MISS Peak—MISSES Character Reveal
This is week three of character reveals for MISSES, my comic book/graphic novel series I'm in the middle of creating. So far, there are posts introducing MISS Inform and MISS Able, which can be found following the links.
Meet MISS Peak
Mango Holcum is a contemporary of last week's character, Rhyme Skousen (a.k.a., MISS Able). They both attended the Millennial Institute of Social Sciences (MISS) at the same time. Unlike Rhyme, however, Mango was actually chosen to become the first MISS to undergo elevation treatment.
After spending several minutes in the morphing chamber, it didn't appear that anything happened to Mango. However, later that afternoon while taking a walk, an apparent accident seemed to bring her new abilities to the surface as she saved several people from dying.
Like the other girls who secretly took part in the MISSES Endeavor, Mango arrived at MISS with an ability that was generally regarded as an impediment. With rather uncanny precision, she would say or blurt out things at the most awkward or inappropriate times, and do so in a way that was unclear or not quite true.
Because of this, she was dubbed Misspeak.
Needless to say, this regular inability to communicate got her into trouble a lot. She just couldn't help herself. However, despite appearances, her temperament was fairly easy going, and she really meant no one any harm.
After she was elevated, the academics and scientists involved in the process wanted to continue to increase her abilities, which were basically beyond natural human performance. She was now the peak version of herself, and thus became known as MISS Peak, better in every possible way. The officials at MISS, though, felt she had even more untapped potential.
As hinted at in last week's post the experiment ended in tragedy when MISS Able entered the morphing chamber instead. The morphing chamber was severely damaged and needed to be rebuilt. For a time, there was debate whether or not the MISSES Endeavor should even continue. MISS Peak, however, spoke passionately and eloquently about furthering the MISSES goals. She was willing to sacrifice all if it led to saving her world from eventual, inevitable self-annihilation.
A long time later, when the morphing machine was up and running and everything had been triple checked, MISS Peak again went in. It was meant to be a monitoring session, to see where her abilities were and any increases or decreases in them that might have occurred over time.
But something went wrong with the equipment, similar to what happened with MISS Able. Fortunately, MISS Peak was not obliterated, but she was left in a deep coma, her mind seemingly wiped out.
Concept Art
The Sketches
In the previous two character reveal posts, I've mentioned how communication between myself and the artist has been key in getting a character that is more or less what I imagined. With MISS Inform and MISS Able, there were some fairly quick alterations that I requested in the sketching phase to get them close to what I wanted.
With MISS Peak, though, the first sketch was nearly dead on. I didn't want her sleeves rolled up, but besides that and some minor uniform adjustments, MISS Peak was ready to go.
This second sketch came with the first as an optional look. To me, it made her look younger, and while she is supposed to be in her teens, I felt it was too much. So, the first sketch prevailed, and the thing around her neck was also removed, and the aura around her hands were pushed out to encompass all of her, similar to MISS Able.
With the third sketch, we see MISS Peak back to what her face looked like in the first sketch, with the sleeves modified along with the blouse, and now some rather interesting circles around her hands. I think I may have requested some manifestation of energy blasts, and they were showing me different concepts. I decided that energy blasts might be a little too much at this stage, thus the glowing around her body instead.
Inked
With the design concepts pretty much finalized, we entered into the inking phase, where we have the cleanup work done and her her appearance and apparel set.
Colors
Uniform style and coloring exactly like MISS Able's, but with blonde hair and brown eyes. She seems to have more of a sunnier, confident disposition over her counterpart, too. Her aura is more of a golden hue. She looks like she is ready to lead or do something of great importance.
MISS Peak's Concept art was also done by Graphics Manufacture, just like MISS Inform and MISS Able.
That's all for MISS Peak.
Next week, I'll be shifting gears a little bit to present a character from TEAM MISS, the all-female superhero group.
Until next time... Enjoy!
This looks really promising! I checked out the other character designs too, they're really cool.
Thanks for sharing the process of how a graphic novel gets brought to life.
