For me it starts with a rough idea on their story, what their occupation would be and so on. After that’s figured out what their personality and their face is worked on together.

I usually start with a small concept like: “Marnie Girlfriend” or “Galar Bug scientist”, or “Alolan Ice Aether Admin”

Depends! If there’s already a running story in place then design and personality go hand in hand since the latter kinda dictates the former (cliches exist for a reason, it’s all about just adjusting certain bits to feel more unique). But if it’s just randomly making an OC with friendos then screw story, design first and personality injection afterwards, especially because 9/10 times the personality will evolve over time and warrant redesigns anyways.

I mean, just look at Ruth :)

Design => Story => Design

It starts with one character and something I'm interested in exploring, then I build everything else around it. Like Elio for example. He was set to have a twin in Renee. But later expanded into him having a larger family. Also, originally, he would be middle-class like I am irl, but he became wealthy since I wanted to let loose while giving him and his family more importance.

I do the design first. The way it usually goes for me is creating the outfit, then "okay, why does he dress like that?" And then I build the world around it. Developing personality has always been kind of a crutch for me though. That one takes me the longest to develop.

Mostly the former although ocasionaly the latter. Usually, a random idea gets in my brain which tends to be a basic concept like "Cool Mom Character" as an example, then my brain starts breaking it into parts of personality and history. then my brain goes back to design in order to change some of the appearance or to make sure it's not too similar to previous ideas.

I usually briefly start with a general idea of who they are and what their role is. Then I trial and error a concept on a piece of paper. Once I’m satisfied I transition to digital and figure out colors once I’ve finished lining them. Then I develop them as characters even more from there. Some characters I had a lot of their personality and character decided on long before they had designs, a good example is Minerva.

It depends. Sometimes I have an idea for the backstory first. And other times I get the idea for a design and I’m just like “I have to make this a character now”

9 times outta 10 I’m usually just sitting and thinking, “You know what would be cool?”. But other times I actually had a slight idea planned out and build off it overtime. Basically all of them come off the dome whenever I think of them.

Sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Most of the time I think of a backstory for someone and think of a design to fit with that, but occasionally I just think of a neat design and then work out character details later

Most of the time I'll have a little bit of the personality down before I do the design, but most of it is done afterwards. Sometimes I'll come up with new stuff while making their designs which make me change the direction the deign was going!

It's rare that I have a lot of success sitting down and actively thinking "Okay I will make a new OC"

Usually the ideas just hit me and I just start writing stuff down. It can come from anywhere. Listening to a song, seeing a nice picture, thinking about a setting...

Also typically the personality comes first. The story second.