How do you find character references (pictures)?

Hello!

I'd like to know what methods you use to find pictures of your characters, whether it be for novels, short stories, storybooks, or whatever.

I've been looking for a character of mine for ages and I'm tired of seeing pages and pages of Josh Groban, Adrian Grenier, Nathan from Misfits, and that guy from High School Musical whenever I google "man curly dark hair".

And I also can't take characters from movies/TV shows that I have seen because then I'll only think of my character as the TV show character. I like it best when I don't know their names.

So I'm at a loss. Is there something that I just haven't thought of? Let me know how you do it!

Hi! :3

So what I do is I "cast" my characters - even if it's only according to looks and google pictures of that actor. I know you said you have trouble with that, but I focus on the actor instead of the character and try to find pics of them when they're not in character for anything. It usually works pretty well!

@Elinor%20Brynn Hi! How do you find the actor to begin with? That's the part I have trouble with xD Do you just google features that your character has and see what comes up?

Hello!

To find my character photos, which I have posted several of on here, I think, I scroll through other people's story boards on Pinterest. I always imagined Talon (a character from Basecode) as a boy with close-ish cropped curly black hair. Of course, you can never get a good picture when you Google Image that. After some time scrolling through Pinterest though, I was able to find some photos that I thought looked just like how I imagine him. For example, this one:

Spoiler

From Pinterest you can then look up who the person in the picture is, and therefore find your actor or hipster taking a random photo or whatever. For instance, Asa Butterfield, whom you may have seen in Ender's Game, is almost an exact match to what I thought Talon looked like.

Um, why would you want a dark curly-haired guy that ISN'T Nathan from Misfits?

Srslydatboyshairtho

@Twit good question.

I use Pinterest! I make boards for each novel and then I look through "celebrities", "hair & beauty", "men's fashion" and "women's fashion", sometimes even "tattoos" and look for the clothes, hair, tattoos, etc I think my characters would wear. Sometimes I luck out and find a picture of someone I think is the spitting image of one of my characters, but I think it's hard to find that!

(One time I was standing in line at the Empire State Building and there were two people a couple of groups ahead of me that were the spitting image of two of my characters. I was soooo tempted to take a creeper photo but ultimately didn't because I felt too weird about it :p) So keep your eyes open! Never know when you're going to run into your character's doppelganger in the real world

I have trouble with this too and I usually don't have much luck on google. Lately, I've been turning to Pinterest. They have a lot of good, interesting pictures. Actually, typing in "Character Inspiration" on there and slight variations of it is really interesting. Lots of neat stuff. It might be worth checking out.

For me with my characters, I cannot for the life of me find one of my main characters but I did find an artwork someone did that is like identical to my other character, which is just awesome. I'm pretty sure I found that on Pinterest. Best of luck!

I actually have a tumblr that I use for this! I just follow lots and lots of photo-y type blogs, and it tends to work pretty well, although I'm sort of looking for a general feel for the pictures rather than an exact match, although I have found some photos that have matched how I picture the characters very well. I like the fact that it has tags, because it's so good for organising, I have a tag for Hayden, a tag for my current project, a miscellaneous tag. It does seem like I'm either finding heaps or nothing, but it's definitely helped me. If you want to take a look, it's here. I did find one photo I found that reminded me of Liv and Eugene so much it was kinda shocking, not so much in appearances but in the fact I was like YES THAT WOULD BE THEM. So yeah. Works for me.

To be honest, I'm not usually a fan of how real people look compared to my characters. It's not that they're beautiful or anything-- I just feel like I haven't seen their particular faces yet. I prefer (if I have to have a picture of my character) to find more drawing-y type things than photographs. This is an anime picture sharing site that is pretty good when you type in details (blue eyes, long hair, etc.). I also like looking at deviantart for this kind of thing.

I think about who my character type is first and think of actors I know or have even just heard of that fit that description! Then a lot of google image searching. Bonus points if I think they could actually play the part, but visualizing them based off a real person's looks is really how this helps me!

You guys are amazing! Pinterest seems to be the next thing to try - what a good thing I made an account a few weeks ago!

And @Carlito I actually saw this character like three years ago on the metro and his beautiful face haunts me to this day. I'm so vexed I didn't get a picture of him. xD

Well, I guess Pinterest has already been suggested a bunch of times. lol
The other thing I do is drawings, instead of pictures. Sometimes on places like YWS and other websites you can find artists looking for practice and taking requests. I always jump on that. Just drop of as detailed a description as you can, and even if they get it wrong at least you can identify what you didn't like.

When it comes to finding pictures of real people I can't really help, usually I'm satisfied with just a rough sketch.

Good luck.


Edit: I thought I'd give some examples. These are from a story I was working on last year that I've kind of fallen away from.
First there is the picture of Maon drawn by ERZA...
http://i58.tinypic.com/2v3r9l2.jpg
And Karisha drawn by Buggiedude2340 (I really really love how this one turned out)...
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4SnZk6zpTns/Uw__baZ2P4I/AAAAAAAAAnE/DhKHMbIBH1Y/w576-h768-no/Wolf.png

I am confused by this topic, why are you snapping up pictures of internet people.

That seems like it would severely limit the creativity of any characters you want.

If you absolutely need to, why not ask someone (like me) to draw based on what you imagine?

not trying to be rude but this confuses me.