Hi, I'm just curious. Where does one turn to learn new characters after HSK 6? I'm not talking about new words, just new characters. Preferably not odd-ball obscure ones that are never used in real life, but actual characters used with some realistic frequency. Which list, book or website continues the character list where HSK 6 stops?

There are several frequency lists based on usages of the words in books, films, news etc. Can't really see the point of just learning characters since very few of them at that point actually is used as stand alone words. Better to focus on frequently used words and get what ever character comes from them. There are in skitters very large collection of lists actually some of those frequency lists that do have just the individual characters. Think I have seen up to around 6000 characters there.

MikkelJ, I agree with what Mandarinboy states about the importance of words, however, it may also be worthwhile to study certain characters in itself, e.g. characters, which are not often used in normal language, but do appear a lot in names. I had once made a list about "Chinese people one should know" ( http://www.skritter.cn/vocab/list?list=115425147 ) and learned a lot of characters from there. It is also not too difficult to learn them, as in many cases it may be sufficient to know the pinyin and tone, that it's used in names and has some meaning like: something to do with jade or means somehow beautiful, nice or clever, intelligent...and so on. Many of them carry similar meanings and may also indicate, whether it's a male or female name. I found it more useful to learn it in connection with real people than in an anonymous list of characters, where it's only stated: mainly used in names.
It's helpful, when reading, whether it's books, newspapers, name cards, ads etc., names are appearing everywhere. I find the statement "....then you can understand 98...% of a Chinese text" to some degree misleading, because if you understand everything in a news article, but you don't know about whom they are talking, what in the end did you understand???

By the way, also this list of 500 chengyu ( http://www.skritter.cn/vocab/list?list=161565733 )might add quite some new characters, I made it in German, however, as far as I know, they all have by now also an English definition.

I personally augment my HSK character studies with corpus-based lists, such as Mandarinboy's TV/Film lists. Those do introduce obscure characters, and since you're likely to see them onscreen, this learning is certainly applicable to everyday life.

Roland, I like your suggestion to use names. Since I'm teaching English here in China, I use student name rosters to cull new characters that also become helpful in daily life.

MikkelJ, I'm not convinced that HSK words are corpus-based, because too often I find words that I percieve to be common at levels 5 and 6.

@Roland

off topic but I would like to say that that that list about Chinese people one should know is really great, although I was surprised not to see 郑成功 on it.

Also for the Scholars & Philosophers you could start with some 子s：老子，庄子，墨子，孟子, 荀子 and 孙子，plus 韩非 (apologies if they are in other sections).

I know it isn't the same at all, but the topic here makes me smile and think of the Dr. Seuss book "On Beyond Zebra!"

http://www.amazon.com/On-Beyond-Zebra-Classic-Seuss/dp/product-description/0394800842

@Antimacassar Do you mean Koxinga? He is in as well as his father. If you mean somebody else, let me know.
Regarding the scholars, I feel they should be in, however, I'm interested more in other things, like history, movies, etc. So far, I'm postponing this from month to month, hoping that somebody would volunteer to fill this list. If you or somebody else wants, let me know, I'll put you there as an editor. You can then also send the pictures to me, if you want, I will then resize them and put on my server, if you don't have one.
Also for all other categories, if some body wants to add some people, please feel free. The list is very subjective and everybody might have a different thinking about who one should know and who one not.