed that part of the lore yet).
I also struggle with making good outfits, hence why all my characters have practically the same clothes, so if people have references from their cultures or from cultures you’re knowledgable about, that would be FANTASTIC, I need waaay more than I have atm, and a lot of my characters are elemental, so if you know outfits that may suit something for an ice user, or a fire user, ect, share!!! I want them to be visually interesting and diverse, I want them to pop, be memorable! I’m going to get off my ass and do some research, but I am not good at research so help from others would be a blessing~
As someone who is fairly chubby herself, I would love to figure out how to draw different body types as well, while these characters lead a pretty active lifestyle, I have at least one character (Ivy) who I’ve wanted to have be chubby for a long time now, but I struggle with rolls and curves when it comes to that, (I also feel like now that I have the silvkin and ferace races, and Ivy is a silvkin, it makes even more important to me, because a lot of the silvkin are very slim and graceful due to feeding on sunlight only, or only eat a little solid food, just for the taste, but Ivy lives a different lifestyle than them, in a group of all three races, and eats solid food regularly, and is a healer so she doesnt move as much, but shes still happy with herself)
So if anyone has any good advice or references for drawing: Skin tones, clothes, body types, or really ANYTHING, feel free to share, PLEASE share!! Please reblog too, even if you don’t have anything to offer reference wise, I dont care if you’ve never interacted with me, I want to educate myself and learn how to make my characters and drawings more diverse, because Im getting sick of my giant cast of pasty white people that all look the same, and i want people to be able to see themselves in my characters, even if they never become popular, I just want to be able to feel PROUD of what ive created, and while I love my world and my characters, I know they can be better, i know they can be improved, a lot of these characters were made several years ago, and I want to improve upon what middle school and early highschool me made, because I’ve learned so much myself about society and the importance of diversity.