OC Origins

[Descant 1,897]

Where did your OC come from? And no, I'm not asking if your OC came from Manehattan or Fillydelphia. 

 

What I'm asking is, where did you get the idea for your OC? What inspired you to create it the way you did? Did you get ideas for your unicorn's magical powers from some movie you watched? Did you base your earth pony off of a character in your favorite sitcom? Where did the original concept for your character come from?

 

I'll start this with mine.

 

Rose Petal: 

 

I suppose you could say I originally got the idea for her concept from Fluttershy being a tree. Rose Petal originally started off, in my notes and descriptions of her character, as "Tree Fluttershy". No joke.

I had planned, upon the original design, on naming her Green Thumb, but scrapped that idea when I remembered that thumbs don't exist in Equestria. Upon the redesign, and thanks to some ingenious work on the part of Dragon_LadyXD, her cutie mark, which was originally a four leaf clover with hearts for leaves, was changed into what you see now.

As for her powers... I originally developed the concept of Rose Petal from the idea of my love of nature. I thought of what powers a nature unicorn might have (I knew she would be a unicorn), and, drawing inspiration from that Layla, that one floral superheroine from the movie Sky High, and from the waterbenders in Avatar: the Last Airbender that bent the water inside the plants in a swamp, I developed her powers to be the way they are.

The rose and satchel were sort of added as an afterthought, during the first RP I've used her in. The satchel was modeled off of the kind often seen in TES Skyrim, (Apothecary's satchel, and it's a container often found lying about near alchemical stations)

Her personality was loosely based upon the Ents from Lord of the Rings, or trees in general, with certain additional aspects reflecting the different natures of flora found worldwide.

 

 

Descant:

 

When I first created this character, he was largely based off of my own personality, and my talents, and is, therefore, as far as I'm concerned, my ponysona. However, I think that by now, he's evolved largely into someone completely different than me. And even though he was originally based on me, his backstory is completely fabricated. I have a very loving relationship with my family.

His abilities were mostly of my own design. I was originally just planning for him to have no more than the ordinary telekinetic skills until I saw the story of another OC (I do not remember her name) who was able to use her magic as a sort of autotune, and completely change how her voice sounded. Inspired, but not wanting to mimic her magic exactly, I exchanged pitch for volume control. The Voice Direction abilities I created loosely from Telepathy. It is a happy medium; Descant can have a silent conversation with somepony easily if he can see whom he is talking to, but his mouth still moves, so it is apparently obvious to anypony not included on the conversation that he is doing so.

 

Rag and Tag

 

 

The concept for a mischievous pair of twins isn't new or original at all. I admit coming up with the concept for these two with Fred and George Weasley in mind. They're still under development, because I'm not entirely happy with how there characters turned out, but there you are. They're fun to reference in roleplays with my other OC's, however.  

 

The image you see is also merely concept art, thanks to Leogal. I'm going to see if I can tweak their appearances from what you see there

 

 

Now post your own OC's. Where did you get the idea or the inspiration to make them the way you did?

 

Let the stories of your OC's serve as an inspiration for others.

Edited November 30, 2012 by Descant

[Mephala 2,633]

Raindancer

 

 

Original: http://mlpforums.com/topic/7430-raindancer/

Now: http://mlpforums.com/page/roleplay-characters/_/raindancer-r1671

 

Raindancer was my first OC and I consider her my semi-ponysana based on her personality and behaviour, Her original character development was very hyper and pretty much a carbon copy of everyone else's little Mary Sue's.

As you can tell, she's changed quite a lot...

Originally Rain was the happy-go-lucky cutesy character in the roleplay's that I participated in. Eventually, though, I realized most people's characters were like that *laughs*

Rain sort of matured eventually, though. Over the course of the Discord's Legion RP she went from adorable, innocent youngster to self-destructive angry bitch-like me. Rain mirrored my emotions and my attitudes at the time and was sort of a vent for anything that I was feeling, and eventually this became her character. Though I'm pretty much through with my extremely dark period in my life, Rain remains that one that stands out from all the other cutesy innocent ponies. I'm currently writing a giant fanfiction about her life.

