KH OC Week 2024 - Day 2: Past What Was Your Character Creation Process Like?

KH OC week 2024 - Day 2: Past What was your character creation process like?

this one will be morally difficult for me 😭😭

I didn't find much old art to show, but I think these ones will say a lot.

Hajime as a character has existed since 2016. In March 2016 (I was 13 uuum 13 ehem) I learned about KH and somewhere around the same time I came up with this, at that time - eh, I don't know- at least unoriginal character who was literally a goth Roxas (I didn't knew about the existence of AUs idk, and Roxas is already ''emo boy'', but 2007 was almost here idkkk, we can joke about it for a very long time actually, but the fact remains a fact).

His name changed many times and there was no special meaning behind them (Sea, Syon), I just liked the way they sounded. I can answer the question why I named him ''Hajime'' right now. Internet says: ''Hajime (Japanese: はじめ) is a Japanese name meaning "beginning" (初め, 始め)''. I liked the way it sounded and its meaning and it gave me a hint where to move the character's story now.

+ in the Hajime's story he chooses this name for himself, because obviously no one gave name to him, but he needed a word to talk about himself and (i'm not sure about that) in the book he finds this name and I can say that it was chosen by him randomly.

He had a terrible written story on the basis of some other AU (???) and without сorvalol I can’t read it, even though it’s stored somewhere in my old dms from those years, I still don’t want to show it 😭

Around 2017 and up until 2019, I tried to make... something... out of him. It feels more like I just periodically returned to KH in a fit of baseless nostalgia and I really wanted to shove a “piece of myself” into this universe (which was already tired of me lmao).

2019 reminded me about KH in the form of KH III release and... this character again (+ my friend's kh oc- Jun).

I think that for a long time I didn't wanted to fundamentally change his concept (which was literally just that he exists and somehow travels around the worlds) because I was emotionally attached to this character. In essence, he was not just a character for me, but also memories that were triggered by each repeated hyperfixation on this universe.

It seems to me that the most obvious indicator of how I jumped back and forth into the KH universe is noticeable by the fact that it gave me the opportunity to look at one of my redraw series with this character through the years.

From 2020 to 2023 there was a long lull with this character.

2023 has been jUiCy in rethinking from the start because the long break gave me the opportunity to finally stop give in to nostalgia (or at least less) and loosen my emotional attachments to unworkable concepts. Therefore, this character now has the opportunity to finally become something better than a copy of another character.

However, this epic attempt was quickly abandoned as soon as the hyperfix ended.

We've reached the present time (mid-2024).

I slammed my fist on the table and decided to finally play through ALL the Kingdom Hearts games (that was therapy for my soul) and finally my understanding of KH universe became kinda complete (I still don't understand everything, the plot is very complex u'know). From what I began to understand, I decided to give this character another chance and close this damned gestalt.

This story is still ongoing, but I told in general details everything that happened to this character all these 8 years. This actually shows not only how the character changed, but also how I changed as an artist. Even my ''psychological problems'' can be seen through this story, and what amazes me the most is how over the years, using Hajime as an example, my drawing skills improved.

At such moments, you understand that you are not standing still and thoughts about "I have no progress in my art" no longer arise.

@khoc-week