My character creation essay is a little out-dated and lacking a couple of key subjects that I never got around to updating. So, I will be using my word-press fueled blog and making an update.

The Handler

You are the handler, it’s a part of the backstage jargon of old that usually talks of a manager for a wrestler who can’t represent himself sufficiently. You will be handling your character in your chosen efed.

This can be as big of a decision as you want to make it. You can put very little effort into your character or you can treat it like you’re creating a real human being complete with a life of it’s own. For this column, we’re going to put on our mad-scientist metal hat and go all Dr. Frankenstein.

Your first step is learning to separate yourself from your character. Don’t join your fed as your character unless you’ve clearly thought about the ramifications. Otherwise, you and your character will be treated as one in the same. This happens very often in our world. If you desire this bizarre treatment, then really, it’s your call in any case. This however is a tell-tale sign of a rookie and should be avoided.

I like what I said in my old column, so I’ll include it here for reference:

YOU are the handler, it is your job to manage and direct the career of your character. You must create, role-play and make the life of this wrestler interesting. It is a good idea to give your real name or your “net alias” instead of your E-fed wrestler’s name or people will begin to refer to you as your wrestler. This has happened to me, as people call me “HK” which is short for HardKore. You should also give your permanent email address and Instant message names to your “prez” so he can contact you. The other fed members would probably like to know YOU and not your wrestler as well. The way you present your self and your character will decide how popular you become in your e-fed career. It’s good to learn from other E-wrestling sites such as RoughKut.com and to learn from the experienced people in your fed. You’ll never know all there is to know, so never go in any fed acting like an ass. And NEVER go in a fed thinking you can’t be defeated. At the end of the day, it’s someone’s opinion that decided who will go home with the victory. It’s all in fun, so keep it that way.

Your Character

Again, there’s not much I can add to what I said before, so I’ll just include it. The most important part is; Be original in your thinking.

This is where you will decide what wrestler you will use in the e-fed of your choice. I will only cover “original wrestlers” because I know nothing about real wrestler feds. Think of a name, make it jazzy or “cool” but make sure it’s interesting and creative or you’ll find yourself the butt of fed jokes. Don’t dabble in “real” wrestler’s monikers. Don’t use “The Stunner” Steve Houston, that sounds like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin don’t it son? You’d be whored in a serious e-fed using names like that. And it kind of shows how new you are to Ewrestling by using such a name. Let’s come up with a name right now;

1. “The Thriller” Mark Davidson
2. Kyle Floyd
3. Kris Kancer
4. Jayce Russell
5. “The Jackhammer” Keith Hagen

These are just a few ideas for original names, there is always a chance that you’ll come up with a name that someone is using already. Well, shit happens, unless you stole it purposely, you’re fine. Let’s go over a few names that I’ve seen used in e-feds throughout my career that I personally liked;

1. HardKore (This one is mine and since I first used it I’ve seen it used OVER AND OVER again!! It’s so obvious when they capitalize the H and K.)
2. Ambush Bug (Cool gimmick)
3. TyranT (Cool name)
4. Komatose (Cool name)
5. “Too fine” Chris Divine
6. SyN (His catch phrase is: “Forgive me father, for I am SyN” THATS DAMN KOOL!!)

That’s just a few examples of names you can create. BUT DON’T USE THEM!! Just be sure that the name is catchy or creative and it doesn’t mimic a real wrestler. Also don’t be a jackass, don’t use Steve “The fuckin’ mutha fucka” Jackson. Or don’t use Jake “The shit” Russell, act a little mature even though maturity and Ewrestling is like an oxymoron. Instead use, Jake “The Shyt” Russell make it creative and don’t act like a Internet bad-ass. There is ALWAYS someone better than you! One last tip: It’s good to make a character that you know you’ll stick to for the rest of your career. I used HardKore and retired with HardKore! It was great, but you might have just as much fun changing characters every so often.

Your Gimmick

This is your character’s personality, so to speak- The defining traits of your character. In years past, a gimmick would be outlandish and easily detectable, but in modern pro-wrestling, a gimmick is a little harder to define.

For example; back in the day, you had wrestlers like Duke ‘The Dumpster’ Drosey, The Earthquake, Razor Ramon, The Repo Man and so on. All of these gimmicks could easily be described because they portrayed specific roles.

The problem was, even back then, the more outlandish gimmick tended to stay in mid-card hell, never getting much further than an Intercontinental title. While characters such as “Hulk” Hogan and “Macho Man” Randy Savage got pushed to the main event. These guys were a little harder to pin down (pun intended) on exactly they were trying to portray. They weren’t plumbers, policemen or baseball players, they were just larger than life characters who were usually just being themselves, but amped up a few notches. Matter of fact, the kookiest character that I can think of that ever held a World Title was Yokozuna, a giant Sumo. You can include The Undertaker, I guess, but he’s morphed into a more believable character over the years.

This is true today as well. Even tho, the days of the Greek God-like wrestlers being reserved for the world championship are over, the characters who aren’t silly or easily definable stand out more in the main event.  Mostly, you’ll find that the World Champions or marquee stars are just being themselves, but supercharged. The World Championship is passed around a bit more often these days to boot.

