vampirethevarious | (no subject)

Current Mood: creative

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Anyone else ever do moodboards for characters? The traditional character portrait never worked for me. I've found that a collection of images does the job better.

Relatedly, would anyone be interested in seeing moodboard or outfit of the day pictures people have done for characters?

(Icon related because fashion Tories are like that, okay?)

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Moodboards are great! I love them, they're a fun way to be creative and it's really fun to see the "vibe" or aesthetic of various characters

Moodboards always worked better for me, too, but my favorite was making mixes for characters. I still put on my mix for the character du jour about an hour before game start.

Our storyteller does a song of the day before game.

Most of my mixes for characters are short. 4-6 songs usually.

Most of mine are, too. One of the other players made a six-album massive mix for hers, with her backstory and fall from grace and vengeance &c. It's mildly intimidating. laughs But I know a lot more about her character now!

Oooh, I should mention to the GM that idea. A song of the day, I like it!

It serves as a really good transition from general hanging out to gaming. We've had games in the past without that and we all struggled to keep focus especially at the beginning.

Yes, my game does the same thing! I really like our group but the dynamic is very... distractable, and if we *start* distracted we tend to digress for twenty minutes at a time *all through game*. ... I am as guilty as anyone else, but.

That's a neat idea. I have mixes I use for writing them (and some for long-running fics to try and set the mood) but using them as a pre-game ritual hadn't occurred to me.

I do a lot of AUs with characters also, so it's an especially helpful ritual to settle back into the variant I 'officially play', as it were. I've been writing fic and doing chatfic and so forth for long enough that I can typically run at the drop of a hat, but still, you know? It's a nice transition from the work headspace to the gaming headspace.

I totally do the same thing too! Nikolai acquired a whole playlist by the time he was done, and I'm currently in the process of making sure that every major character in the comic has a theme song.

I KNEW I COULDN'T BE THE ONLY ONE! *fistbumps*

The best part is tracking the character arcs through the playlist.

*fistbumps* I know, right?

You should send me some of your playlists, or post them here or something :)

... you know it honestly never occurred to me that that was a feasible option? laughs at self

I've done a few for my most recent batch of characters (two for Santino because there was a fundamental Change in him between story arcs). Commissioned portraits too, but the moodboards did sort of... bring ideas together and express things like character Backgrounds and key locations.

I started a project to do some at one point, but let it fall by the wayside for reasons I don't remember. I liked the ones I did do, though.

Outfit-of-the-night stuff was big on my last game, since it was a forum-based chronicle. There as a nice little template for your signature- put in your appearance and charisma scores and a few sentences about how those came across, any obvious merits or flaws, etc. But at the bottom was a nice spot for your outfit. That is where I learned that men's clothing is not very interesting, lol.

And I would love to see some of yours :)

I have! Not in a while, but I have made them.

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