Create-A-Monster

## Introduction

Welcome to my **new and improved tutorial** on creating your very own Monster High fan character (abbreviated as FC in the following paragraphs)! This is meant to help you in your creation process by taking into consideration this wiki’s **rules and guidelines**.

## Monster Parent

At the beginning of this process stands one question in need of an answer: What type of monster should my new FC be? We already have a long, ever-growing list of **species** and **deities**, that you might want to take a look at. If you have no idea yet, that might help you getting one. If you do, you might want to check if your idea is already featured on the wiki. If it isn’t, you might also want to check whether your idea is **allowed**, as there is **a rule against crossovers** in place.

If you want to create a FC based on a common monster of the universe, such as Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves or Ghosts, I advise you to avoid the following:

***Don’t make siblings/relatives for canons!***

It is NOT against the rules to do so, if you really want to, by all means – go for it! But chances are that you limit yourself too much to the original character and end up creating a carbon copy of said character, creating an FC with little to no originality to them.

***Don’t forget the “monster” in monster parents!***

Humans, even if they are mean and evil or if they have special, non-human powers are not monsters. But we are here to create exactly those! Yes, the canon features a cast of human characters too, but, just like the show, we are focusing on the monsters here.

***Careful with Deities!***

Deities are powerful within their myths and legends, capable of a lot, usually flawless, too. But flawless characters with the power to solve every conflict immediately are boring. Your FC child of a deity should have huge limitations to their power, even if it’s just the “god\*dess in training” perk Mattel chose for their godly descendants, or else you might end up with a so-called **Mary Sue/Gary Stu.**

## Character Name

Now that we figured out what type of monster your FC will be, it is time to give them a name. There are the following naming conventions the canon follows:

***Puns***

Most of the Ghouls and Mansters have a name that is a Pun on their monster parent/type: Draculaura adds the name Laura to Dracula, Ghoulia combines the Name Giulia and Ghoul and Mouscedes is a combination of Mouse and the name Mercedes. We also have examples where a monster’s feature or trait is part of the naming pun, as seen with names like Clawdeen, Clawdia and Clawd who all combine the word *claw* with a name that has a similar on-set sound, the names Howleen and Moanica are doing the same but with the words *howl* and *moan* respectively. Finally, a pun can also be made by using the monster’s natural habitat as part of the name, as it was done with Lagoona, Twyla, Operetta and the surname DeNile. Some names are auditory puns, specifically used to sound like something representing their monster heritage, like Frankie Stein, Elle Eedee, Kala Mer’ri, Manny Taur and Porter Geiss.

***The right Meaning***

Some Names might appear normal without any pun in them, but they might just mean something fitting for their monster type. Take for example Iris Clops. Iris is a flower, but also the scientific term of a part of the eye, fitting for a Cyclops. The name Rochelle is French and actually means “small rock”, perfect for a Gargoyle.

***Surnames***

Some characters have normal names with only the surname addressing their monster type. See for example Andy Beast, Kjersti Trollson and Kiyomi Haunterly, to name a few. Here also goes the actual monster type, a feature, or a trait, as well as a monster’s habitat as part of the surname.

In most cases, canon names combine some of those conventions as seen in names like Spectra Vondergeist, Scarah Screams, Wydowna Spider, Rochelle Goyle and Neightan Rot, to name a few. So, in search for a fitting name for your FC, you might want to find a pun to mix into a common name, find a name with a suitable meaning – check names in other languages, too, preferably the language of your monster’s origin – or just name or hint the monster type within the surname. In case of the latter, I would avoid going with surnames that are already canon to avoid people assuming they are related to canons when they are not.

## Bio Page

Now that name and monster type is set, it is time to give your FC personality and depth. For this part, you should have done some research on your monster type as well, as this will help you with filling out some of the arrays in your infobox more easily.

### Age

This might seem straight forward, and it is. Just put your FCs age. However, there is something, that Mattel did in the case of Draculaura, that I have seen overused in FCs. That is making characters incredibly old. Draculaura is 1600 years old. That is due to her being an immortal being that doesn’t really age, indicating that she has been around for a while. A lot of FCs copy that and add a “x in human years” in brackets after that. Realistically it doesn’t make any sense. Sure, you are trying to point out that your monster ages slower than humans, if at all. But that doesn’t mean they also stay in school for centuries longer than other, normally aging monsters, so having a 1600-year-old monster still sitting in high school makes no sense. While this is a funny gag once or twice, you should stick to conventional, “human” ages, as does the majority of the canon cast as well.

The following table depicts the age range of High School students in the US, where Monster High is canonically situated. Your FC should be within this range if they still are High School students.

