The Fun of World Building & Character Creating
Those that know me well know that one of my hobbies is story writing. I'm mostly self taught and I sort of have the style of writing as thoughts come to me, or I'm just piecing together the huge jumble of daydreaming thoughts I pondered about during the day. It's something I've slowly worked and fleshed out my skills with, not being one for creating visual artwork but story writing felt far more natural and easier for me to grasp and do.
And of course if I'm going to delve into this topic in particular, the elephant in the room with me being a furry? Yeah I get it, BUT this isn't just limited to that. Anybody can world build and create their own original characters based off anything really. You want those lovely anthropomorphic fluffy people? Go for it. Regular humans? Done. Maybe more fantasy stuff? Elves? Dwarves? Encouraged. That is simply the fun of it all, you create the worlds, the rules, everything.
When it comes to making the characters themselves, there really isn't much you have to abide by unless you're also creating a world for them to exist in. Most people usually base it on things we're all familiar with. Some go nuts and make outlandish places, whether based on sci-fi future like worlds or ancient places of centuries past. The fun of it is creating those small details, creating cultures, social norms, or maybe lack of them. Then where they're located, like lush forests, dense cityscapes, heck why not even another planet? Alternate timelines and universes? So many options.
My Own World, My Own Characters
I have seven characters of my own that I commission art of and write stories about. The face everybody knows me here for is Russell, that pudgy soft fox with the rad teal hair. They're based off of myself, including my own actual teal dyed hair! Woah. My other characters are all just as near and dear to me as well. Two of them were actually adopts, meaning an artist designed them with the intention of selling them to somebody else for a bit of profit. My other characters are of my own design and creation fully, though the two characters I acquired as adopts have pretty much the same massive amounts of lore and personality as my other characters created all by me.
The Valley was named "Spotted Valley" because of the strange occurrence of small forest patches that dotted the landscape of the valley. Pictures taken from planes far above the valley, the isolated forests looked like spots, thus the name stuck early on. The valley never really got settled into, few tried but eventually left. The remains of those who tried to settle can be found throughout the valley, from the paths they made, old fences still standing, to even an old ruin of a building in one of the forests with a large pond inside of it. The only person known to reside in the valley is Claire. The cottage she lives in was once owned by a Tigress, she was a friend of the people of the village Claire grew up in. The city nearby has no records of her and Claire does not remember her name. Claire continues to live in the cottage by herself.
The city to the east of the valley is named Larkton, it's very small by city size standards. A quarter of the city is right on the coast, with beaches and some hotels. The city is known for being a rather quiet beach city to vacation to, it's lax vibe is what keeps people coming back to visit. The majority of the residents are laid back, the whole city feels like it's just separate from the craziness of the rest of the world. It's so laid back it's often gotten ridicule other cities and towns for being so open towards people in general. Larkton has a strong reputation being extremely open and protective to all walks of life. One such event that made Larkton a big hot topic was their law allowing public nudity for it's residents and visitors, over one person who didn't even live inside of the city. That would be Claire, she had such a positive influence that to allow her to maintain her lifestyle, the city passed a law allowing her to do so, but it applied to anyone in the city. Despite all the fears of those on the outside, Claire was the only one to take advantage of the law at first. However, my characters got very comfortable with being this way thanks to Claire and they were the first ones other than Claire to express this.
Behind the city, further away from the valley and very much adjacent to Larkton is a suburb town called Driftwood. The suburb town falls under the small district of Larkton, so their laws, policies and people in charge fall under the suburb town as well. It's mostly residential, with most of the businesses people go to being in Larkton. Surrounding both Larkton and Driftwood further north is a mountain range. To the east is Spotted Valley and on the southern side of the valley running along the coastline is the only main road that leads in and out of the entire area where Larkton, Driftwood and the valley lie.
The other of my six characters reside in various places in Larkton and Driftwood. All of them have cars but the entire area is walkable despite it's size. Trolley cars are common and easy ways to quickly get around the city and buses handle the suburbs. Those who need to go by car usually are leaving the area entirely for jobs or other things. The population of this city-state like place is roughly 10,000 people. It all started as a vacation spot over a century ago, with the city building up behind all the beachfront hotels. The suburbs popped up roughly a few decades after Larkton was really established as a city.
So yeah! Once you get started with making some back story for a character, it can really snowball into something extravagant and fun to do. The best part is you can just continue to sort of "fine tune" your characters' lore, personality and the world they live in as much as you want! As time passes, you could change things, learn new things and roll that all into the world your characters live in. So have some fun writing out the backstory for some characters, create the place, world or even universe for them to live in!
See ya next time!
artwork featured:
Russell by: ChaosFennec
Claire by: Ghostii