Building around a thesis

Last night I hosted our second online, 1-hour character design game.  We chose "The Victim" archetype, where afterwards I learned more about how to approach a character design from Vicky's drawing and her initial approach.

The whole time I was very frustrated and felt like my idea of a victim didn't have any direction and didn't know why, so I kept turning to the details of the character.  I picked out a few too many traits and mashed them together, leaving me very aimless in where to take my drawing.  When I boiled all my ideas down, the only direction I had was the word, "sadness."

Vicky was able to take hers a step much further while still keeping things basic - She chose a trait of the archetype that stuck out to her and then structured everything else around that (like a thesis statement for an essay).  She focused on the fact that victims take pride in their sacrifices, and the result communicates that clearly below.

Victim character archetype by Vicky Kao.  I love the eerie-ness of how it communicates a sense of loneliness within pride

My Victim archetype posted for comparison.  By getting lost in details, all I was able to think of was "a character that is sad," resulting in a drawing that communicates not a percent more specific than that

Moral of the story is for me to develop a character like I would for an essay.  The archetype should serve as a character genre, not a character in of itself.  In order to make them more rounded and 3-dimensional, I must ask myself, "what is that 'thesis statement' within that archetype?"  Once I have that set as a foundation, then I will have something solid to build upon.