So I got tagged on a Q&A thingy and since I am launching a new comic I figured I'd give it a go (thanks Nomyai!)

1.  How do you go about character creation?

I often get ideas from my dreams, other times a random doodle will gain a life of its own. This latest endeavor however I set about to deliberately make characters with the combined traits of several friends as well as characters different from what one usually sees- such as one of my mains being mixed-race. Other characters are born of a random joke or idea that took off.

2.  If you've written about your characters, or drawn a comic featuring them, which character was in focus for the first scene?

Usually whoever is going to be the main character, although It's Complicated will technically have four 'mains' of equal value, I'm starting with Vi's viewpoint and plan to rotate who we see through (including the pets!).

3.  Who is the last character you created?

Ooh that's kinda tricky... I have so many ideas and characters floating around right now... I guess I'll go with Julian- the kitten that they find.

4.  Do you feel dominated by your creations?

Sort of. Not exactly dominated, but I feel like they have lives and thoughts of their own and are waving hands like impatient school-children going "Oh-oh! Me! Pick me next!" I've had characters in my head for years that I've only partly gotten around to writing or drawing about.

5.  With which of your characters do you identify most strongly?

Right now it's James, he is based mostly on a sort of male version of me (also he has blue hair!)

6.  Have you ever killed a character that you really liked or loved?

Well, I've planned to... In Nimrod's Story I was going to kill one of the mains towards the end of the story to grow the other main, but I somehow didn't get around to finishing it.

7.  Would you sleep with any of your characters?

Well, since Vi is based a lot off of my wife yeah, I'd totally do her. Others not so much (I don't get excited by dragons for instance).

8.  Which of your characters have personalities that you like?

I pretty much like all of them to some extent, even the annoying ones. Take Kerebi for instance, she has some annoying traits but a lot of her anger at Three Frogs was she thought he was pulling tricks on her. And Ember is a young child who's experienced great loss so her tantrums are something to be expected I think. I hope the new comic will have likeable characters that people will relate to, I tried to make each one different enough that everyone will find someone identifiable.

9.  Which character(s) do you hate for no reason?

I don't hate any of them I don't think, I made some horrible villains like Witchbone (the 'Master' in Nimrod's Story) who are made to be hated, but I don't hate them. Rather I take a sort of perverse joy in vicariously reveling in their awfulness.

10.  Do you cry when you write sad scenes?

Yeah. I put a lot of myself into my work. Writing the scene where Ember's world literally goes up in smoke was hard (also it was based on an intense dream where I was her).

11.  A question of color: do you have a dark-skinned character?

Yes, I try to have racially diverse casts to my stories (when they aren't outright impossible things like dragons and talking cats) I did my World of Krater stories with mainly Native American characters. And for my newest I deliberately made Violenté to be Mexican/African descent since I so rarely see characters like that, but for the purposes of the story actually it'll be James who gets the racially insensitive comments being Atlantian.

12.  Last question: do you have a gay character?

LOL. Yes, lots. Blue Wolf, Tall Deer, Kerebi, and now Taz, and Kyliegh and Violenté are bi. Being gay myself I find it easy to write people like myself and my friends.

I don't plan on tagging anyone, but feel free to fill this out if you want. I hope to really get somewhere with this most recent comic, and I do still think about my writing even if I haven't worked on it in awhile. Stay tuned. Happy reading!