Got a character that looks completely oof? Overpowered alicorn with bright colors that are harsh on the eyes, or that edgy black-and-red doom and gloom guy? Now, you don’t necessarily have to change these if you really don’t want to, but it’s understandable to look back at a character and maybe wonder why you made certain choices, or no longer be happy with how it looks. Taking what you’ve learned from the previous guides, it shouldn’t be so much of a struggle. Let’s look at an example:

Taken directly from my deviantArt, this is her description:
“Her real name is Glam Candy (PunkScene Emocore is her internet/stage name) and that’s her natural mane color (minus the raccoon stripes and the black dip dye), yes her eyes and magic are rainbow because she’s Worth It™
She likes raves, bubblegum, piercings and crazy makeup, glitter, music, bright af colors, vaping, puppies, playing guitar and baking cookies. I didn’t draw her cutie mark but it would be a guitar-shaped cookie with white chocolate chips. 
Glam’s savage but also a sweetheart and will beat you up if she sees you bullying kids.”

Now, this is a character I made as a joke for some giggles one day, so she’s meant to be like this on purpose, but let’s fix her up anyway. She still has some viable traits here for her to become a good character, like a basic personality and the beginnings of what could be a nice color palette. We’ll start by discussing the process of changing her looks.

I started by removing all the accessories from her base design, the black stripes on her horn, and some colors from her hair. The yellow and reddish pink in her hair looked nice, so those were kept as her two natural mane/tail colors and adjusted their brightness slightly. Her legs got a light gradient and I gave her hooves to match my current style. Instead of rainbow, I made her eyes and magic color a light aqua.

For her stage persona, I looked at punk clothing for ideas on her outfit, and saw some neat black leather coats with belts and studded/spiked accessories. I used that as well as changed her piercings. I took out the spiked collar specifically because that has some… other implications… so yeah, make sure you when you’re choosing an outfit for a character, you know the purpose and usages of the clothing! Anyhow, I decided to keep the drippy, sparkly eyeliner and add eyeshadow since one of her traits mentions that she also likes makeup and glitter. Additionally, I made it so that she dyes her hair and hooves during shows to cover up her identity a little more and add some loudness to her look.

Finally, her cutie mark sounded interesting (don’t think I’ve seen a cookie shaped like a guitar CM before) so I decided to actually draw it this time, using the yellow from her hair and the brownish color from the hair dye. The bite mark might make it more clear that it’s a cookie, plus it looked cool.

Now for her story and personality details. Well in the original description, it says that her real name is Glam Candy, and PunkScene EmoCore is a stage name. So we can assume she’s a musician of some sort. She has a sarcastic streak a mile wide and can be fairly sassy when she wants to be. Judging by the fact that she dislikes bullies and seems to love having fun overall, we can tell that she’s also sweet at heart. She’s the friendly confectioner/baker Candy Coat by day, and the young ponies love to come by her candy shop so she’s grown to care for them dearly. But by night it’s leather jackets, hair dye, piercings, and belting out harsh lyrics for over-the-top punk performer Sour Core! We’re taking the part about vaping and puppies out of her bio because it seems kind of random, but otherwise the rest is fine.