Membership "Casting" vs. Representation vs. No Thanks!

[clipsed 231]

19 minutes ago, Morrigan said:

@clipsed I love you but:

 

Irony of the blonde in the still? 😉

 

I kid. It was more a hair length thing than anything else - this was back in the earlier seasons of GoT!

[Morrigan 1,826]

It was before the "walk of shame". @clipsed but I love her most as a brunette. My first movie that I ever saw her in was the first live Jungle Book movie. That and I love her tattoos. <_<

[CovertSphinx 710]

I......do something different with each character. Because I'm weird. 

 

Sometimes, I have an entire character mapped out and I scour the internet for the perfect visual representation (or as close as I can get) to that pre-written character. Whether it be a person, artwork, or done myself. If I can't find a proper Rep (or actor/tress), I'll go with a written description. 

^This is part of the reason why I refuse to join sites that force a celebrity faceclaim

 

Other times, I'll start with a concept and then look for an image that fits that concept before I go any further in the creation process. Then I'll tool the rest of my character to fit that image. 

 

 

 

In either scenario, I will drop a character before I play it using an image/playby/actor(tress) different than the one that truly fits the character as I wrote it.  

[Quell 249]

Faceclaims and I have a weird relationship. 

 

Generally speaking, I forget who my faceclaim is for a character. Every now-and-again, an RP buddy will send me a picture of a celebrity, and I am legitimately confused for a minute or two as I work out "oh right, I said that my character looked like this dude/chick."

 

Now and again, I find an image of a character that is perfect and I will happily refer to that celebrity when someone requests a description, but I almost never am "casting" them. My character might look like Paul Bettany, but that doesn't mean he speaks, moves, or laughs like him. He doesn't mean he's the same height, even. It means, of the limited supply of men who wear suits and have blond hair and blue eyes -- with in the realm of my patience for looking, I have landed on this dude. He's good enough. 

 

I often change faces as I move from site to site. I have a character who has been portrayed by Tom Hiddleston, James McAvoy, Richard Armitage, and Casey Affleck -- you guessed it; he's brown haired, blue eyed, thirties-to-forties and Caucasian. So all of those actors fit the bill. All his details and important characteristics, I flesh out when I write. 

 

Mostly, I just use FCs for other people and aesthetic purposes.

 

On the flip side, I have one character who is Andreja Pejic and nothing will ever change that. And I literally can't play the character if that FC is unavailable because the face is perfect.

[Arceus 1,082]

So here's a weird fun tidbit, I am an artist, I draw my characters when I feel like it, which is to say when I have a reason to; but? The first character visualisations in my head were real people. Tbf, I sucked terribly at art back then, you know, when I was like fifteen. But, I was using RL PBs before we even had a concept of what the heck that was. I remember my first one that I did this with waaaaas the hell was her name, something with a V, anyway, she's long gone now but her images were Avril Lavigne. I didn't think anything of it then, nor do I now, it just made sense to me that, as a real person, my mind would automatically start using a real person representation for them, and obviously you don't want to infringe on someone's privacy and use their pictures randomly, so I picked someone relatively famous whose images were everywhere (at the time, Sk8er Boi had just come out, so Miss Lavigne was very readily found on the interwebs).

 

Now, whether the images/person I use for a character is considered a "cast," or a representation that's just good enough, actually depends on the character, rather than the site. Some have multiple celebrities I could use, and these are the ones that tend to have PBs that only acceptably look right - I have a range of options for them, and none of them feel exact because none of them really are. There are also a few instances of a character that has a different PB depending on what setting they are in, what time-period they're in, and similar somewhat odd variables like that (for instance, my hot pink haired Russian is usually Liam Hemsworth, but sometimes he's died and evolved into Wes Ramsey). Others only have one, and yeah, I will get obstinate and refuse to join a site that doesn't have their one PB open, so goes life. And then even others actually look nothing like their PB, ultimately, it's just the closest approximation I could get. I have one character who, for the longest time, had no RL PB, and when he did get one, kept changing which one he used, because I couldn't find anything remotely close. I needed a skinny black man with hair down to his rear, at the least. Yeah, you see my problem (thank you, Jordun Love, for existing, he fiNALLY STOPPED playing PB roulette and stuck to Jordun). Fun fact, that character's hair's actually white tipped red and his eyes are aqua (see, nothing alike).

 

I can forego PBs entirely, tbf. It'd be fun to go back to when all we had were pieces of paper and some pens, and we used our imagination instead. For some of my characters, I'd probably be describing their PB, not them, lol, but here we are. Fun only vaguely related trivia, the funny thing about this, I guess, is that, despite not really paying any attention to media or celebrities, I still managed to dump over a hundred PBs into the directory here, so clearly I'm not as out of the loop as I thought. (??? Wild. I'm not being a very good hermit. Where do I buy hermit guides?)

[Kazetatsu 263]

8 hours ago, Elena said:

 

For me, if you draw the character, or the chibi, or something, it's just character extra, not how the character looks, not a real face (because the character is not a chibi/ anime/ etc, but a real person). Something to decorate a journal or a letter, not to put as an avatar. (but signature yes, maybe). You know, like you have on your wall that charcoal drawing somebody did of you at a fair... and which ressembles to you only 40%.

