creatingblackcharacters

[creatingblackcharacters]

Aker Ajak by Raul Tovar for Vogue Mexico May 2025

[creatingblackcharacters]

very small Black creator i enjoy on yt is Kerobits she only has like 300 subs but great stuff!

Another YouTuber!

[creatingblackcharacters]

A couple more Black-created audio dramas!

InCo - "A Sci-Fi story about a disgruntled information seller, a mysterious space boy, and an android doing her best." This one is very fun with very short episodes/minisodes. Created by ItMe.

Overbrook - Set in a weird small town full of horrors and dangers, we follow Vincent and their best friend Wynn, who has a bit of a dying problem. That is, dying and coming back all the time. Other than them, the town's full of Gens and Erics, that is, faceless generic people. Aside from avoiding bottomless pot holes, mirror clones, and frozen yogurt free samples that cause hive minds, Vincent and Wynn just want to deal with their classes at the local community college. Created by Rhys Tirado.

--audio drama anon

Nice!!!

[creatingblackcharacters]

i'm Indigenous, my fams Indigenous, i have blond and blue eyed cousins who are also Indigenous, and we can tan pretty dark... because we're Indigenous. being white-passing doesn't divorce us from our culture(s), that's the genocide. that said, given how racist beauty standards are it would be nice to see something. y'know. else. in combination with. but these guys sound like assholes so fuckem tbh, i just ask thats something we keep in mind when it comes to Indigenous creators. a lot of us get shit for not just how we protect our cultures but how we portray our cultures and try to reconnect to our cultures, especially given a lot of our cultural practices are still illegal to this day. that commonly extends to the characters we use to do that with regardless of character colouration. a lot of the time it feels like we just cannot win. sending this ask by itself is nerve wracking.

i also want to give thanks to this blog, i appreciate so much the work you've done to bring together a fantastic syllabus for creating Black characters, thank you so much! it's been a fantastic resource for me both writing wise and personally speaking and i'm very grateful

I don't... I don't know what to say about this 😅 I'm not saying that you don't belong! We know we have white passing Black people and mixed people. I still think that Afro-Indigenous people, specifically darker skinned ones, would be shown less than white passing ones for obvious reasons, and that's my focus here. That you can be Black biracial without being light skinned with thin hair, that maybe we should see more of them. Like even within the community, thanks to colorism, lighter skinned Black people are going to be chosen for representation far more often.

And you're welcome!

[creatingblackcharacters]

Hi! Bit of a hyperspecific question so feel free to ignore

I'm drawing stuff for the melanin beam challenge, specifically focusing on multiple hairstyles for my Black design of Two Face across their life. With their whole gimmick being having two separate parts of the same body, I wanted to do something fun with their hair during their "villain" era and take it a step further than just having one half dyed and one half natural color, and instead have it so they have two separate hairstyles for each half of their head.

Is that actually something that can be done with Black hair, and if so, how should I look it up to find examples?

(I know that with characters there can be a level of unrealism at play for rule of cool, I'm mostly asking to have reference at hand so I can make it look more accurate to how Black hair would actually look if someone did that)

Yes 😅 if it can be done, it can be done in Black hair. You'd just part it in the middle. I don't think you necessarily have to find people with two different styles in their hair, as much as you would just find an example of both styles you want and just reference it at the split, if that makes sense. So, if you want him to have straight hair on one side, curls on the other, just either type that in on your chosen search engine, or find a ref for straight hair, and one for curls. Just work with your drawing software!

But yes, it's possible.

[creatingblackcharacters]

The Our Life discourse involving Rose was very complicated, and I definitely didn't see every side of it, but I do feel that askers "summary" of it isn't all that accurate.

From what I can find Rose's seemingly biphobic comment was taken out of context and was part of a larger discussion about biphobia in the fandom surrounding Tamarack(one of the love interests), where their comment was meant more as "it bothers me that I only ever really see her with male MC's and think it would be nice to see her with female MC's more as well" rather than "Tamarack being with male MC's erases her bi/queerness" (though I would like to stress again I don't know everything about the situation)

The developer stated that none of their feedback had shown any sort of biphobic beliefs and that she genuinely believes that it was just a poorly worded comment in a larger discussion.