Rain is and will always be my little baby <3

 

 

Edited November 28, 2012 by Petyr Baelish

[PonyEcho 1,610]

Swift Echo

 

Knight Templar, Celestia's body guard, currently dead.I made him for the soul purpose of taking part of the Equestrian civil war RP, and he was based around my fascination of ye olden wars and knights

 

 

Spidermare

 

 

i'm still waiting for an super pony RP to just appear so i can use her, Spider-mare is basically Scootaloo nothing much about it i was looking for a cannon character who would make a good fit and Scoot fit the picture

 

The Punish-shy (a cross between Greg Rucka's Punisher

 

 

even tho its not technically a OC i consider her on because all she shares with Fluttershy is the name and history and i came up with this when i was drawing her and came up with the idea of a finfic around her were Equestria is filled with corruption after the Alicorns are overthrown so ponies ruled and everyone moved on which allowed corruption to grow and Fluttershy was enlist to a few wars and when she returned to her cottage it was burned down (killing angle Bunny) so she swore to punish the ponies

 

 

The Ponysher 

 

same deal as Punish-shy but with AppleBloom, which i made to fit into the fanfic i wanted to make were Applebloom's entire family gets killed in a cross fire between to gangs at Applejacks wedding and she was the only survivor, she later get enlisted by Fluttershy and later become apart of the Crusaders and you see where i was going with this

 

 

Whirlwind

 

 

his origin was to be my ponisona and he is the biggest reflection to me right down to his injury story, other then that there is nothing much to say about him apart from the fact he is awesome

 

[Evilshy 5,090]

I have more OC's, but here are the ones I generally think of as my main OC's.

 

Evilshy

 

No link's, as I've never actually RP'd her since long before RPW was created.

Anyway, she started out as literally my avatar, just a picture I found and wanted to use as my avatar on this forum, adn at that point, she wasn't even an OC, just an alter ego of Fluttershy that I liked to use. I used her in my first RP (Wolves vs Ponies), saying she was Fluttershy's younger twin sister. Her character was somewhat developed in the RP, but I never really came up with a full backstory until I was asked about her life in my Ask Evilshy thread. And honestly, I'm not even completely satisfied with that one.

 

 

Nightshade

 

http://mlpforums.com/page/roleplay-characters/_/nightshade-r867

She started as a fairly one-dimensional villain in the old Elements of Harmony RP (which was also long before RPW was created). She got developed a bit when Linguz stepped down as the GM, passing the reins to me. However, interest fell off not long after that and the RP ended.

A few months ago, an attempt was made to reboot it, so I decided to bring Nightshade back, this time with a full backstory (this new Nightshade is the one linked). The attempt failed, but at least I got to write what I see as a pretty awesome character

 

 

Sigh

 

 

no database entry, so here's the original text, pasted from the original thread

 

Name: born Simon, now calls himself Sigh, and won't answer to anything else

Species: unicorn

In the stable: nope.avi

Description: light grey, with a red mane and tail. Usually smiling, a creepy, I-haven't-decided-if-I'm-going-to-kill-you-yet sort of smile
Personality: used to be normal, but the war changed him. He was born in a vault, but it malfunctioned and its residents were forced to live in the wastes. He was drafted into a gang at a young age because of his talent with fire. He quickly became one of their top fighters, despite his age and dislike of fighting. Then his boss ordered him to burn an entire village because they didn't pay their fees. When Simon wouldn't do it, they threatened to kill his family, and he was forced to raze the village and kill many of the inhabitants. At first, he tried to come to terms with all he had seen and done, but he couldn't take it, and fell heavily into drugs. Now he takes a ton of drugs (I'm talking Ozzy Osborne amounts of drugs here) and views everything as a joke. He now enjoys fighting, and has little to no morals. He is unpredictable, since he often acts on whatever whims strike his deranged mind. 
Cutie mark is a lit match. 

