Scrivener and Shifte

Well, ok. I'm not sure if these guys are really superhero's. They kind of count I suppose in the sense that they have special abilities and have been known to use them to help people...but none the less.

I am cheating a little bit, since I have done some work with these two before and I'm posting some of the sketches I've done of them prior to receiving Rie's awesome challenge. I figured "what the hell, why NOT work with these two." For quite some time now, I've been wanting to do something with them...the problem is...I haven't totally figured out there stories. I know how their story ends...just not totally how it starts. I thought I'd take this opportunity to see if we couldn't get some of their narrative ironed out.

Let me tell you what I have so far.

The girl is Co Dawes (alias Alice Scrivener) and the blobby blue guy is just named Locke (though he can take on different shapes and will occassionally call himself "John Shifte").

Co Dawes - A shy and quiet girl from a small, rural town in Nevada. She grew up feeling terribly out of place and alienated. Her shyness and social anxieties were downright crippling, and as a result, she never developed much of a voice. Look up "wallflower", and she's pretty much what you find. Despite having such a hard time speaking, she did really want to be social, she just didn't know how.

So, despite an intense social anxiety, she did have a fairly normal life. Until the day that "The Edge" appeared near her small town. A huge, gaping, mysterious black tear in reality. She was sadly nearby when it appeared, wrong place, wrong time. When the Edge appeared, she was too close to it, and ended up getting zapped. When she woke up she found that when she spoke, the words literally came out of her mouth (ok, it only works with nouns, but none the less). Say for example, she lost her house keys, she could just say "house keys" and they'd manifest in her throat...so yeah...it's both gross and really dangerous. She's never tried it, but she does have nightmares about saying anything like "car" or "tree"...it probably wouldn't be pretty.

When it's discovered that this has happened to her, she's rounded up by the government, along with several other people who seem to have all been affected by The Edge's appearance. And it's there she meets Locke.

Locke (John Shifte)-

Locke confounds everyone, even himself. He was found near The Edge when it appeared. He has claimed that he was once a normal human man, but that The Edge altered him. It made him into the strange, pliable, blobby thing he is, but he has no memory of his life before it happened. He can take on nearly any shape he wants with relative ease, but human forms pose a problem to him. Oh he can do them...he just can't do them for any length of time that would be practical. Despite all of this, he actually has a very upbeat, kind, naive sort of personality. Where as Co is constantly tense and shy, he's almost too trusting and very outgoing. He can be friendly to the point that it can be annoying, or even get him into trouble. Co often has to show up to redirect his behavior if he's getting too wierd, or to get him out of trouble. There is a lot about his behavior that is pretty child-like.

Whatever The Edge did to him, it wrecked his memory so badly that he can't remember even basic facts about being human, things like how family structures work, common courtesies between people (like he'd just walk into a ladies restroom to find someone and not realize or consider what might be wierd about that.). He eagerly and enthusiastically consumes any information about humanity that he can, but there are times when his desire to regain his lost humanity seems a little strange to Co...It seems a little more to her as though he's learning and discovering all this information for the very first time, rather than recovering it.

It doesn't always work, but Locke can sometimes "read" people's minds when he touches them. (Actually it's a bit closer to figuring out what you mean or intend as opposed to concretely and distinctly knowing what you are thinking.) This is why he hangs out with Co all the time. Her inability to speak is a huge, huge handicap to her. Yeah, she can write down what she wants to say, but that's slow and can be a clumsy way to communicate (and over time, it starts to seem that writing words might be having a similar effect to speaking them.). Locke will very often hang out with her and go around with her to basically serve as a translator. (She reallllly wants him to pin down that whole taking on a human shape thing as a result.)

The scientists they were kind of captured by were at first pretty hesitant to let him do this, but inevitably they decided it would be interesting to study and so they let them keep at it. This is a bit of a strange experience for Co though, at first it was strictly a relationship where Locke was figuring out what she wanted to say and then interpreting it...but as time goes by, she actually starts developing it with him, almost like a psychic backwash. Locke had been getting careless with the whole process, a little too lax, and she started seeing a few things he might not have wanted her to see. She started to suspect that his whole story about not remembering anything about his past might not be true...that maybe he wasn't really ever a normal man.

Somehow, I'm not totally sure how though, they do get out...whether they straight up escaped, or if they made some deal with the scientists, I don't know...but yes, they did get out.

So yeah, bear with me guys, I'm trying to figure out the whole story with these two. I'm not totally doing a "superhero" story, but I'm still running with this. Really, for me, it was just trying to pin down these two and figure out how they tick. It feels really disorganized to me still and kind of sloppy, so if anyone has any suggestions, that would be totally appreciated.

The grail

More of the create your own superhero week. This is the main villain, the Grail.