There was also further discourse from two people posting several unflattering screenshots of things Rose had posted in a private venting server, but I have a feeling that's probably more info than necessary especially since you're not really near/a part of the games community.

I do also definitely agree that the Black and POC character designs in OL:BaA are pretty bad, but the developer has listened to people's feedback and has definitely made an improvement in that area, though it still sucks that there's only one Black character currently.

Oh and iirc shortly after the discourse Rose did step down from their role as a sensitivity reader

(I just wanted to spread more accurate information on that topic, since I felt the other ask didn't really accurately portray what happened and I'm very sorry if this ask was unwanted or rubbed you the wrong way at all that was not my intention)

In reference to this post 👆🏾 Thank you for further context!

I will say, if y'all wanna debate this out further, unless there's something key about antiblackness, y'all are gone have to do it in the post! It's odd to me when people debate through anons through me, as if I have been signed on to be a mediator to something I know nothing about.

[creatingblackcharacters]

hey! one of my friends considers the way i draw darker skin tones oevrsaturated, but i know for a fact the way they draw them is ashy and desaturated. i want to get them to reconsider their approach to skin, but they're awfully stubborn and bad with criticism. have you had any experience with people like that?

I'd have to see both pieces to make a call like that. But if your friend can't deal with criticism, and they especially cannot deal with criticism that potentially deals with them being racist, then I would reconsider that friendship altogether.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Mixed thoughts II by  Odeyemi Oluwaseun

[creatingblackcharacters]

Anguillan carnivaler, Anguilla by Ani

[creatingblackcharacters]

[creatingblackcharacters]

hi! i seek some advice for Black character deisgn! basically i have a character who is supposed to have a "water motif", so i want to try and explore a lot of themes that have to do with water, especially deep water bodies, the bottom of the ocean, etc.. she's actually a quite old oc of mine im revisiting and redesigning, her first iteration had wavy long black hair that i want to change into something more natural. she has rlly dark skin, and the reason her hair was the way it was is bc i wanted it to resemble water flowing; i wanted to ask if you have any suggestions for Black hairstyles that could give a similar impression to that? its completely fine if not, i plan on changing her design anyway! im thinking of doing something with braids and beads if nothing else, dark blue beads and seashells, but i wanted to send this ask to see if you have some insight or suggestions?

thank you in advance if you decide to answer this!

Braid styles and locs flow in water too 🙏🏾 They worked on Halle's hair particularly to make sure it flowed with the water in The Little Mermaid.

[creatingblackcharacters]

Im pretty sure I can share this here, but I wanted to share an interactive novel that I love! I sadly haven’t been able to read it in awhile due to irl stuff but I want to share it!

It’s called “A Tale of Crowns”, a large amount of it is based on Kurdish culture and the Middle East! It has four love interests you can befriend and/or romance during the course of the story, all four and including the player character are all people of colour and the storyline is genuinely interesting to read through and interact with! ^^

I'm going to assume that because you sent this here, this also includes Black characters!

[creatingblackcharacters]

on a similar wavelength to a prev anon, being Black in roleplay communities is TOUGH. A long time ago when I was like 13/14, I was the only Black person in an online RP group of people older than me, and I had a Black OC that occasionally made lighthearted comments and jokes about white people amongst friends, as I do. They called me/my character racist against Canadians(?) and someone even did some sort of "um actually ☝️" about Black people being very racist themselves(??). I didn't know how to handle that back then, and honestly I doubt anything I could have said would impact those dense mfs because a pack of anti-Black white people are impenetrably ignorant. I don't rp anymore but I'm sure it hasn't improved much nowadays. I hope there are Black roleplayers with their own spaces, and I encourage Black people to make/seek out those spaces. I would have loved that when I was younger, maybe wouldn't have fallen out of the hobby.