I feel like I have to address this but I don't really want to start a whole back and forth when this is more about faceclaims than art. My characters start as the drawing first. Its more like making an animation or comic than a film, so the style I draw them in becomes part of them. chibi, or anime, or semi-realistic or stick-figure even is the way I see the character 100% in every scene I write them in. It's not some partial resemblance or a caricature.  The character can be a 'real person' in the stories I'm writing without having a realistic face, because the personhood comes once writing brings the character to life not merely from the image.  A real face from a real person would be approximating for my characters, and in many cases wouldn't capture their person-hood properly at all.

of course it causes dissonance on sites that don't work with having multiple styles, but on my kind of site, I've seen a little bit of everything, so any style of character representation fits in the world of those particular roleplays.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Kazetatsu

[Elena 546]

1 hour ago, Thyme said:

My character might look like Paul Bettany, but that doesn't mean he speaks, moves, or laughs like him. He doesn't mean he's the same height, even. It means, of the limited supply of men who wear suits and have blond hair and blue eyes -- with in the realm of my patience for looking, I have landed on this dude. He's good enough. 

 

This is how I am thinking too. My characters don't always have the same eye colours or height with the actors portraying them.

 

The height and mannerisms belong to the actor, so they aren't transferred to the character. There were plenty of average height actors who had played the role of taller (or way smaller) historical figures.

 

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Elena

[Meushell 18]

6 hours ago, Elena said:

 

By contrary, I see my character as being only the actor in X role, not in a different one (or maybe also in another one, not in several). The looks change from a movie to another, and they don't suit the character's personality and specifics anymore.

 

E.g. my character, Andrea Costa, the angelic pirate sailing master, has as playby Alain Delon, but it's him in "Rocco e sue fratelli" and in "Plein soleil". If we choose any upcoming movie, e.g. "Il Gattopardo", it isn't my character anymore. 

 

My character Maribel Vargas, the innkeeper, has as playby Sarita Montiel in "Carmen, la de Ronda" and maybe also in "Veracruz". Other movies aren't suitable, because her hair colour is different, and her clothing is different, as they happen in a different time period. 

 

My pirate captain, Sol Picador, has as playby Eduardo Palomo in "Corazon Salvaje". In other movies, even "Ramona", he looks different and he wouldn't embody my character.

 

My former mercenary, now smuggler, Chago Moreno, has as playby Fernando Colunga in "Pasion". In other movies, he looks too different to be him.

 

Yeah, it an really vary with the character. I used James Purefoy for a character, and many of his characters fit my character in different situations. Having a character that would have reason to wear different period and modern clothes certainly helped. However, my use of Jason Momoa was only from Conan the Barbarian. That’s the only version of him that would fit the character. Sometimes, I’ll do some cropping to hide the fact that the clothes don’t make any sense. 

[RaWolfe 43]

I am a bit picky when it comes to faceclaiming (oh sounds kinky). But I do cast people for my characters that seem the best fitting for my character. However, I do not cast those that are already in that genre canon series. While I know there are groups out there that play the canon characters, I hate it because it takes away my creativity. I want to create an own character that I made for that genre and not relay on something that was premade. 

[Dragon 673]

19 hours ago, clipsed said:

Sirius Black will always be Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya to me, sorry Gary Oldman!

 

While that particular thought had never crossed my mind, I gotta say you're spot on there IMO - now that you pointed it out Patinkin is so much more like the book description of Sirius. 

 

Anyho, I mostly enjoy having playbys and face claims because I like to play with graphics. I'm an artist in the most basic of senses. I am not a good one. I can't really draw people realistically.  So taking my mental image of a character and throwing it down on paper for the world to see isn't an option for me. 

 

In that vein I typically do a mix of "cast/rep" with face claims. I find an individual that most accurately matches the vision in my head - that particular actor/model's mannerisms and way of movement are of zero importance/consequence to me. The pure visual is all I'm interested in. 

 

My favorite face claim is for my character Mykola. When I first made this character years back, I was using an actor from an obscure Dungeons and Dragons movie to portray him - wasn't exactly how I pictured the character in my head but it was as close as I could find so I could still do my photoshop playing about. Then one day I'm lying in bed with the dog, channel flipping cause I had nothing better to do. Click. HOLY SHIT THAT IS MYKOLA. 

 

This actor could not look more like my vision of that character if I had literally projected him out of my mind and into reality. I had never heard of or seen the guy before. 

 

And for my last note, I don't really understand the objection to face claims on account of 'well my character is too unique to find a pb'. People aren't unique in appearance? I look just like my mother. I've used her ID to get into a casino and to buy liquor - in three different states altogether. I have blundered into another girl that was my doppelganger - no biological relation what so ever, we looked. When I was a child I once ran up to what turned out to be a complete stranger and hugged him because he looked just like my grandpa. The dude was even wearing the same weird green plaid shirt that was my grandpa's favorite.

 

[Sage 289]

I've very recently gotten on the bandwagon of "aesthetics" instead of using face claims, either real live celebrities or art. I love written descriptions, but having that visual is also a must have for me. With aesthetics, I can pick and choose features, feelings, styles, etc. that accurately connects the character I've written on the page and the one I've got in my head. That way I don't have to go out and look for that perfect celebrity match or rely on my horrible art skills. It's like the best of both worlds. And it helps me focus less on the celebrity of the face I've chosen and more on my writing and the way I'm choosing to describe my character.

[Icewolf 258]

I choose images based on how close they are to the look/personality of the character I have in my head. Sometimes it's an actor or actress, sometimes it's artwork that I've come across - I've no particular preference, either way, really. However, when I choose an actor or actress, their image image has to match up with the genre that my character is in, otherwise it looks odd - I would never choose for example, an actor or actress if they've never appeared in an historical or high fantasy tv programme or film, so the setting is more important than the actor/actress. If I was good at drawing people, I'd do my own art for them so the question of using actors and actresses wouldn't come up at all - I use them because I need to. I'm put off games which makes everyone choose a face claim because I don't follow celebrity culture much either (I think the only tv series I've ever watched because of the main actor is Poldark, and I probably would have watched it anyway because if I can't watch sci fi or fantasy, I tend to go for historical dramas instead.)