 09 (freshman)
 10 (sophomores)
 11 (juniors)
 12 (seniors)

### Monster Quirk/Freaky Flaw

Giving your Monster flaws, weaknesses, or shortcomings, is one of the, if not the most important thing to do. Nobody likes perfectly and unironically flawless characters – Mary Sues or Garry Stus – because they are bland and boring, leave no room for character growth and development and are usually immune to any type of conflict, as they are too able to overcome everything in an instance. A monster quirk or freaky flaw is an undesirable quality in the character’s personality, appearance or monster DNA, that they have and that they admit to and are aware of having. However, (mental or physical) disabilities aren’t usually and shouldn’t be displayed as flaws. The following list shows an excerpt of freaky flaws of canon characters to give you an idea of what a character flaw could be.

**Aery**: knack for knowing what others are thinking before they say it
**Amanita**: likes to hear herself talking
**Astranova**: gets lost in translation
**Avea**: stubbornness
**Bay**: can't dance
**Batsy**: has a hang-up with monsters that don't care about the world
**Bonita**: chews on cloths when nervous
**Catrine**: Perfectionist
**Catty**: Superstitious
**Casta**: mixing up words and put spells on others by accident because of this
**Clawd**: Sheding
**Clawdia**: chewing on pencils, paper clips, … when nervous
**Clawdeen**: quick hair growth
**Cleo**: afraid of the dark
**Deuce**: turn people into stone with his gaze
**Draculaura**: drawbacks of no reflection in the mirror
**Elissabat**: terrible stage fright
**Elle**: blow a fuse when too amped
**Fawntine**: doesn't like large crowds
**Finnegan**: dives in headfirst too quickly
**Flara**: singering her mane and tail when get too fired up
**Frankie**: loose stitches
**Frets**: slow
**Garrott**: Perfectionist
**Ghoulia**: not spontaneous, slow walking, terrible in showing/making facial expressions
**Gigi**: claustrophobic
**Gillington**: afraid of (or rather biased) Ocean monsters
**Gilda**: jumpy (doesn't like loud noises)
**Goolippe**: afraid of not fitting in
**Heath**: impulsive/self-control issue
...

As we can see by this excerpt, freaky flaws or monster quirks can be everything; from very universal but undesirable character traits or fears to very specific drawbacks concerning their monster side, to things they simply can't do but are expected to.

It helps to do some research on your chosen monster parent to find a suitable flaw for your character. It could be something your monster type is generally known for, but your FC can’t do, or something that they can do, but not perfectly or so perfectly, that it causes other issues. Something, that is known as your monster type’s weakness and so on.

### Biggest Pet Peeve

A Pet Peeve is something that grinds your characters gears. Something, that they cannot stand, but also something that they just love to be mad about. Something, that they might see as a flaw in other people. Their biggest no-no, a deal breaker. Let’s have another look at some canons and their pet peeves for reference.

**Bay:** Other ghouls thinking she is flighty because of her casual unlifestyle.
**Elissabat:** When she fubs a line/makes a mistake on stage/ infront of the camera
**Ghoulia:** Last minute schedule changes & monster unable to speak zombie
**Jackson:** Listen to loud music with a beat.
**Jane:** When monsters want her to eavesdrop on the conversation between their companion creatures & other animals.
**Robecca:** Rain.
**Rochelle:** Pigeons.
**Scarah:** Others mimicking her accent.
**Sirena:** being anchored to a spot.
**Twyla:** That others don't understand why she would want to help normies & normies thinking she wants to scare them; vacuum cleaners
**Wydowna:** Can't stand the "black widow thing" (whatever that is... :P)
**...**

Some of the pet peeves are related to the character’s monster trait, whether they are having a problem with it themselves or with others having a problem with it. Others are more personal or have something to do with a character’s professional career. Just as we did for the monster quirk, doing research on your chosen monster type can help you with finding a suitable pet peeve for your FC.

### Personality

A description of your character’s personality is important for them to be able to connect with other people’s FCs. Relationships are built on similar interests, sure, but also on compatible personalities – or the lack thereof. If you have a good description of your FC’s personality, it is easier to suggest relationships with them and come up with a reason why they are such good friends, in love with each other or, the contrary, can’t stand each other (don’t be afraid to also introduce bad relationships to your FC, no one likes or is liked by everyone!). If you aren’t used to or good at writing personalities, I suggest checking out universal zodiac descriptions or read through personality sections on wiki pages of other characters you like. You can also look up lists of personality traits, that usually give you a plethora of adjectives to work with, if the issue has more to do with vocabulary. Another good Idea is to address your FC’s flaw and/or pet peeve in their personality again. Give them good and bad personality traits to have a well-rounded character.

### Monster Lingu

Monster High is full of puns, that do not stop at the character’s names. School subjects, countries, cities and other places, social media and some everyday terms have monsterfied versions of them. The official Monster High Wiki provides a **list of canon terms** that can be used on your FCs page as well to spice things up. You are absolutely free to come up with your own puns, too!

However, avoid writing your FCs page or bio with a heavy accent or dialect the character is supposed to have. Do not use a language that you aren’t familiar with, just because your FC is supposed to be from a place where this language is spoken, even IF you provide an English translation. This will just make your FC’s page unnecessarily hard to read and, worst case, might be viewed as cultural appropriation.