Well, thank you, and you're welcome, too. :) I like them. I think they represent where I want to be with them. The idea is to not go into costumes per se, but keep it lower key. I think they need a way to obscure their faces. Typically that's a mask, but maybe there's another way that's not so overt.
re: process
Well, I'm kind of learning as I go here, so I'm not sure if this is so much THE process as it is MY process. :) I needed a starting point, and being able to see the characters rather than just visualize them in my head is helpful, I think.
That sounds great, I could suggest you some kind of eye mask, check out the character designs for Persona 5, it's a videogame with really cool art.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense writing with some kind of visual reference.
Sup Dork! Enjoy the upvote!!!
Hey, @supdork.
A pleasure as always. Thank you. :)
Excellent review @glenalbrethsen and your characters get new and interesting colors, well done!
Hey, @serkagan.
I like how MISS Peak turned out, too. There's a lot of work that goes into any of this concept art, and much more to come with developing backgrounds and then the actual storyline. So, we'll see how that goes I guess. Need to get back into it so I can have a story to tell. :)
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And miss peak look great i must say
Thank you. I think the combination of her confident but not so serious facial expression and the design of her uniform is what I like the most. There's probably some things that still need to be worked on, and maybe even some changes that will need to be made once I've written the stories with her in it, but for now, I think it's a good place to start.
Yay, another character is ready. She looks like a very though lady, I like her :) Her uniform is looking good, the yellow-orange stripe fits well the light and dark gray. Looking forward to the next one :)
Well, thank you. As I've been saying, I am happy with them, particularly these that were designed by graphics manufacture. Next week's will be from a different artist, and I liked the five he did, too. I just enjoyed the process with GM more, as well as the style of the art. You can decide for yourself if you like it more or less. :)
I'm going to check them out for sure because I guess I've missed a few :)
Howdy sir Glen! great job of the review and explanations and she does look like she's ready to do something great, I like the golden hue! lol. The artwork is done by a company that does comic book characters?
Hey, @janton.
Thank you. There's three now posted, and seven more to go. No. 4 goes up today as soon as I catch up with all the comments and mentions from yesterday. :)
re: something great
She definitely does have a brief chance to do good. She's going to be one of the tragic characters of MISSES, though, so her greatness will be short lived.
re: artwork
The company, Graphics Manufacture, does all kinds of illustrations, from children to fantasy/sci-fi. I'm not sure how they do it, exactly, but a lot of times, an artist will have different genres or styles that the can draw in, aside from whatever kind they might naturally gravitate to.
howdy again sir Glen! very interesting...and is that artwork expensive? Of course I have no idea what the going rate for that kind of art is.
re: expensive
I'm sure it can be. The idea is try to get what you want, which usually means limiting the scope. In my case I wanted front, back and side, but settled with just the front for now.
I ended up spending $125 for the first five to the first artist (I'm not posting in order, so the first five include this week's and the following four to come), and then paid $200.00 for the next five and different artist (the previous three, along with the two I haven't posted yet which will come at the end).
There was a big difference in turnaround with the second set of characters, though. This is all these guys do (no full-time jobs along with side jobs), so I had back all five characters in about two weeks, whereas it could take that long just to get one character back the first go around.
For me, that meant the jump in price was well worth it.
Howdy sir Glen! very interesting, I had no clue of costs, where are these artists at?
The first guy, the one I'm showcasing now, is from the United States somewhere. I want to say the Midwest, but I'm not positive on that without looking. The other group, Graphics Manufacture, is headquartered in France, but they also have artists in another country somewhere in Asia—the Philippines, Malaysia, something like that. I'm just going to look it up.
Okay. Can't find it, but they have another office in another part of the world which I guess means they're more or less able to work around the clock.
Wow, that's great. Didn't know you were an artist. 😊
Oh, I'm not. The three characters I've revealed so far were done by a graphics company in France. I like to draw, but my stuff doesn't compare to what they can do. I probably need to commission them at some point to do more, but I don't think I'm ready for that yet.
Ha, I should probably learn to read. Either way they look cool. :)