A Comprehensive Character Creation Guide

Pseudonym

Some of you might remember my popular topic from the Bethsoft forums prior to the games release, regarding character creation; with a few hints, tips and tricks on how to create an aesthetically pleasing character.

I decided to kick start the topic again, but spend a little more time on it this time around. If any of you are like me, and end up scrapping your character ten levels in because you don't like how tall he is, or how big her bum is, then you've come to the right place - what I hope to do here is minimize the amount of dissatisfied you get from your new characters appearance!

These are all my own opinions of course! What's beautiful or aesthetically pleasing to me, might not be to you.


#1 - Outline
First I decide what type of character I'm making, this is largely decided already by my race, class and gender. Next you want to decide what sort of impression you want others to get when looking at your character; should they be intimidated, curious, weary, inspired or perhaps infatuated or besotted.

For my first example, I'm going to go with a female Imperial mage/sorcerer. I want her to look somewhat like a young and inexperience, nerdy book worm.

#2 - Body
Bodies are a tough one, because, sorry to say, they really messed up on some of the body proportions. That being said, what we have here are more caricature-esque dimension - so our character aren't supposed to look entirely realistic; we do have room to play.

As a rule of thumb - don't put any slider to minimum or maximum. The sliders in the middle are averages; anything at either end are extremes, which usually give undesired results. I've found the one exception to this rule is Torso Size;

Torso Size is essentially how broad your characters are. It's the distance between the two shoulders. As a rule I always set this to minimum on my female character, as wide shoulders aren't what I would consider a desired feminine trait. I even reduce the torso size somewhat on my male characters; as anything above average looks surreal and oddly alien like.

Another rule of mine - never go full skinny. I understand a lot of you out there like your female characters slim, but thin here is borderline anorexic. The same goes for making your characters fat; both male and female. If you can look past realism here, then good for you, but I personally cannot see a skinny worm swing a sword, nor a fat person run the breadth of an empire without breaking into hyperventilation.

Remember you're making a champion! They don't have to be the fittest, broadest or most athletic, but they should at least be able to hold a staff or sit on a horse without killing it.

For my example, I want her to be petite, but still have a womanly figure. My sliders are all rather average here;

If you'd like my actual sliders, they can be seen below;

The triangle is hovering around the middle, slightly to the right.

If you're tweaking my sliders, be sure of a few things; huge breasts don't work with most armour types, and look rather propreposterous. Yes, even on the voluptuous Redguard - and so do huge shelf butts. You might like the results in character creation, but I can assure you some armour types will make you reconsider your choice further down the line.

#3 - Face
This is a tough one, because there are so many different options here; though the same rules apply here as they did in the body section; don't use minimum or maximum settings, which also includes the triangle. Never go full soft, heroic or angular; the best results are found around the middle of the triangle, not in any one of the corners.

Something you might want to consider, which I recommended in my last topic. If you're having trouble getting face proportions right, you can use these Golden Ration masks, which I've edited for my own personal tastes; (female on the left, male on the right.)

You can do your own research on the golden ratio; it's rather interesting. I use a program called Foreground Image Overlay, in order to lay the image on-top of the game client, in order to line it all up.

There are other masks on the internet which you can use, though I've made my own, as it's easier to spot the key points with these. Feel free to use my versions, like so;

#4 - Colours
Use these as a rule of thumb, though be as creative as you like. These are only tips for your consideration;

Dark Skinned - Brown, Reddish Brown or Strawberry Blonde hair with dark eyes; preferably brown:

Pink/Reddish Skin - Golden brown or blonde hair with bright green or blue eyes;

Black and whites are harsh colours (or lack of) which stand out and can sometimes look rather odd. That being said, we're in a fantasy world, so why not? Personally though, if you're thinking of going with black hair, I'd suggest knocking it down a tone to a very dark brown;

#5 - Naming

It's always tough deciding on a name, and that's entirely down to whatever you're comfortable with, though I have some lore friendly suggestions, for those of you who are interested;

Breton

Imperial

Redguard

Orc

Wood-Elf

High-Elf

Dark-Elf

Nord

Khajiit

Argonian

I'm a big fan of alliteration in names, because I personally think they flow off the tongue better and are more memorable; that's names where their first and second name begin with the same initial; aka, the typical Stan Lee naming convention.

I've decided to go with Alana Aldcroft.

Thanks for reading! I hope this information helps some of you. I plan to do a more in depth male character creation soon.

Have fun in character creation!

Mulkarn

Hi, thanks for this guide... Can you do a guide for the creation of decent male mer (dunmer, bosmer, altmer) ? My creations are so ugly

I want to create a decent male dunmer, but I still fail to give attractive and especially REALISTIC proportions (nose, chin, etc.) to the face of my dunmer...

CrimsonThomas

Great guide! Thank you for this!

Khazaad

Well gawd dam that was thorough.

jesterstear

Very nice OP, deserves to be stickied. I don't know if i should start a new thread out of deference to this guide, but here's how my character design went.

