How to Design Your Own Persona

If you’ve been looking to design your own persona, this is the article for you! There’s lots of different kinds of sonas you can design, whether it be based on your favorite franchise or your favorite mythological creature. If you’re looking to design yourself a fursona specifically, there’s an article all about it that you can find here. If you’re not too sure what a sona is, check out this quick guide by my awesome co-writer. Lastly, before we get started, if you’re looking for ideas for your OCs rather than a sona, check out one of these articles.

• Tips on Picking an Aesthetic for Your OC's Design!
• How to Choose Your OC’s Personality!
• How to Build an OC with Friends!

Now, back to talking about personas! A sona is a useful way to represent yourself, whether it be as a way to draw interactions of yourself, or maybe just to use as your profile picture. It's also just a fun thing to draw and design. There’s a lot of different ways you could design one for yourself, so how do you go about doing it? Let’s talk about it.

First, you'll want to think about aspects of yourself you want to keep in your persona’s design. If there’s any details about yourself that make you recognizable, you might add that to your sona! If you need ideas to consider, you might think about using . . .

• The glasses you wear
• Your eye shape
• Your nose shape
• Details like freckles or scars
• Your favorite accessory
• Your favorite hairstyle
• A style of clothing you wear often

Once you have the features of yourself you want to keep, you can incorporate them into your sona. That way you can have a sona that feels like you, even if you don’t use a human.

Design Your Persona's Appearance

Now, let’s get to designing the appearance of your sona! You’ll want to think about what creature you want your persona to be, what hairstyle you might give them, and unique features you could add to them!

Pick a Creature

You can start with picking what creature you want your persona to be. If you want a more simple look, you might opt to stick for a human sona…and that’s perfectly fine! A sona doesn’t have to be crazy complex, especially if you plan on drawing them often.

That being said, if fantasy or sci-fi is more your style, you might make your sona a different creature than a human! If you need some ideas for creatures you could use for your persona, here’s a few for you to consider!

• A fairy
• An elf
• A vampire
• A mermaid
• A ghost
• A werewolf
• A zombie
• A skeleton
• A monster
• A robot
• A human with animal features
• A hybrid creature
• Bonus: If you have an original species, you might make your sona that!

You could pick a creature that reminds you of yourself one way or another! If you love nature or have a whimsical personality, you might pick a fairy or elf. If you love the night and the macabre, you might pick something like a vampire or ghost. You could also just pick your favorite creature!

I mentioned using an original species for your sona earlier. Original species can be a fun addition to any story projects you might be working on as well! If you’ve been thinking about creating one and you're not sure how, check out this article all about the topic here!

Choose Their Unique Features

Another thing to think about when designing your sona is the hairstyle you want to give them! You could pick something based on yourself, or you could try something new for your sona!

You can also think about what haircolor you want them to have. While you can give them your actual haircolor, you could also experiment with colors you might have wanted to try! You could consider giving your sona…

• Your current hair length
• A hair length you want to have
• Your favorite hairstyle
• A hairstyle you wear often
• Your natural hair color
• The hair color you have currently
• A haircolor you want to try one day

There’s lots of ways you could go about picking your sona’s hairdo! You can pick something that feels most like you, or pick something you just really like! It’s your persona, so it’s up to you!

If you need ideas for choosing hairstyles for characters and not just your sona, there’s an article on the topic that you can find here!

For the last part of designing your persona’s appearance, you could think about special details you could give them! Unique details could be inspired by features you have in real life, or they could just be cool fantasy details to make your sona more unique!

You could even take features you have and give them fantasy or sci-fi elements! If you have freckles, you could make them fun shapes on your persona. If you have a streak of hair that’s a different color from the rest of it, you could give your sona a streak of glowing hair! If you need some ideas for what you might add to your persona, you could try…

• Angel wings
• Bat wings
• Fairy wings
• Bird wings
• Glowing freckles
• Freckles with unique shapes
• Glowing eyes
• Patterns on the skin
• Tattoos
• A halo
• A gradient on the fingers
• Glowing nail polish
• Glowing hair
• A tail

It’s up to you what features you might add to your persona! Choosing some unique details based on yourself can be a great way to create a sona that feels unique…and feels like you!

If you need some tips for picking unique details for your character and not just your sona, check out this article here!

Design a Signature Look

Now that you have an idea on what you might do for the appearance of your sona, it’s time to work on the outfit of your persona! You can either design an outfit based off of real outfits you wear, or create one that you might want to try one day!

Does your persona have a specific aesthetic?

First off when designing your persona’s outfit, you’ll want to think about whether you want to give them a specific aesthetic. If you wear a specific aesthetic in real life, you might pick that! If there’s an aesthetic you’re really into but can’t wear it in real life, you could give your sona that too.

Pick something that you like! Designing a persona is the perfect way to experiment with different styles and things you might not try otherwise.

If you need some tips for choosing an aesthetic for your OCs, there’s an article about picking an aesthetic for your OCs.

What clothes will your persona wear?

Now, it’s time to pick out some clothes for your persona! There’s a lot of different things for you to choose from, and it doesn’t have to be an outfit you own in the real world. (Though, it certainly can be one you own if you like the outfit!)

You could pick your favorite style of clothing, or pick something you’d like to wear! If you have a favorite outfit in real life, you might choose that. If you need some ideas for what you could try, here’s a few ideas!

• A ballgown
• A favorite T-shirt
• A favorite dress
• A favorite dress-shirt
• A suit
• Cargo pants
• A frilled top
• A fantasy adventure outfit
• A fancy corset top
• Medieval armor
• Sci-fi armor
• A mysterious robe

Whether you pick something you like to wear or something you wish you could wear is up to you! You could even just pick something for your sona that you think looks cool, even if you would never wear it yourself.

If you need more ideas for picking out clothes for a character, check out this article here.

What accessories will your persona have?

Lastly, it’s time to add some accessories to your persona’s design! Accessories can be a good way to make your sona recognizable. They can be based on accessories you wear and love, or they could just be fun additions to your persona’s design!

If there’s something you wear frequently, or something that’s necessary for you to use, you might include that in the design of your sona. If there’s accessories you wish you could wear in real life, you might opt to give your sona the accessory! If you need some suggestions for accessories to consider, you could think about…

• Glasses
• A wrist brace
• Rings
• Bracelets
• Necklaces
• Ear piercings
• Lip piercings
• Nose piercings
• A cloak
• A cape
• A fun hat
• A fancy tie
• A crown
• Flower hair ornaments
• A cane
• Fingerless gloves

There’s lots of accessories you could add to your persona to give them a cool look that also feels special to you! A persona should be a fun way to represent yourself, so create one that you like!

If you’d like to share your persona with the community here on Unvale, feel free to make a post about your sona in the Unvale-Blog community. We’d love to see!