Over the years, what makes a good gimmick has changed quite a bit.  Some rather far-fetched gimmicks still remain tho, and can even be successful, The Undertaker is a prime example. Do you want to be a “Most Valuable Player” role, such as “Montavious Von Porter? He’s basically an un-categorized sports star. There’s a lot of outlandish gimmicks that can actually get over with the fans, like “The Hurricane” or “Sharkboy”. However, these characters are rarely, if ever taken seriously. They almost never become a credible champion outside of mid-card roles.

I believe the closest thing to a zany, but definable gimmick that elevated to a top position in pro-wrestling was John Cena, who grew in popularity by being a white rapper. However, once his popularity became a franchise, he was quickly stripped of any remnants of his white rap past. His ridiculous chains, his underwear showing, his rapping, his chain gang all became a distant memory and the ‘new’ John Cena is not definable at all. He’s just another mega-tough super guy, no different than Hulk Hogan.

The you have the new generation of superstars that can carry a company, like Edge. Edge started as vampireish, drone who over the years turned into a greedy, opportunist without a definable gimmick.

So you have a lot to think about when trying to create a gimmick for your character. Will he have a definable gimmick, like a truck driver? Will he be a simple bad-ass like Steve Austin? The options are limitless, but if you do choose to use the more outlandish gimmicks you may suffer in a more realistic based efed.

Your Alliance

Are you a good guy or a bad guy, basically. What kind of heat do you want to draw from the fans? Do you want to make them hate your guts so the good guy can look better? Do you want to be the hero? Positive Heat or Negative Heat? Boos or Pops people.. Let’s see..

This position has changed so much over the years, especially since Steve Austin grew to the popularity levels of Hulk Hogan and some might argue have surpassed them, since Austin was only on top for a few years compared to Hogan.

In fact, some people have argued, including myself that there’s a new category that we call: Fan Favorite.

It’s an exclusive club that contains only a small number of pro-wrestlers.

This is a very delicate category and can easily be debated, because purists, who want to fit everything into the traditional mold will say that Steve Austin is a babyface (good guy) because the things he did always catered to the fans. I would argue that Austin also tortured his boss, beat up refs, frequently drank in the ring and openly gave people the middle finger. This is not traditional babyface behavior. Most of all, Austin made only himself look good whenever possible once he reached the top. There were no handshakes after he won, he’d just kick them in the stomach and stunner them. …And the fans LOVED it! It was so anti-hero, but the fans ate it up.

Then you have the opposite of a Fan Favorite, which we call ‘neutral’. Being neutral is not a good thing because you have no heat at all. It’s hard for the fans to follow you because you don’t cater to them, but you don’t necessarily draw negative reactions from them either. I’d be inclined to put Kane here, but Kane is pretty popular. Kane goes into another category called “Tweener”. Tweeners don’t really sit on either side of the fence, they can be heelish or they can get cheers from the fans. Kane has tried to be a heel, sometimes desperately, but always in vain. I say he’s just too adorable.

What side do you align with? It’s important to put some thought into it.

Your Physical Stats

I can’t add much more to what I said in my old column, so I will include it here.

Basics:
Muscle weighs more than fat, the taller you are the more heavy you are. If you’re short and skinny, you’ll weigh very little. Rey Mysterio is a mere 5′3″ or 5′5″ depending on who you talk to, and he weighs only 150-160 pounds. But he’s muscular too, so keep that in mind. If you’re huge like Paul Wight, he’s not necessarily “fat” like people say but he’s almost 500 pounds! He’s also 7 foot 4 inches. I believe Steve Austin is 6′1″ and like 243 pounds. A list of popular wrestlers will be below this so you can see how weight and height AND muscle effect each other. You’re bound to know a few people off this list. Use this chart to decide what a short muscle bound man would weigh or an average height wrestler would weigh, etc.

After you’ve come up with your character’s physique, you want to consider things like: Nationality, race, skin color, and age is important too. This all really falls under your character’s bio.

Your Bio/Description

You want to piece together a back story of sorts about your character. Does your character have scars? How did he get them? How old is your character? Where was he born? Does he have a family at home while he’s on the road? What ethnicity is he? There’s a load of info that you can go with here and the sky’s the limit.

Your character is still naked, if you haven’t noticed.

What kind of ring gear does he wear? What does he wear outside of the ring? What does he wear towards the ring?

How about an entrance theme? What kind of music? What kind of pyro? How does he enter the ring? What kind of taunts does he do? How does he get a reaction from the crowd?

Your Arsenal/Move-set

This requires a lot of thought and a little common sense.

Over the years, this category has become more complicated than just thinking of a cool finishing move. You want to decide how you take your opponents down, with a arm drag or with a leg sweep? Does your character use an arm bar while on the mat or does he use a choke hold?

Does your character mostly use chops, punches or kicks? Maybe he uses a forearm? Headbutts?

You must create a move-list that makes sense for your character and is consistent.

You can’t do moonsaults off the top rope if you’re the size of The Big Show. It’s just not going to be believable. Even IF the Big Show could do this, it wouldn’t be realistic to make it standard.

