MC's hair colour?

[Reilith]

This is a pretty straightforward one. I am interested to know what is your go to hair colour for your MCs, male or female; do you keep it simple or like to add in some crazy colours etc. Feel free to elaborate

 

[NerdyCavegirl]

I seem to go for mostly brown, black and blonde tied for second, and red is rare as in real life. Brown and black are the dominant colors in many species, and I know I tend to prefer brown hair in a mate. In my current WIP, I've got 3 blonde females (sisters from a race of mostly redheads and blondes), 1 redheaded female (same race), 1 with auburn hair that I'm not sure who to lump in with, 1 brunette, and 3 with black hair (not sure whether that'd still be called a brunette);for the males, 4 brown, 1 blonde, 2 black, 1 red. About the craziest I go is a rare natural bright crimson. Now maybe my intense preference for long hair either on either sex (my man's must at least go to his neck or I simply have no libido) is unusual in this age of close-cropped craniums, but long locks has been the dominant style through most of human history.

 

[AJ Stevens]

I don't have a main character per se. However, I tend to assign typical looks to people from a certain region, thinking about the climate, likely levels of diversity, etc. and decide how many people would vary from the norm. Assuming they're human, that is. For non-human races, I like to get a little more creative - gold skin and white hair, for example.

 

[Miskatonic]

Blonde or brown usually. Nothing overly exciting.

 

[Jerseydevil]

Brown. He is made to look as average as possible. Not ugly, not handsome, not too tall, not short, just someone who will blend in with a crowd.

 

[X Equestris]

I stick to realistic hair colors for all of my characters. Black, brown, blonde, red in certain ethnic groups, and white or gray among older people.

 

[Bruce McKnight]

Almost always a boring dark muted color. I'm not a fan of hair or eye color being a big dominant differentiator. Size, build, or complexion is a different story.

 

[Shreddies]

I usually end up with normal colours for human characters. Unless they have some magically or divinely induced oddity about them.

For instance, one (human looking) character has white hair and gold coloured irises due to his species. He's supposed to hide them though, since the old emperor's family during the golden age all had white hair and occasionally heterochromia, with one eye gold (they claimed it was because they were direct descendants of a certain deity). He's not a relative of theirs, but he is from the same tribe they descended from, and if people found out about his appearance they'd want to use him as a political piece to claim succession of the empire, whether he wants to or not.
Although he isn't human, so I guess he doesn't count?

Another character had light brown ('Tawny!') hair until she was blessed by a certain deity, then it turned greenish on the fringes (she had mixed feelings about that).

Another group (a line of kings from a certain country) has emerald green hair. But it's due to a rite of passage rather than genetics. After the rite the heir's hair turns green, and any children they sire afterwards also have green highlights in their hair (with less and less green as more time passes between the rite and their conception). So emerald green hair, even if it's just on the fringes, is tied to royalty in their country. And its princes and princesses often keep their hair a moderate length in order to show off as much of the green as they can.

When it comes to non-humans, I like less realistic hair colours, if they have hair at all. One race has reds and oranges and pinks, but no brown, black, or blonde in their hair.

 

[FatCat]

I'm sorry but is this really a question? Who cares what her hair color is, who is she? Why does the color of her hair matter at all, unless to mark her against you're society. Absolute garbage, I'm perplexed.

 

[valiant12]

Absolute garbage, I'm perplexed.

If you don't think that the question is worth you time, why are you commenting ?

My current POV characters have jet black, dirty blonde\very light brown\whatever you want to call that color and golden blonde.
And I have one main character with natural purple hair.

 

[Vaporo]

Solid black. Everyone in my MC's home region has black hair, with the occasional brown or very deep red. Blonde and true red hair only appear in people from the far south.

 

[Queshire]

Blue! Well, ok, not really. I do want to give an MC blue hair for the lulz, but haven't had a chance to do so yet.

 

[WooHooMan]

Blonde for antiheroes and morally ambiguous main characters. Black for straight-forward heroes and villains.
In my entire writing """career""", I have only one brunette main character.
I didn't plan this out or have any specific reason for this.

