#4 Potato elder
I’m finding it rather difficult coming up with names for my characters. How do you guys go about it?
Anyway continuing with the “fighting vegetables” theme I’ve established this is the grand poobah of all the potatoes in the land. He is the leader, possibly the king.  Don’t let his gnarly beard and cane fool you. He is still quite the fighter in his old age.
Me not being able to figure out what to do with his right hand resulted in me just cutting it off. From the look on his face I’d say he recently lost it in a fight to the death. A hand is a small price to pay for your life.
So what do you guys think of him? All opinions welcome!
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Very cool! His beard makes me think of roots or somethin’. And his right hand just proves that an artist’s block is more dangerous than it sounds.
As for names, I usually just brainstorm until I think of something that clicks. …When in doubt though, I look up meanings of obscure words. haha.
Yea his beard is supposed to be those little things that grow out of old potatoes. Thanks for the comment!
Getting the right name is kind of an art form in itself. If you want to go with something completely unique that’s the hardest, but a good way to do it is just mash names and words together until it turns out to be something different.
I prefer sort of real sounding names myself. A good way to get those is looking at movie credits, phone books, cemeteries…
Also if you like puns I think this guy could be named “Spudicus”. 🙂
Thanks for the input!
He’s great!!
You take Mr. Potato Head to a whole new level Ryan! LOL I love how you used the potato eye thingys into a beard and the cut off hand is a great touch…
yea sometimes coming up with names is real tough. It seams I always have an idea for everything but one aspect… like a freestyle image looks like a cool character but i have no name or story for it.. or I have a character all mapped out in my head but i can’t think of how i want the character too look… sex, race, clothing, hair color can all be tough decisions to make
So I think what it is, is that in character design often it takes a lot of exploring and revising the look until you settle on something you like. This challenge forces you to work quick however so im treating many of these as unfinished characters that probably will be changed a few times before i finally make it into something.
Thanks man!
Like I stated in my first post character design is something I’ve always struggled with. Now I draw “characters” all the time, but before this I never thought about naming them, or giving them a personality or a purpose. I think when I have a little more free time I’ll try and develop these characters a little bit more.
guess i kind of went on a tangent there not exactly talking about the name thing…
well names tend to come first for me and then i build around that… probably 80% of the time that’s how it happens for me…
I do have a woman character though that i had no name for but i had a decent amount of background story thought out for her… I think I’m going to use the word Scorn for her name taken from the phrase “God hath no wrath like a woman scorned” or however it goes… and that phrase pretty much describes her motivation…
luckily with comic book names you can get kinda cheesy like that and it still sounds cool 😉