As the writer I have some images I really am specific about. For example, the character of ASH (in my mind) looks like Sendhil Ramamurthy from HEROES. Only because I needed someone Indian, and someone with a compassionate face. For the character of September, Frost always said she was Native American and beautiful. Wow. Sure. That's easy! (I would ask for people to send me ideas as photos, but I know no one is reading this...LOL).One of the biggest problems I have run into is the authenticity of the story. I have tried everything to acknowledge the histories and cultures of the characters in the book. It is here I ran into problems. I had found a character, a psychopomp from mesoamerica for the 2nd book. Then I developed a great character/image for him....THEN I realized I had the background on him wrong. The Axis Mundi of the Mayans have at the center a crocodile/caiman. I found the deity Xotol and based the story at that point around him. Whoops... the deity I really wanted was actually a woman (name unremembered at this point!). I developed Xotol into a character with a large crocodile headpiece (actually the top of the crocodile's head, like a baseball cap) and had nicknamed him Caiman. I took the literary license to keep my character, and will probably publish a footnote in the second book to this affect.
Sometimes you have to create a story for a character. Our main antagonist is Iktomi, from Lakota legends. Now Iktomi, from my research, is a trickster god, yet was at one point Ksa, a god of wisdom. I couldn't find anything about this change, so I wrote a backstory using the legends and bent it to my story needs. I hope they don't mind, but it turned out ot be a cool story (issue 5). Also, my Iktomi, will look a bit different from the image at the side. I alos need to find a phot model for him, but I can't say more than that...Laters
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