Heres my basic format
Characters Name
Quick-list
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Name-Your Character's Name.
Age-How old is he/she?
Race/Ethnicity-Just in case your character is non-human, or of a certain descent you want to carry over into art of them.
Body-type-Just so that the artist doesn't draw you flat-chested, stick of a character as some sort of voluptuous vixen.
Brief Personality-What is your character like? For the brief personality I generally use single descriptive words like cunning, or stubborn. You can list as many as you want to get your point across.
Dominate expressions-Don't want your badass assassin chick drawn generically smiling? That's what this catergories for.
Must include-Like I mentioned before. BE SPECIFIC. If your character has an importan birthmark that simply MUST be included on the right side of his face, then that imformation goes here.
References-Links to your most accurate/ favorite pictoral references of your character.
In-depth Bio
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In-depth personality-Here is where you go into great detail about your characters personality. Everything that makes him/her special.Physical description-A detailed physical description of your characters. This is a good idea to have as well as picture references because you can go into detail about various parts of your characters physical description, and how they got that way.Brief history-A brief (or long-winded if you prefer) account of your characters background story. Characters transformation-This is optional, but could serve to inspire an artist to take a more vested interest in drawing your character at a pivotal stage in their story.Character relationships/ Family-Another optional, but potentially useful category. Especially useful if you plan on having your character drawn with other characters.Example of character interaction-Again, Optional. Use this category to describe specific scenes you'd love to have drawn, or dialogue out interactions between your character and another to give an artist a better feel of who the character is.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't mind if you use this exact format, coding and all. It's just
that important to make sure you provide an artist with adequate imformation. There is both a
quick list, and an in-depth bio for a reason. Most artists I've encountered can be seperated into two groups. Those that will rely solely on the quick list, and those that thirst for as much information about a character as they can get their hands on.
The quick list || Lets talk about that first type of artist. Gaian artists most likely don't have a ton of time on their hands. Think about it. They're sacrificing their
real life time, and effort to create something personalized for you in return for something that doesn't yeild any real life worth. Keeping that in mind, some artists will not want to put as much time into reading about an OC before they start drawing. The quick list acts as a good reference material for those artists that are itching to get drawing. They can glance over it real quick, all the important details are there, including the must-haves, and the references pictures closest to what you're looking for are right there. The quick list is a great resource for the artist to consult as they're drawing, and it makes getting those small details right even easier.
The in-depth bio || There will ALWAYS be those, myself included, that have a hard time drawing a character if they can't inspire themselves. The in-depth bio is your chance to go all out with the details, and make your character as appealing as possible. Does your character have an awesome background story? Rock the hell out of it. Include awe inspiring scene descriptions, tell all about the epic fight where your character got that prominent character defigning scar, include RP snipits. This section is really up to you to include whatever your hearts desire. And there are artists that will appreciate seeing, and reading that kind of passion invested in a character. Plus, and awesome backstory, makes a cool looking character even more epic.
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