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OddPenguin β Nuzlocke Comics Guide: Characterization Part 2
Published: 2013-04-11 16:25:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 4764; Favourites: 72; Downloads: 47
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Folder with all the other tip and trick guides:volbeatfiro.deviantart.com/galβ¦
hope you find this helpful, this is about characterizing in game characters and ones you didn't make yourself, such as N, Cheren, Bianca, you know, characters you aren't starting from scratch on
enjoy, next comic guide will be on spicing up your nuzlocke plot
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Comments: 46
Well, I wouldn't say that the Pokemon are emotionless because in the game, they have nature and IV.
Take Kynim's Myth of Unova, Jordan's nature is serious so she made him actually be serious instead of anything unrelated to Jordan's nature.
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yes but using that as the ultimatum basis for your characters can leave things unbalanced, what if you end up with 3 pokemon that have relaxed nature? are you just going to characterize them all as relaxed? The in game nature and iv can serve as a possible INSPIRATION for your pokemon personalities, but going only by the natures won't get you a very balanced team personality wise most of the time
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- Change Game Characters a lot or at least a little while keeping the original character inside... Check...
- Adding quirks... I still need to work with that
- Fashion... Check-ish... I'm changing a lot... if what I'm doing is even considered 'fashion'
- Giving other people's Pokemon Personalities... Check! Thank you for bringing that one up! It's so boring when they're just emotionless! My rival's Charmander is gonna be cocky-ish and the Pidgey is gonna be Motherly (Dang! I really need to make squares for them!)
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depends on the character, some aren't worth the hassle since you'll barely be able to utilize them or something. do it on a need to use basis.
half the time they'll develop on their own over time in the comic, you don't necessarily have to plan them.
for sure, I've been working on that 100 pages 100 nuzlocker thing, and I am SOOO sick of the soul silver outfit by now. hey, sounds different and that's cool
ah cool, and indeed, it's impractical to do a lot of enemy pokemon with fleshed out personalities and it depends on the comic, since some comics don't have pokemon talk.
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This is one of the reasons why I love your nuzlocke. Instead of using character stereotypes, you made them seem like, well, CHARACTERS! Bianca is my favorite character because, instead of just making her a boring dumbass ditz, you made her into a girl trying to feel normal, even though she's slowly being corrupted by Belial. Beautiful job, sir. Just Beautiful.
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oh man, I really appreciate this and awesome you think so. It can sure make the pacing slower with all the characterization, but it's well worth it and fun. will do my best to keep it up, thanks :3
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This is really helpful~
btw, I have a slight problem with characterizing one of my pokemon... Her Nature is Bashful, but she doesn't seem to act like that too much. She just... Keeps a lot to herself and acts tough. Is that a good characterization?
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glad you find it so. You can use natures as a guiding point if you feel like it helps, but I feel it's better to do more of what you want than what the nature is.
uhhhh...I'm going to be honest and say no based on what you said "keeps a lot to herself and acts tough"....this just ends up boiling down to the tough as nails girl cliche, all you established with that characterization so far is that she's tough and isolates herself.
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Well, I'm not too good at making characters out of nothing, so I use natures to help wit their personality for now.
Also, thanks. ^^ I'm gonna characterize her better. Though it's gonna be kinda hard, since I've already published the page where she makes and appearance. ( [link] ) Thought not too much is revealed about her yet, so I guess all I need to do is to follow her nature a little bit more.
To be honest, she started off as a shy girl, but somehow I turned her personality into that without noticing, even before I had drawn the her first appearance. I have no idea how I accomplished that.
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I wanna get to the bottom of this shiz immediately, Volbs. You make a good tutor, really. As for the topic of accent, yep you have no idea how many knives were "shunk shunk-ed" at me by that, especially the "sssssss" part. Hahahah *stares at Antioche* Damn snakes, but at least maybe I should tone that down to 3 S's, no?
I'm really curious what advices you for....
Dun dun dun! Regarding the visual and personality makeover of certain characters, I agree with you--tis actually better you shape the characters to the overall atmosphere of the nuzlocke, and besides their base personalities have so many interpretations to many a person. (Heck for me I've had a lot of assumptions about Cyrus the most. More than Ghetsis. Cyrus passed my standards that could very well compliment the tone I have always wanted)
Great tips!
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oh ho ho, thanks, and heh, your example with antioche wasn't too extreme, I found it bearable. yeah, minimizing it is best, and spacethem out.
you shall see in time, I'm saving doing more of these until vacation, I can easily do these in the long car trip. and glad ya agree with me, ther'es a lot more to things than base personalities, and interested in seeing what you come up with
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This series of advices are the kind of stuff one wants pinned on their faves for quick access: addresses things clearly and it can be so useful...
About accents, I'd like to add that some readers might not have English (or any other language you're writing in) as their first language. And weird speech patterns can be quite a hurdle to understand what's going on, believe me. So all of my yes at that "use sparingly and carefully".
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heh, thank ya, I format them like general guides with tricks and stuff to help you out as you see fit.
oh yes, this is a good point as well, odd speech patterns make things harder to understand too in addition to being annoying most of the time. so yup, keeping it to a minimum is what I think is best
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wow this is really some useful tutorial! i mean, you said it's not a tutorial, but it gives some pretty good advices, so i'll just call it like that!
it also made me realise that i appearently took the right track spending a lot of time into characterizing a lot of the pokemon i encounter in-game, the rival pokemon, gym leaders...
and dat desu part was just the best! XD don't worry, i won't go for it, since i'm really bad in THAT kind of features, so i'll just leave it out completely
this was very interesting, i'll go take a look at the other parts :3
and now i'm hungry
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heh, thank ya, and it's not a tutorial in the sense that it doesn't teach anything about art, just a collection of advice in tutorial tip trick format.
ohhhh, so did you start yours up yet or still in the planning phases?
heh, desu power is the best kind of power !! sounds like a plan, I stray from doing accents too since I'm not good at conveying them consistently.