And then they ask "why aren't there any Black people in ____?" I'm sorry you went through that friend. You deserved better, especially as a kid. Bunch of grown ass adults acting like that 🙄

[creatingblackcharacters]

The ask about roleplay reminded me - how do you feel about nonblack roleplayers with Black roleplay OCs, or roleplaying canon Black characters in fandom RP? It feels kind of... Weird to me, in the way that white people using GIFs of Black people to be sassy is Weird to me (and in a way nonblack creators adding Black OCs to their fiction does not by default feel weird to me though it obviously can be antiblack in practice). In video game fandoms, we've had conversations about white gamers with brown player characters being a kind of brownface, because it's more than just creating a character; it's creating something you're supposed to self-insert into. RP feels fairly equivalent in a lot of ways - but I'm not Black so I don't get to tell Black people how to feel. May I ask you to weigh in?

I won't say I think being a Black RP character itself is inherently weird, like I don't think there's a problem with men RP women because we done had to play as guy characters in everything our whole lives.

I think the issue comes into play when they're trying to... BE Black, if that makes sense. Like it's one thing to have on a character skin, it's another thing to try to enact what you believe is the racism or racial experience this character would have, ESPECIALLY when you don't know anything about what that means. Like why is your character supposedly undergoing oppression that deals with racism, but you can't even pinpoint what that looks like in reality? What exactly are you playing as, other than a whitewashed, incorrect mentality of what you believe to be racism?

I think that goes for really any sort of character role with a marginalized identity. Like if you just a knight saving the kingdom and you're Black, go for it! But dont get in on some Detroit Become Human shit and expect anyone that DOES live that experience to take you seriously 😅

[creatingblackcharacters]

gentrified locs is a rly funny term to me bc it's so true 😭😭 I'm gonna go on a rant here very sorry LOL but I feel like a good chunk of loc styles have become peoples default when it comes to designing Black characters , and I'm not too sure how to feel about it ? on one hand it's like, "okay good on y'all for finally finding Black hairstyles to draw rather than just not putting in the effort to draw any hair texture above straight" , but on the other hand sometimes it feels like a cop out in a way? at least in the art spaces I've been in it feels like a lot of Nonblack character designers will only give their Black characters locs and no other hairstyles... and in some cases I'd even argue it doesn't make sense for the character (specifically pertaining to like black versions of already existing characters or gijinkas, and also specifically naturally grown locs and not crochet or faux), though maybe I'm just a bit nit-picky? Quite unsure... 🚬 also no need to properly answer this or anything . I'm just airing my grievances

I hear you. I personally like locs so I'm never gonna be sad about seeing them. But it does feel like we're still shying away from natural hairstyles and the different ways Black hair can be depicted. But that's also why I follow Black artists, because I know that WE know what our options are 🤌🏾🔥

[creatingblackcharacters]

"Mary"

source: Girls' Night Out, photographed by Chloe Atkins

[creatingblackcharacters]

Not a question but I want to say that Pinterest has improved a lot when it comes to Black people hairstyles references for character design. Two years ago for some reason it suggested hairstyles very similar to one another, but now they're very diverse, to the point the white people's hair suggestions get boring.

I still struggle with creating unique silhouettes with short afros or with clothes instead of hair for bald people, but in the last weeks I've seen so many cool hairstyles that it bugs me even more that people insist in that Killmonger (which I've started thinking is the "closest to white men hairstyles shape" they can imagine a Black man with) or straight hair or wavy hair every time.

Tis the gentrified locs! But yes, it's why I get incredibly bored of seeing what is clearly just a person's inability to draw Black hair on an ambiguously brown character design. I refuse to accept it as something that's supposed to be me 🤷🏾‍♀️ either I'll fix it (I.e. Hades Patroclus, Noe) or I'll completely ignore it. Because I don't look like that. We don't all look like that. And y'all KNOW we don't look like that, because when it's time to be discriminatory, you know precisely what we look like.