Strengths: Good with fire and explosions, psychological warfare has no effect on him (since he isn't sane at all). His ability to think is no longer really affected by drugs, either because he's insane anyway, or because he's done so many drugs that his brain is permanently like that. Either way, he can always think normally (normal for him, I mean)

Weaknesses: bad with other types of magic, but can still do them with difficulty. Addicted to a ton of drugs, crashes hard. 

Other: works as a mercenary when he's low on money or supplies, otherwise, he just kinda wanders and does whatever.

 

 

Sigh is actually adapted from a character in a Sci-fi/Supernatural/Biopunk story I used to write called Collectors (basic premise was a futuristic, distopian society. Souls have been scientifically proven to exist, and certain genes have been found that bind a soul to a body. These can be mutated to allow more than one soul to be bound to a body. When someone has large amounts of souls bound to them, supernatural powers start to manifest. It was only later that I read Fullmetal Alchemist and realized my Collectors were basically just glorified Homunculi ).

Anyway, in Collectors, Sigh was an insane serial killer who, despite not being a Collector, was highly skilled at tracking, hunting, and killing them. He only kills Collectors, because to him, normal humans aren't a challenge and therefore boring.

I had to change his backstory a ton, but the idea is the same; an insane druggie killer who does stuff for fun. I've used other variations on him in several other RPs, each time changing his backstory and abilities to suit the RP in question.

 

[Zhooves 843]

Night Cloud

 

 

(Thanks to Raiponi/Raikissu for the image~)

I made Night Cloud just to have an OC.

So when I made him, I basically based him on my personality and nature, and amplified everything about it. So he became pretty much nocturnal, as well as overly carefree. And once he got angry or thrilled: It was on!

As I RP'd a little with him, he kept on developing towards being what I'd say was a bit too overpowered... I did give him flaws to counter his pros, but they didn't always come through the way I wanted it to. So I basically went on and quit RP'ing and using him at all for a while... Until I made my next OC/Ponysona.

 

 

 

North Light/Nordlys (Zhooves)

 

 

(Also thanks to Raiponi/Raikissu for this one as well~)

After a while, I felt like making a ponysona... Night Cloud was close to being one, but lacked some of the looks and his personality turned into something quite different over time...

So I made North Light, or Nordlys as his family calls him (Norwegian for North Light), or Zhooves by some of his friends (A nickname, if you want.).

This time, I made sure to not go too far on his abilities, and in stead of making a ridiculously stealthy, nocturnal, and fast flier, I made him more realistic: Same hair/mane-colour as me, about the same hair-style, same eyes, same interests (slightly ponyfied, as computers and a lot of electronics doesn't seem to be available in Equestria...).

So since Zhooves also is based on me, but at a more realistic scale, he still ended up becoming somewhat similar to Night. That's when an idea popped up in my head: They're brothers! That way, I could give both of them a decent past, as well as keeping Night kinda active (and mention him here end there in RP's~).

 

 

So yeah. That's it... I guess~

[MelancholicMemory 2,025]

In order of creation:

 

DeadEye

 

 

I always loved vigilante characters like the Punisher, Craig Boone from Fallout: New Vegas, and Ezio from Assassin's Creed 2. I based him on such characters. It is notable that at the time I created him, I was reading a lot of blogs from the MLP Tumblrverse, and they inspired his character a lot as well.

 

 

 

Tender Heart

 

 

I wanted to be a psychoanalyst at the time, so I made an OC that reflected that. Most of his character came from his job.

 

 

 

Moonbeam

 

 

I realized I needed a happier, more excitable OC, and so  used my own passion, poetry, as well as my love of the night as a basis for creating Moonbeam to fulfill that role. She has evolved into my primary OC.

 

 

 

Dusky Chant

 

 

(sorry, this is the only picture I have right now)

Someone pointed out the fact that none of my OCs are pegasi, so I wanted to make one. I also wanted a character with more self confidence than the others without a dark side like DeadEye. I also wanted him to be musical. Thus I made Dusky Chant.