The first thing you should do is work on a background for your character. Where does he come from? How did he get where he is today? Create your character's world, his culture. Is he a soldier? A child? A philosopher? A king? A beggar? Also try to visualize this character. He will be shaped by these ideas.

It's not as complicated as it seems. Characters have a tendency to "evolve" on their own, through the proccess of desiging and hammering out the final little details. Take the character shown below, for example. This is Zoltan, from the Blood From a Stone storyline. He was originally slated to be a sort of cyberpunk gryphon pirate; I gave him a mechanical arm and all sorts of techy bits. But then as I developed him more, he began to evolve. I wanted something different. So I played with the idea of making him a sort of crow gryphon, then the idea for a hippogryph popped up.

The guy on the left is what his destiny was. I dropped the idea of a cyberpunk pirate. Instead I began shaping him into *MY* ideal bad guy: strong, intelligent, cunning... and completely devoted to himself, but intelligent enough to know how to use others to get what he wants.

Remember that you are creating living beings, even if they only live in your own mind. They must have motivations, wants, and desires. And you must not be afraid to hurt your characters, mentally and physically. Unless they're hunks of stone, your characters should be capable of tears, laughter, and rage. A character who is invincible, or incapable of feeling pain or pleasure, is also unbelievable.

If you are having trouble hunting for ideas, look at yourself. Understanding yourself and your own nature quite often helps. Find out how other people get ideas, everyone has a muse... you just have to hunt to find it sometimes.

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