Thread:HTF1234/@comment-26814631-20150811010014/@comment-4834197-20150811012343

(WARNING! TL;DR-inducing! Skip to the bottom to see my tip in a nutshell) By design, I take advantage of Flash (mainly used for creating animations, like the HTF show itself) to create my fan characters. For me, it's easier to use because I can recycle the same parts over and over again (after all, most HTF characters have something in common with each other). When it comes to colors, nowadays I stick to the more pastel-ish colors (instead of random bright colors; compare my older characters to the more recent ones) just so they won't be a horrible sight to see. I use a random shot from an episode to decide the character size/proportion and pose. And that's all for the design.

By concept, nowadays I use some real life examples, wordplays, or some random reference that I'm interested in to decide how the character works. This is, actually, the first step for me before deciding the design. Take Marshal for example. The concept is based on a horrifying real life accident, for starters. And since one of the victims is a racetrack marshal (whose body is torn in half), I take the "marshal" character concept and make him only live with only half his body present (yet giving him a special contraption, just so he can somewhat function like a fully-capable character, but it has its own twists that can be useful for episodes). So, basically, base the concept on a real life experience/event... or simply read a lot.

This is kinda optional for you, but my third tip comes with the name. Since the HTF characters have either a punny name (Mole is, well, a mole, who has a mole on his face and... you might consider the word "mole" used for spies), simply cute-sounding (Cuddles; his cuddliness might be relative), or based on one thing/theme the character possess (Toothy has big buckteeth), by basing on the character concept/theme you can decide on the name from that. Like, say, you have a trickster character, so his/her name can be Tricky/Trixie (this is just an example). But once again, it's up to you on deciding the name.

TL;DR - Try basing on a random HTF episode to get the idea on how the design would look like and basing on real life stuff (or reading a lot) and other sources for character concept inspiration. For naming, it's mostly up to you. But if you want to follow my tip, try using a name that goes with the character's theme if you can't come up with the names yourself.