where do you get your characters?

Do you get yours straight from your own imagination? Or do you take them from people you know? Do you blend people? Taking the best of all your friends and family? The problem with using people we know though, is they could recognize themselves and not be so happy about it. Do you worry about that? Or is that just what writers do? I forget which Woody Allen movie it was, but in it, all the characters were so mad that he had written about them and put them in his stories. But as writers is it our job to worry about how people will feel? Or does the art always come first. I know in one of my first scripts, I had a character that seemed similar to my mom. When my mom read it, mind you I was an adult, she said she was grounding me. LOL Now, obviously she couldn't, but she did see that she was in my story. I did the best I could to blend who this person was to not make it so obvious. But apparently it didn't work! And sometimes we find these gems of characters in the people we love most, so what's a writer to do? In fact, one of the sitcoms I pitched to ABC was ALL my mom. I didn't hold back on this at all. I mean, there's so much food for fodder in her that I really wanted someone to put this woman in my story. But I also think finding characters in our minds based around what the story needs is just as good too. Sometimes we might not know of the crazy, eccentric characters we actually put in our stories. And thank god right? But that's why it's great to get out and be in the world, find new places, people watch to your heart's content! We never know where our characters will come from. But the more we can be inspired and colorful, the better our stories can be because of it.