## Appearance & Art

While good FCs do not need art, a nice piece of artwork can round off your character’s page and serve as an eye-catcher. If you don’t feel like art is your strong suit, check out our **Shard Market**. Maybe one of the adoptables available there suits your need. Sometimes, Artists offer their work for Monster Shards there, too. If you are in need for Monster Shards to spend, you can learn how to get more **here**.

If you don’t have art for your FC, it is important to describe their appearance in detail in the respective section of the FC’s page. That way, artists have something to work with if they pick up your FC in their work (imagine, for example, you are the art raffle winner that may happen after **Spotlight** voting :D ).

   If you want to create your art yourself, there are some rules you must follow, depending on how you approach this. Recently, we changed our rules concerning **traced base work**, which is now allowed, but **has to be approved**. If you created your base yourself and just used references from, say, official art doing so, you can skip the approval process. Original Work (with or without references) is always preferred, but **we’ve noticed good quality artwork with traced bases as basis**, that we wanted to acknowledge.

### The Art of Monster High

*This is an abbreviated tutorial on how to create DIGITAL art for your FC. There are plenty of awesome tutorials on that matter online, that go into more detail than this one will!*

Obviously, your **art does not have to imitate the official Monster High Art style.** YOUR style is completely fine! But if you want to give it a shot, using references (in either way) is never a bad idea (despite what some crazy, gatekeeping artists might tell you), so don’t hesitate, find and use them! Using well-made bases is a good starting point, because they can show you the proportions of the characters without fabrics blocking your sight. While I believe, that tracing bases or making traced bases from official pieces of artwork can help you learn (much like how you learn to write by tracing letters in the beginning phase of the process), learning and using actual techniques, like breaking down your reference into simple shapes before recreating it using these shapes, does way more for you than tracing could in the long run, which is why I advise against tracing. This also has the added benefit of your Art not having to forgo **the approval process** of this wiki, either.

#### Create a Base

Find a reference. I’ve decided to use canon Elissabat for this tutorial. Open up a new canvas and add your reference. Make sure you have enough space for your own drawing next to your reference. Add a new layer and ***break* *down*** the reference picture into basic shapes. ***Replicate*** these shapes. Ruler lines can help you with the proportions. When you are done, ***outline*** the shapes on a new layer to get a ***clean base***.

#### Add Monster Traits & Attire

When you finished your base, its time to ‘make it monster’. Go to google image search and look up your chosen monster parent. If it’s not something unique or rare, you should find loads of pictures, with striking traits such as horns, tails, and wings. Add details like scales, fur, feathers, wood grain, joints, of course all depending on your monster parent. You may also get rid of huge parts of the human body in case your monster is part animal, like a Satyr, a Centaur, a Mermaid, or a Naga. Again, do not hesitate to look for references for said creatures/animals to get their anatomy right. In this step, I would also figure out the character’s hairdo.

Only after the process of ‘making your FC monster’, it is time to figure out their attire. That way you can make sure, that certain monster details you’ve just added aren’t covered up. As someone with little Idea of fashion, I wouldn’t hesitate to take to the internet again to get some inspiration and references here. Depending on the pose of your FC, putting clothes onto them might be a little tricky, because it takes some knowledge of how certain types of fabrics and cuts would behave on certain poses (and body types). I would suggest you experiment with attire on a new layer.

#### Colors & Highlights

You got your outlines, you are finally done! Well, almost, because it is time for some color. Finding suitable colors can be challenging, but since every drawing program usually comes with a color picker tool and/or a way to insert hex codes or RGB values, you can look up color palettes online or grab colors from other images. To avoid having your character look like a reimagination of a canon character, I suggest avoiding colors from a canon character of the same monster type. Just because your FC is an ice-themed monster, you are not confined by Abby Bominable’s color scheme. You don't have to use the same colors in the same way they are used on her. Even if creating a sibling, there is no reason to use exactly the same colors in exactly the same way. Now, I usually add a new layer for every new color I am using, sometimes even a new layer for every specific part of the art, even if I end up using the same color more than once. That way I can switch and change colors easily and try out different ones with little to no effort. Note that adding more and more layers will increase the resources your computer/drawing tablet will have to handle (this is also dependent on the size of your image, of course). If it is too much, your drawing program might slow down, or worst case, stop reacting. So don’t forget to save your image a lot in between, so you don’t lose (too much) progress!

When you are done picking colors and applying them, you could add shadows and lights to give the art some depth. You can look at your reference again and copy the placement of lights and shadows from it, if you having trouble making it look right by yourself. If you do this a couple of times, you will, eventually gain a good understanding for how highlights work and will have to rely on references for that less and less.

## Peroration

And there. You are done. You have just created your very own FC; Well Done! You can share it with everyone else on our Discord server and/or browse through the wiki to find FCs your new FC could have a relationship with. If you find someone fitting, leave a comment on their page, so that you and the other creator can potentially work something out!