Scatterbrained: The Mysterious Red-head

I think my biggest hurdle when it comes to anything creative, is the fact that I'm so ADD about... everything.  So far I have two completely separate story ideas that have completely different sets of characters.  (I've been trying to curb my character recycling habits.)  When I try to work on one, I only seem to come up with ideas for the other.  Then when I actually attempt to write anything, I end up staring at a blank page for an hour or two before doodling something that may or may not have anything to do with what I was just trying to write.

doodles

Take this picture for instance.  I doodled it because I wanted to show the difference in this character from the time the story starts until three years in.  I don't even think I really accomplished anything but at least I got a picture out of it?

I sat down and tried to write again.  Seems like I just got distracted by photoshop again and ended up slapping some color onto one of the sketches.  I even tried to cell shade but that totally didn't happen.  I'm not sure whether to call it a failure or a win.  I don't hate it but it really wasn't what I was aiming for.

Yep, my attempt at cell shading went horribly wrong.

Some of you already know this character.  She's come up in multiple drawings but she always seems to look different.  Probably a product of my ADD getting the better of me.  Her name's Kyna and she's been in about three different plots now.  I've also kidnapped her name and appearance for a multitude of online games. (Hello PWI peeps!  Now you know where the infamous Kyna comes from.)

She started out, first as a character in a high fantasy story I started way back in high school.  As a matter of fact her name wasn't even Kyna to begin with, it was Rika.  I was a total Anime nerd and I seriously thought I could get by, writing some drabble that resembled just about any feudal Japan manga in existence.

I pretty quickly saw the error in my ways and backed off the Japan thing.  (Weaboo status avoided.)  I started making up more on my own and trying to mimic less.  Her name eventually changed to what it is now and I never looked back.

Originally, she was supposed to be mysterious, bad ass, and only sort of a traitor.  She joined the enemy with every intention of ripping them apart from the inside, but fell in love with them instead.  That version of her character is still very much an entertaining design to work with.  As a matter of fact one of our prints for the convention rounds this year features this rendition of the character.

Rika Herp-a-derp

I've long since abandoned that old story and I no longer have any intention of writing her character in this manner.  Despite having changed it from a mock-Japan, to a more original setting, the old story was still just full of plot holes!  I mean, come on, it was pretty much what you'd expect from a seventeen-year-old author wannabe.  Better than the fifteen-year-old terrible fanfiction writer, but still not great.

The plot was seriously cliche and predictable, the characters were often cheesy and just hopeless.  Nearly the whole thing was hopeless but it was my baby at the time and for years I didn't let it go.  The only thing that really stood out was the world that I ended up constructing.

When I scrapped it, at least some of the characters survived in artwork, and a few of them ended up integrated into a new plot.  Something more adult and less hopeless-romantic-teenager.  I do believe I mentioned it before in a previous blog entry.

The Original Kyna (Pencils by Nga, colors by Michele)

The name of the story was E20XX, a post-apocalyptic fantasy in which the apocalypse was caused by magic.  This plot idea allowed me to keep a lot of my old character ideas.  Some of them changed drastically to fit a new setting, others didn't change much at all.  

Kyna was one that changed a lot.  Possibly the one that changed the most.  In the old plot, Kyna was the pretty usual, mysterious antihero.  Honestly I liked her design more than I liked her character, she was just missing something.  That whole story was just missing something.  The new one I started and sort of began molding her character to fit the current environment.

Things didn't really add up though and I tweaked her personality.  Even then, that didn't seem like enough to make her a survivor.  Normally she is, yes, but in a more modern setting she wouldn't have had the same situations growing up.  She wouldn't have had this urge for revenge to keep her going.  That was a terrible basis for a character anyway.

So what did I do to give her character that extra "oomph" to survive the apocalypse?  I did what anyone would have done!  I gave her a kid.  It just seemed like a good solution and a pretty solid way to turn a somewhat normal woman into a vicious, battle-scarred, ass-kicking survivor.  Momma bear syndrome.

Hopefully this version of the character and this story turns out more productive than previous versions.  I'm sticking to it until it's done, let's just hope I can find my focus this time.

Maybe this will explain the red-head that keeps popping up in a multitude of drawings.  She always has the same colors, the same hair, the same scar on her cheek, the same name, but a constantly changing setting.