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Sonion — Family Tree meme blank
Published: 2009-10-22 00:40:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 4601; Favourites: 56; Downloads: 1402
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Description
How well do you know your characters?This meme is deceptively simple. There's a place for your character, their parents and grandparents. And also a place to put how they met...so the real question is...do you know? Answering these questions will tell you a lot about your character.
(sample done on last deviation)
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Comments: 25
Done. Thanks!
fav.me/d7nmyo0
I had to improvise a bit, because there wasn't a place for siblings.
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Uhhh... yer.... ughmm.. this confuzes me... I would use it but.. I dont know were things go.. T.T
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Bottom dot is your character. The two dots above your characters parents. Top dots your characters grandparents. Here's one that's completed [link]
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Yay! I understand now. 
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I am so trying this sucker. Dunno on who, yet, I have so many characters that need a better fleshed out family history. We shall see :3
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That's a great idea for a meme, but I am not convinced that a rigid chart is a good thing to start with - people might have siblings/unlces/cousins that are more important to them than their grandparents.
Without looking at the sample, the layout is very confusing. Real life convention for family trees is a circle for women and a square for men, so starting at the bottom it looks like space for one hetero couple, and then... two mothers of the woman involved?
I guess using a different way to link the "additional info" boxes and the "people" circles than the ones representing the actual family relation might help there, and/or using a longer rectangle for the infobox at the bottom rather than a square.
I like the texture/colour you used.
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True but you could just add those other relatives to the tree. Of course that would mean making your own meme...but as far as memes go it's a pretty simple one to make. My main point was to illustrate the importance of knowing your characters. If I ask who your character's parents were and your answer is "I don't know" then I think it would be time to examine him more. Maybe he's an orphan and never knew his parents (if he is that's fine but that definitely puts him in the minority) but more than likely someone raised him.
This is all just applying my theater training to my comics. I learned long ago that if I want to portray a character convincingly I have to know his history. Sometimes a script doesn't provide it so I would just make one up. But knowing that history internally helps to make a character believable. When I am playing an anime part like Krillin 9 out of 10 times I can find the manga and just read up on who he is.
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I agree completely with the idea that you need to know a character's background. I'm pretty sure orphans are waaay more common in amateur writing than they should be.
Coming up with names for all of those ancestors is daunting, though.
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I think in most cases just knowing who the parents (or who raised them) is enough. In my theater work I didn't name half of my characters' parents but I knew who they were..."possessive accountant mother" "abusive construction worker father" (usually not so stereotyped). What more important is to know key moments in the characters childhood that still effect them today...usually that involves their gaurdians
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This looks great! I'm going to do it. 
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O.O That looks so fun!!!
Only problem is I have too many characters. I wouldn't know which one to fill this out for. >.<
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I started with my protagonist
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Yeah, but you're actualy working on one project right now. I've got...about 8 ideas, none of which are started, and I don't really want to make my characters fight for attention again. The last time they did that, it was kinda messy...
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Sounds very crowded in your head
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It is, it is. It's no wonder I'm distraced so easily, there's always someone yelling something random...
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This looks like fun! 8D I'm definately gonna try this!
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