Feminity vs Fightability tradeoff

This is a fantasy game, but i didn't want to throw common sense completely out of the window, i wanted a character that looked like they could hold their own in hand-to-hand combat and at least defend herself, even if she's not very strong or hard hitting. She's going to be a healer/tank type character, so DPS is not a priority but survivability and support are. At the same time, I also wanted her to look nice. Finally, I'm a massive fan of Tolkien works so the character i'm trying to create is more designed to fit that universe.

Rolling an Altmer female, so much for balanced sliders

The easiest way to make her look tougher without compromising her femininity is to make her taller. Many real life tall females i've known have had broad shoulders, thicker waists or slightly odd proportions that detratact from their attractiveness. In this game however there is no such penalty, so tall slider all the way to the max.

Given what she does for a living, it is inevitable that she's going to be something of an athlete. Going for max muscular on the body type triangle surprisingly looks just fine. She tooks slim and toned, but no visibly bulging muscles.

Next up, hips and waist. I must admit, I've got a thing for women with nice hips. Let's just push the hips slider all the way out to the max and set waist diameter to minimum. This adds feminity without compromising her athleticism. Her height gives the impression of much more slenderness than is actually the case. It only looks excessive if you're more than 30% past the halfway point towards the Large body type.

As regards Torso size, I'm entirely in agreement with the OP. This slider essentially governs shoulder width, and this isn't the 1980s. My main character has this set to below average, but the models used in the pix below have it set to minimum, which i'd recommend.

Gut size being low or at minimum is also a no-brainer, since this allows a more athletic look without compromising femininity (RL women spend far too much time worrying about their lack of a flat stomach, it does not compromise their looks, but in the context of a character that runs marathon distances and wrestles monsters, it should be small in the name of realism!).

Breasts and butt : suffice to say, i've kept these small too. The "no gear" pictures look a little odd, as less well-endowed women look considerably better than this IRL - put it down to a flaw in the character models. However, you have to bear in mind that clothing in this game adds significantly to the size of both breasts and butt, and that small ones look much better than large once clothed. I'll show pictures later.
Finally, Arm/Leg size. I've set both to max since even at their largest, her arms don't look like a bodybuilder's and in any case look to be about the minimum that could realistically lift a sword. As for legs... again they don't look "chunky" when set to max unless the body triangle as a whole is set to make the person look fat.

OK, time for some pictures, showing the effect of moving the slider along the line from max muscular to muscular : large -



Now you need to consider what happens due to clothing. I made an alt with the above settings and body triangle running along the line from muscular to large, about 30% of the way towards large from the max muscular setting. In other words, a compromise between the two examples above. Look at how her rather unnatural looking , flat chest turns into rather well endowed in armour.



My main was made with the triangle in the max muscular position, and with smaller breasts and posterior than the above example (she also has torso size - ie. shoulders - set a little larger). Without armour, she looks a little odd in the chest area, and whilst her lower body looks great from the front, from the side or rear she's so lacking in buttocks it seems a little odd.



However, here she is with armour on, Nord style robe, Altmer light epaulets, everything else is actually heavy. She's now got a nicely shaped, average size bust, and the "tail" on her robe makes her butt look bigger. If I'd optimized things for unclothed, she'd look like Niki Minaj with the gear on.



For some height context, here she is next to an average height human male, Abnur Than. If that seems extreme, remember she's supposed to be a tank. Somehow I've managed to give her face really delicate features to offset her towering presence.

To launch a thousand ships

The OP did a superb job here, the "golden ratios" should make the process far less hit or miss, though I'm still lacking a good transparency overlay program. I must confess I feel a little blind here, with most of the sliders you can move some distance either way of the ideal ratio and I'm unable to tell the difference.
Unfortunately the default Altmer female face is a thing to scare children, with mad staring, reptilian coloured golfball eyes, huge pointed chin and ears like a pantomime villain. To correct these traits, and make our character look more human, even sympathetic and attractive, some of the sliders need radical moves.

The picture on the left is the Altmer female with every slider in the middle. Our very first move is to shove the face triangle as far into the "Soft" corner as it's possible to go. She still looks angular, by human standards, but it's a big improvement.



Next, she needs to let her hair down as that ponytail looks severe.

Now let's try and fix the eyes. First, we get rid of the yellow colour and choose something a human might have. Now, we move the eye angle and eye squint sliders most of the way over to the right. She still has enormous eyes by human standards, but it's more manga esque, and less like an alligator. Left, default eyes with softened face and long hair. Right, after the eye adjustments -



Now, let's see about those donkey ears. Move the ear size and ear rotation to minimum. Don't worry, you can still tell she's an Elf. From the side, you get her cute little ear tips poking through her hair line. Move the ear tip flare slider a couple of notches to the right if you want more of that.

Finally, let's sort out that huge chin. Increasing chin height raises the bottom of her chin , reducing the bottom of mouth to tip of chin distance like so -




You can further reduce the apparent size of her chin by lowering mouth height. This is a picture with it lowered all the way.



By this stage it's largely a matter of preference though.

This is only a starting point of course, but you now have a presentable starting point on your way to making a unique character. For other adjustments you might make, i'd refer to the excellent original post, and say that from now on in, subtlety , small adjustments and middling positions are king!

