Help with visualizing your characters

Sometimes when you are trying to write a story, it is hard to visualize your characters unless you have modeled them after someone you know or have met in real life. I’ve been trying to write my first fantasy/romance story, and I ran up against this challenge.

The solution is Hero Machine 2.5, a web-based application that allows you to make up your own hero character. (I'm putting a link to it in my sidebar as well.) You can choose from a startling array of skin colors, eye shapes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, hairstyles, clothing articles, and gear to put in their hands. You can give them wings or tails, if you so desire.

You can build your characters to match the image you have in your head, or you can simply use it to make your characters in the first place with no preconceived ideas. Either way, it is a lot of fun. Once you take a screenshot and save it to your character file, you’ll end up with an image you can reference so you don't make silly mistakes in character descriptions. (“What color was the king’s hair again? How long was his beard?”)

Just for grins, I am going to put up some heroes and heroines that I created, just so you see what is possible.