[@Pyromaniacwolf] I do not know how the rest made their characters, but when I make a character I go "Hm, I want to play THIS kind of character!" and then go seek an image that suits my needs, and then I fine-tune the rest of the character so it suits the image. It varies how much I have made of the character before I get the image, but by now I'm at a stage where I don't really feel my character is complete without an image.

As for if you need an image or not, I've said it is encouraged. As you've no doubt noticed, everyone else so far has one. I use safebooru to find suitable images most of the time, and I usually include the "original" tag in my search to not get any images of characters from anime/manga/games/otherwise. I use anime-images because, well, Pokémon is drawn with anime-graphics. But, I'm a fan of letting people play as they like. If you don't want to have an image, that is totally fine too.

I'm happy to hear of your interest~

Edit: ... And I totally acknowledge the difficulty of finding images of male characters using these means... XD

[@Delta44] Why stop listening to something that you like? Embrace it. Enjoy it. [i][color=red]Let it in.[/color][/i]