How do YOU think of personalities for your RP characters?

[Danae]

Me, I take one facet of my personality, think of a talent, then build the rest of the OC around that.

I do that because it makes characters easier to RP realistically and think about what they would really do, because I can relate to them better.

What about you?

[RarityDash]

Usually, the first things I think of for my OCs are their occupation, species, gender and age.

After that, I think about how they would have got to the point of having that occupation, which leads to me forming a backstory. This backstory usually informs the personality.

Names sometimes come early in the process, and can help inform personality, though other times the name is the last thing I come up with.

Very rarely I start with personality. Spirit Flame, Arcana and Dazzle Dawn developed that way.

[SilverSwirl]

I just get the inspiration whe taking a long walk alone

[MyLittlePonyTales]

Well, it depends. Sometimes I'll think of a character I want to create and work them out, then come up with a name. Sometimes I'll start with a name and then make the pony from that.

[korok132]

Basically all of my OCs have sprung from a funny or interesting idea I had at the time. Mostly I come up with some gimmick about them, then kinda work from there. Like Scoundrel, her thing is being a wandering street-urchin thief because I thought of having a wandering street-urchin thief character.

This includes other OCs that I have yet to actually do anything with yet and are completely unrelated to ponies, but they're ideas none the less.

[Clockwise]

I'm an artist, so a lot of my characters (read: all of my characters) start as pictures. They usually have a lot of expression and a sort of heavy flavor, often influenced by stuff I was doing or thinking about, and those things lend themselves very well to both generating a personality and some of the finer details about the character.

If I have to make a character up on the spot, though, like for a roleplay, I usually generate them randomly based on the situation at hand and how appropriate I need them to be, and then I throw in some weird quirks to make them interesting. Sometimes they're interesting enough that I develop them into full-fledged characters!

[Ashton]

I start with an idea, sometimes a poor one. Such as "I want an OC of each race to maximize RP options" Therefore, right now I will (eventually) create a unicorn. sometimes it comes from an idea I have in a story or as a stolen idea from another story (I mentioned before a unicorn specializing in illusions - that came from a story I wrote - which came from the Queen Iris of Xanth (Magic of Xanth series by Piers Anthony) though turned down a few notches. The last thing I usually choose for a pony OC is their cutie-mark, though occasionally I get inspired as I work (such as for this pony I decided the perfect mark would be 3 connected spheres of light --- the 'Juggling Lights' illusion (stolen from Quest for Glory) The next-to-last thing I usually choose is colors, unless there is a specific reason for colors from the start (such as Dunes I decided I wanted to use earth-tones, specifically sand-tones).

though all of this can randomly move around based on inspiration, I might see an image of my head of a pony, colors, cutie-mark, etc, but have no idea a name or tallent (Dunes' Talent was actually his last addition) I have very random surges of creativity...

[DashieInTheDark]

I make characters based on my emotions. (/insert black hair, painted nails, and odd tinted American flag waving in the background)

I've only got one RP character here, but that one is my most complex RP character to date. (Not just ponies, any..) and I hope you all see what I mean as I progress through my RP'ing.

The story with nimbus is that my friend is spoiled, and his parents had bought him anything he wanted. However, it was due to him that they divorced "as far as I know" and for a long time he was mad at the world.

The "personality" spiraled off into the character I have now. A bit of Nimbus' personality comes from Rarity, too. (Influence in creation, I mean.)

Edit: Look at Clock's, Ashton's, and then my original post time. O.O

12:34, 12:43, and then 3:34.

34...43....34.....43....34....43.....34....43....34....43.....34....43...

[Bright Glow]

I don't know I just made up my character's personality.

[weesh]

Back in the day, I would mostly pick an attribute that I wished I had, come up with some ideas for how someone like that would act, and then fill in all the rest of the gaps with myself. I thought it would give an interesting challenge and allow me to think about something that I would change if I could...

I had one who didn't second guess everything he thought of.

I had one who didn't let what others thought of her affect how she acted. I quit this one quickly because none of the people involved liked her. Myself included.

The hardest was one who completely devoted to, and cared more about, his family and friends than himself. This was the most rewarding, and includes almost all of my good memories* of RPing, but it was a lot of emotional effort to keep him up. So for my next one I tried something that sounded more relaxing:

Someone willing to let the ends justify the means. This guy crashed and burned so badly that with the support of some friends I was able to quit RPing cold turkey and I never came back.

*Unfortunately, the bad memories outnumber the good by a huge margin.