I think anything else (blue, white, whatever) is silly unless there's a specific in-universe reason for it. I'm curious as to where this "unusual hair color for the MC" convention comes from. I suspect cyberpunk and the punk subculture in general.

 

[Reilith]

I think anything else (blue, white, whatever) is silly unless there's a specific in-universe reason for it. I'm curious as to where this "unusual hair color for the MC" convention comes from. I suspect cyberpunk and the punk subculture in general.

I guess it can come from any medium where hair colour does't have to be explained. Look at manga and anime for example. I love unusual colours, I've had almost all of the colours of the rainbow on my head, but in fantasy the farthest I'd go is deep red, coppery orange and silvery white. Unless we're talking WoW type of fantasy, which still needs some explaining.

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[WooHooMan]

I guess it can come from any medium where hair colour does't have to be explained. Look at manga and anime for example. I love unusual colours, I've had almost all of the colours of the rainbow on my head, but in fantasy the farthest I'd go is deep red, coppery orange and silvery white. Unless we're talking WoW type of fantasy, which still needs some explaining.

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Punk predates and influenced anime, I think. Maybe anime and manga from the 60's and early 70's had technicolor hair but I'm not so sure about that.
"Cyberpunk" includes a lot of anime from the period when anime and manga got big. Akira and Bubblegum Crisis onward. The stuff I'm aware of from before that (like early Gundam and Macross) had more realistic hair colors.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Actually, the reason why anime characters have weird hair colours and especially styles has more to do with economics than it does style. Most anime come from manga, which are usually published in weekly publications. The manga authors, to save time drawing the characters, usually had a few stock faces they used for all the characters and used the hair to tell them apart from one another.

 

[WooHooMan]

Most anime come from manga, which are usually published in weekly publications. The manga authors, to save time drawing the characters, usually had a few stock faces they used for all the characters and used the hair to tell them apart from one another.

But most manga is in black and white. The hairstyles tell them apart, not hair colors.
A lot of Western artists do that too. "Sameface syndrome", I've heard it refer to.

I'll stand by that technicolor hair is a punk carryover. I'm thinking anime artists back in the 80's wanted their work to appeal to younger people (teens mostly) so they give their characters "punk" hair. And that convention stuck so now it isn't even a matter of appealing to demographics.

Also, most anime is based on video games, not manga. And most anime is 13 to 26 episode straight-to-video or TV filler that never really makes it to the west (neither do the video games they're based on). The stuff that makes it to the west tends to be based on manga.
So, there's a little trivia for you.

 

[Reilith]

But most manga is in black and white. The hairstyles tell them apart, not hair colors.
A lot of Western artists do that too. "Sameface syndrome", I've heard it refer to.

I'll stand by that technicolor hair is a punk carryover. I'm thinking anime artists back in the 80's wanted their work to appeal to younger people (teens mostly) so they give their characters "punk" hair. And that convention stuck so now it isn't even a matter of appealing to demographics.

Also, most anime is based on video games, not manga. And most anime is 13 to 26 episode straight-to-video or TV filler that never really makes it to the west (neither do the video games they're based on). The stuff that makes it to the west tends to be based on manga.
So, there's a little trivia for you.

I study Japanese language and culture, I know a lot, but this is interesting bit of information. I never considered from where they pulled the references for hair colours.

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[Gurkhal]

I usually go with all kinds of natural colors although in the present stories I'm writing its mostly dark brown due to, well, it being the dominant color of the part of the world where the story is set.

 

[Tom]

I've noticed that most of my MCs tend to have black hair. For Southerner, this is because the majority of the characters belong to the Yianlai, a people-group from a desert climate. Some of them have brownish-black or dark brown hair from mixing with other groups as they've migrated northwards.

The few characters who hail from the far northern peoples, the Vazkyrohk, have blond, red, or dark hair--no brown tones, due to a genetic mutation. One of the northern MCs, however, has white-blond hair, which is a mark of a shaman in his culture. He dislikes the attention he receives from the Yianlai because of it.