Marrkkiid

I'm going to have to definitely disagree with you on avoiding min/maxing the sliders. I've gotten some of my best characters from doing this.

jesterstear

Revisiting this subject - the OP's "golden ratio" mask is an invaluable resource, though I still need someone to point me to an app that can create an overlay when making the character.

However, unless the face is far out of whack the exact eye, nose and mouth position doesn't matter that much to me - I simply cannot say whether one face looks better than another. Some of the articles on the web showed pictures of supposedly "most beautiful women with the perfect golden ratio" and they looked quite ordinary to me.

I think what's being overlooked is that the shape of the mouth, nose, eyes , eyebrows etc., matters more than their position on the face, provided these are roughly correct. And this is something largely predetermined by race, and beyond player control.

The "hot" Altmer player character's I've met in game bear a striking resemblance to my main. Also, most hot Bosmer women look like the NPC Cariel. It seems that for these two races at least (I suspect for all , perhaps) there is only one attractive face type. The advice to keep everything near the middle again applies more to Breton women like the OP's example, than Elves certainly, both Altmer and Bosmer can benefit from min/max on some sliders.

On the subject of women of other races, i'm still struggling with Breton. Most of my creations look a bit like the caretaker NPC that tends the Hollow City.. except with an even more vacant/glazed look. I know Bretons have an affinity with magick, but mine looks like she spends all her time in the alchemy lab brewing up psychoactive substances.

My efforts at creating a Nord ended up rather coarse featured and plain - like Lyris, but shorter. You can create a rather good "Hispanic chick" look with the Redguard template though!

xanyah90

Nice creation guide !

Nevertheless, I am curious to see how you advise to create a khajiit . Being fascinated by big tomcats, naturally ,I decided to create a khajiit but it's rather difficult to create this character (Especially females ! ).

Here is my female nightblade khajiit (Seeming to me rather realistic and attractive)





But now, impossible for me to redo a character so realstic !

jesterstear

Some of you might want to roll an Altmer for the racials, but want to play a male character and aren't happy with the way the ones you see in-game look.

With some major slider moves, they can be more human-looking , well more Vulcan-looking at least, which is still an improvement.





As you can see, for non-human races extreme slider positions are sometimes needed.

Earelith

This is just Awesome...

Pale_sorc

@Pseudonym You are an artist. They just looks awesome

Yakova

I actually tend to keep the torso slider normal to a bit higher except for my most willowy Argonians. There's a point where the shoulders look cinched-up to me when I slide it down very low. But I scale the shoulders to be about the same width as the hips... hourglass figure?

khele23eb17_ESO

I prefer my MMO female characters to look fierce and athletic (and still kinda sexy if possible ). Torso slider set to minimum will simply not do.

Alucardo

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

I prefer my MMO female characters to look fierce and athletic (and still kinda sexy if possible ).

Fierce and athletic? I got ya covered

Daraugh

I think Alder would be considered desirable and yes, even feminine. If I remember right, there were eight sliders that were set to the far left or right extremes.

DARKNESSCHAINED

Pseudonym wrote: »

*snip*
I've decided to go with Alana Aldcroft.

Thanks for reading! I hope this information helps some of you. I plan to do a more in depth male character creation soon.

Have fun in character creation!

My wife really wants the sliders to her face.

JSilva88

I know this is a little old, but I'm really happy how this one turned out and wanted to share my sliders. Seemed like the most appropriate thread and this is where I came for info on making my character.

Dragonia Flameheart
Race: Imperial
Class: Dragonknight

She's a little firecracker.

Chiba_Emi

Oh my goodness! Why I didn't found this earlier?? I'm so upset now! (Well not literally but Grr!)

Pseudonym

DARKNESSCHAINED wrote: »

Pseudonym wrote: »

*snip*
I've decided to go with Alana Aldcroft.

Thanks for reading! I hope this information helps some of you. I plan to do a more in depth male character creation soon.

Have fun in character creation!

My wife really wants the sliders to her face.

Sorry for not replying to your message earlier. I don't know if these are still any use to your wife, or anyone else here, but her sliders are here;

I broke one of my own rules recreating her, but these are pretty much the same sliders.

Wing

any magic abilities for a female nord?

I can make EVERY other race in the game pretty and in some cases quite stunning but I just have such terrible luck with nords, even if they look good in character creation it just does not transfer over to in game look.

I even took screenshots of a few pretty nords in game to try and figure out what was different to no luck :C

h41pa

thanks mate !

Cynistrelle

I know this is old but you are just creating plastic looking girls..it's not attractive and even less realistic

Snipes007

Cynistrelle wrote: »

I know this is old but you are just creating plastic looking girls..it's not attractive and even less realistic

That’s something only a jealous ugly girl would say and quite rude! Now real girls do look like this just not you.

Banana

I like her. I couldnt create a good looking high elf. May have another go

Saboteur6

Alucardo wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

I prefer my MMO female characters to look fierce and athletic (and still kinda sexy if possible ).

Fierce and athletic? I got ya covered

Tried reaching out to @Alucardo but no luck. I'm a new player looking for some slider info to resemble the above images. I can't even tell 100% what race she is. Redguard? Altmer? Any help would be appreciated, thanks!