Characters, Characters, Characters

I like characters a lot, if you hadn't noticed. I've been drawing characters since I was a wee lil' lad and I still do today. I took a science-fiction writing class back in college and everyone would mention that all of my stories are very "personal and character driven". I do ponder a lot about how people think and the environments that effect them. If I wasn't an artist, I would have probably became a cognitive scientist. I have always been interested in the way "the mind" works. People like Steven Pinker, Andrew Newberg, and Richard Nisbett have some really interest ideas on how people act due to their beliefs. My hope is that I can better mesh my knowledge of cognitive science/psychology with character design to make more believable characters with all the proper complexities. A great way to develop character mentalities is to simply look towards reality for their closest counterparts. For instance, what is the mentality of interstellar colonist settling on another planet. One cannot be absolutely sure, but I can look towards people that were similar, like the American settlers of the Old West.

Anyways, I am always interested in the methods that people utilize towards creating interesting characters. Here's some links to articles that I have been reading lately.

http://www.essortment.com/all/creatingcharact_rdmv.htm

http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/mfocharacter/mfocharacter.html

http://guannawannablog.blogspot.com/2005/05/writing-101-creating-interesting.html