HUNGRY HUNGRY!
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that's good enough for me :3
yes, i finally started that thing!
and the plot is quite different from in-game too :3
desu~ yeah, me too, and i already have tons of research to do for my own plot, looking for stuff like that is not really necessary and not relevant for the comic, there are other things for the fun
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good good
oh ho, splendid, and yup, you'll be SO glad later on when you look back after you get further on.
sounds great, that's how you prevent from hating your own start
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oh yes, in-game plot is alright, but finding it in every comic again gets boring, so i'm already glad xD
and for hating the sequel too
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yeah, things got to branch out more, and heh, yup yup
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once again 
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heh heh, thank ya, and yeah, a lot of this we end up doing without even directly thinking we're doing it
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im worried about the plot bit though.... because i KNOW i should have worked on my plot at the begginging of the white run but ended up screwing up with N's personality ect... i DO however had great plans for the future including an evil Reshiram
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oh YES YES ALL OF MY YES!!! you have no IDEA how much simple phrasings of things I did early on screwed my potential for plot things, there was even 1 line I said early on so drastic I had to go back and change it for the good of the plot.
on page 1, Eric originally said about Cheren and Bianca "but I've never met these people before" .............that single line, THAT LINE that didn't even really need to be said would have prevented me from being able to make backstories and flashbacks for Bianca, Cheren, and Eric. So I just ended up changing the line on the page later on to fix that up.
there's a few other elements I said early on that hinder plot things, but nothing else was as bad as that line.
and oh ho, that sounds GRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT !!!
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hahahahaa omg i see what you mean! 
your lucky you started on computer! haha i cant really change my drawn pages unless i completely redo them 
an omg frosties!
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oh, I start traditional, but I keep my final digital stuff intact so I can go back and fix spelling errors, or in this case, a whole rephrasing of a dialogue box.
and sure you could, you can just take your flattened jpg file, copy it into PSD or something, white the text bubble area, then type something else above it
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Om om om.... Oh yeah about accents. I find it helps for foreign-language accents to be transcribed in a foreign looking font. For example, latin-style font for ancient characters and cursive for middle eastern accents.
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eh, it depends on the font, you don't really ever want to use more than 3 different fonts in a comic
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True, true. I don't have any foreign characters atm but changing font can work. Or even the text boxes can indicate the voice. (kinda what you've done, actually.)
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yeah, I try to keep the amount of different fonts I use to a minimum in Odd Ones, so for possessed tones I do the pink in the back and white text
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Yeah, I always thought that works well ^.^
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I find these tutorials fun and interesting to read. It also has a lot to teach.
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heh, glad you do, and yup there's a lot to cover
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I think Accents are used as a Crutch for a characters Dialect. Dialects are completely different from Accents but they serve the same purpose. To show a character's personality or history from what they say. I would dig a Country pokemon that talks about wanting to impress his mama. Or a pokemon that has very rough English. Or a pokemon that has a podie mouth but a very strange podie mouth.
(This was pretty much my equivalent of a woman yelling amen when the pastor finishes)
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yes, accents need to have a fleshed out point, not just there for gimmicks. Having pokemon be potty mouths is done a lot, so yeah, that'd have to be done with a spin. and yes, using a dialect to hint at backstory and their origins is a good way.
pfft, glad I got an AMEN AMEN!!! ALLELULAH!!
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(Potty My spelling is great!)
Well I ment curse words that are either very light or very diffrent.
"You've got to be Tressing me right now" "Son of a Cuno" "What the Dos!"
Or
"You! Make me sooo mad I just wanna! Gr... FUDGE CICICLES!"
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no worries, it's technically a slang word anyway I believe.
oh yes, I love cursing like that with odd words instead of standard swears, it's funny as well as conveying the character bothered
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All of my yes, as usual! It's especially nice to see the PokΓ©mon characterization and fashion tweaks mentioned, used way too rarely indeed. Oh, and those accents. ;w; It's the worst when the character (usually a PokΓ©mon) has no other traits besides the accent. Because then I don't simply forget about them but remember them as annoying.
Can't wait for the next one!
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do ho ho ho ho, YES, I now own all of your YES !! yeah, it takes away from the world when it seems the only pokemon with personalities are your own and all the other ones are just there for you to beat up. OH GOODNESS yes, that's a peeve of mine, when somehow people find an accent equivalent to personality. all it does is make me want that character to DIE XD
heh, in time, in time, the next one will be about plot !!!!
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Nope, I only hand out copies of all of my yes, so I can give them to multiple people.
Yeah, it's not easy to characterize other characters' PokΓ©mon because they usually get OHKO'd anyway but it makes such a difference if they get to say a line of text at least. Or if it's a recurring character, the PokΓ©mon should appear again as well.
AND AND AND France and Mexico don't even exist in the PokΓ©Verse, so if there's a French or Mexican PokΓ©mon, suspension of disbelief is GONE arrgghh.
Plot, my favourite topic!
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CURSES!!!! I wanted the first edition!!! FOILED AGAIN!!!
yeah, it's silly to do every single pokemon you face, but for more major enemies I feel it reallly helps.
heh, true true, though in gen 6 seems we'll be getting France XD. gen 7, mexico maybe too XD
WOOOO HOOOO plot
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ah, thank ya, I feel these type of things can help people avoid the common pitfalls of first starting out and get something strong going from the start instead of being stuck with a so so intro and no direction
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i think this could help people reguardless of doing a nuzlocke or just making a character/comic in general 
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yes, it's true it applies to in general as well
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