Need sleep...will do a write-up tomorrow.

create your superhero : mr. shadow

create your superhero - mr. shadow

alrighty, here's my super-badass-villain for maxine and max! no, i don't think i'm gonna draw a villain for bryce and ava; i have stuff to do. i present:

mr. shadow (yea, yea, cheesy as hell :D)

he (or she??) is made out of darkness and shadow. he can appear anywhere; he can materialize when there's light because light casts shadow and he can easily embody when there's only darkness because that's what he is. tricky, eh? his only goal is to destroy all kind of happiness, joy, liveliness, comfort, felicity, amusement, or anything close to it -even the sound of laughter hurts him badly-, from the world. he hates every happy ending story so that's exactly how he starts. he plans to destroy all the heroes in every book he ever comes across.. he has power to call his dark minions, every antagonist you can think of and ever believe in -whether they are in folk stories or modern children storybook! 

i should say, dessert "sake" is the best drink to have when you're trying to do sketch like this lol :D

create your superhero : bryce and ava

create your superhero - bryce and ava

okay. i promised i will post my previous ones. somehow, they remind me of something i avoid doing lately but whatever. so here they are, kinda lame, but i've tried lol:


bryce, 24
what is more powerful than information these days? bryce can download and or extract information, just by simply touch the devices. any information, data, memory, restored in the devices will be downloaded in a milisecond. he is not entirely the good guy because he does not give a damn about who's buying the information; he's selling it to the highest bidder. well, data, can't be just downloaded without storage. here is where ava comes in; he doesn't really care either how dangerous it is for ava to keep saving gigabytes of data and extracting them again.


ava, 18
she's a younger than bryce but her hair are all almost white due to the 'misuse" of her power. she is able to save, restore, and extract every bit of data transferred or downloaded by bryce easily BUT it costs her a lot: fatigue, severe migraine, and exhaustion. she knows exactly that bryce is with her just because of her ability. although their action endangers her life, she'd do everything for the man.

create your superhero : maxine and max

create your superhero - maxine and max

after a few desperate trials trying to do some "mainstream superhero" which failed sadly, i came up with this. i will still gonna post the previous sketches i tried to pull though, i was just not happy with them. anyway, here goes some background for the character and her sidekick :)


maxine, 10
she has the power to summon whatever characters -human, non human, or even creatures- from any books: comics, novel, graphics novels, etc. not just that, she also can summon any weapons, vehicles, props, you name it. the only problem is, she has to draw them fast enough to summon them. not so comfortable but even a hero has to have weakness.


max, 2
max is a siberian husky dog; he can communicate with maxine. he talks but only to her; he keeps quite most of the time. his endurance and agility are way above the best trained dogs and max is particularly strong too; he has this superdog power :D. he usually buys maxine time to draw whatever she needs to when they confront the bad guys. 

Salem's Noose

I'm not big on long write-ups, but it's part of our theme, so here we go:

STORY PREMISE

A soul in purgatory volunteers for "grim reaper" duty.

SUMMARY

SALEM, a jaded, misanthropic young woman, spends what seems like an eternity awaiting judgement in purgatory. She is finally given the chance to earn brownie points with St. Peter by taking up a century long duty of gathering the souls of the dead on Earth, which she happily accepts.

Unbeknownst to her, the spirit world on Earth is inhabited not only by wayward souls, but also by supernatural evils and lesser demons, all of whom prey on souls and soul collectors. These creatures attempt to steal souls from the land of the dead, and ferry them back to their own domains without allowing them to be judged. Salem must in turn fight and destroy these creatures and try to maintain the BALANCE OF SOULS.

Generally disdainful of other human beings, Salem relishes the opportunity to pass judgement on others, but discovers through her travels the nobler nature of people that she had never known in life.

As the story unfolds, Salem's duty as a reaper becomes more and more difficult for her to complete, and she must reconcile this along with her past and the secret of how she originally lost her life. This will be an epic tale of one soul finding its way back to the light.

All of this will be set to a soundtrack scored by John Williams.

POWERS AND ABILITIES

Although she is not a "superhero" in the common sense, Salem is tasked to preserve a certain sense of justice and balance by her heavenly employers.

She carries a large scythe, which she uses to sunder both enemies and the mortal shells of humans alike.

She can also open voids to the nether through a large hourglass tucked in her robes, temporarily imprisoning particularly troublesome souls.

He's the Bat, Man!

Um, yeah, sorry for the pun. I usually put a lot of thought into these, but today...no. Why did I pick Terry McGinnis and not Bruce Wayne? 2 reasons, 1, everyone would be doing Bruce. 2, and this is the real reason, McGinnis fights crime IN HEELS!!! No, I'm serious, that's badass! It sucks to get kicked in the face, but how much more does it suck to get kicked in the face with a heeled boot? 38% more, that's how much!

Also...he runs in heels, and never falls. I know most people say that Batman's superpower is just money, but I'm voting that it's actually the heels thing. That's pretty awesome. Superman never tried anything like that, because he knew he'd fail at it.