You can’t use a gorilla press as a signature move if you’re the size of Rey Mysterio.

Once upon a time, Brock Lesnar could do a shootingstar press. He possibly still can, but being as massively built as he is, he only attempted it once while in the WWE and botched it big time, almost breaking his neck in the process.

Big Poppa Pump, Scott Steiner, still occasionally attempts the “Frankensteiner” from the top rope, but it looks really bad when he does because of his massive size.

Long story short, only do moves that make sense for your character’s size and muscle tone.

It’s good to create a list of a good 4-5 signature moves that become like a catch phrase for the fans. Moves that the fans can memorize and expect to see. For instance, Rey Mysterio has the 6 1 9. His fans want to see it, they expect it and they chant it by name.

Many times a wrestler will name their finish something related to their character or name in some way. Such as ‘The Styles Clash’ or the ‘Pedigree’ (Even tho it’s been years since HHH was a rich snob). Some names don’t have much to do with the name but still match the personality of the character like ‘The Stunner’ or ‘619′.

It’s important to be innovative, but let’s not get asinine with the finish or signature move list. Not too many people can do a spinning, spring board, 1080 shining cunt-flip and it many times looks stupid when a new character makes attempts to do so. You see complicated move combinations like that only in Indy feds that don’t take too much pride in the health of their roster. They’d rather get popular by having all these difficult to execute moves. High risk moves should be used sparingly, especially if your character is not a high risk taker. Like saved for PPVs.

There’s a few sources for wrestling moves and some of them even have videos, the problem is none of them seem to stay around for long. Here’s my old, dusty list of wrestling moves and you can do something like search Youtube for video of each move. http://roughkut.com/moves.html Your best bet is to watch wrestling and pay attention to the more knowlegable announcers like Jim Ross and formerly Taz. I’d avoid TNA for learning moves.

When you see a move that you like, search youtube for a clip of it. There’s one fairly comprehensive list of moves that’s been around forever, http://deathvalleydriver.com/bbbowm/bbbowm.htm Hopefully that’s not going anywhere. But it’s hella slow loading. Finally, you can just search Youtube for wrestling moves and follow the links.

There’s one more step in creating your character’s fingerprint and that’s your catch phrase.

To be honest, catch phrases are sort of played out these days. You just don’t see too much “If ya smellllll” or “Because Stone Cold Said so”, wrestlers seem to have all but stopped doing it. HHH used to have a few catch phrases, but he rarely uses them these days. “Watcha gonna do???” seems like an ancient relic only to be viewed behind a glass display.

Still, it’s good to have a nice catchy phrase that the fans can learn to expect from you. It’s how they relate to you. Really, it’s up to you but most top stars do have some phrase that they say more often than not. Wrestling signatures have been catered more to selling t-shirts these days. So you don’t find too many long, drawn out phrases. You find something catchy that can fit on a shirt.

Bringing your character to life

My favorite part of character creation is brining your character to life. This can be done in numerous ways, but I will talk about the most popular.

1. Poser

Poser has been the most popular way of breathing life in your wrestler. Some efeds are known for it, like the FWO. The drawbacks to poser is the pretty long learning curve and the fact that it’s not free. People hate not free software.

Credit: http://thatposerguy.com/

The learning curve is not easy and I can tell you from experience. It takes a lot of patience to learn how to perfect all the different textures and settings and clothes and props that you have to download and usually pay for *shudders*.

Poser is not my favorite method and it’s not even the best method from my point of view. But it is hands down, the most popular. Mainly, because Poser gets you the most realistic look for your character.

There’s a sick little category of people that dominate the Poser community. You’ll find a LOT of bondage/S&M type of shit when you’re looking for sources for your Poser characters. Seems some folks get off on cartoon nudity. You see a little evidence of this in the video I posted. But it’s not the sickest community. More on that later.

2. Hero Machine.

http://www.ugo.com/channels/comics/heromachine2/heroMachine2.asp

Images courtesy of David Valley from my forums

It’s not the greatest thing in the world and it has it’s obvious limits, but the learning curve is all but nonexistant and the variety of characters you can create is large and best of all it’s free. Actually, best of all you don’t have to download it.

I enjoy The Hero Machine for making a nice roster page.

There’s a few much more crappy hero ripoffs you can try too. http://www.scifi.com/superhero/herocreator/

3. Blender

Blender is a little like poser but caters to a much more creepy demographic on the net. More so than Poser in my opinion. It appears they use blender to make bizarre things like anime and furries. Blender is on the other hand free, but I’ve heard of people having a hard time getting free props and textures and stuff. Never really bothered to use it myself, so I can’t say much about it but it’s there. Plus the 3d humans have this really creepy look about them, like child molester creepy. The whole furry thing just plain gives me the willys.

4. Southpark Studio

This is not really the best thing for efeds but I still enjoy using it.

http://www.sp-studio.de/

4. Pixel Art

5. Video Game CAW

Related Posts

1. Roleplay Guide 2009
2. RoughKut Hall of Fame 2009
3. KHill’s Top 10 Wrestlers: #10
4. KHill’s Top 10 Wrestlers – #9
5. Managing Multiple Members

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