For the past week, I was hesitant over my character design.
I decided to push past the theme of Helsing-lookalike demon hunter and moved on to a much more current look, although set in a rather distant period of the future. I've completely ditched my previous character and bundled my ideas and imagination into a small little bundle of joy named En.
Quite sharp, straight to the point, rolls off the tongue in a heartbeat and it's something easy to remember - and so I present teen apocalypse survivor, miss En.
The sketches portray the general idea I had for an improvised survival character, someone thrown into a sudden chaos with little to no equipment or support. So in essence, the world in which En inhabits is during a disaster, however the global incident which brought about the chaos happened merely months ago.
Though I digress, more on the story later.
Now En is a fresh-out-the-cryogenic-chamber 19 year-old teen cast into a world of sudden chaos and supernatural plague who happens to start off in a rather uncomfortable and restricting medical wrap which later gets the snip and traded for some pretty nifty and athletic engineer's gear (pictured above) which should make her a tad more decent for getting the hell out of the not-so-sugar-coated steel-plated storage facility which seems to be under siege from... something out of the ordinary.
Her hair represents a modern edge with a dash of rebellion as I wanted to experiment with her attitude and sexuality, giving her more of a confident presence and dominant personality towards obstacles in her way, so you can throw away those thoughts of action man patrolling a wasteland, this girl knows the city, and the city's going to know her.
In the image above, as stated I wanted to explore her character and add a little more 'oomph' to her ambition, giving her a little more kick and a little less vulnerability within her stance.
En is a ranged character, using salvaged weaponry such as cryotazers, chem grenades and high-precision heat mining laser rifles to take down her enemies from a safe distance, however should she need to, she can disable enemies with specific actions to reverse their element... speaking of element, let's do a little backstory.
L:: En
The year is 2101, civilisation has advanced only as we intended - those with power seeked to build bigger cities and fish a bigger profit and in return the world we once knew with fields of green has dimmed into an urban jungle with bustling highways and cloud piercing, gleaming megastructures as far as the eye can see, separating those with finance and those without indefinitely causing a rift in society that has become far beyond repair. Though with the increase of such human dominance, did we stop to realise just what we were doing? Just what we were losing? The rich high in their offices, scoffing over their morning coffees as they brag about their recent business partner's association with the company; did they ever consider who their true ally was throughout their endeavors? Of course they didn't, no one did. They were all completely oblivious, because of course no one believes in consequences, not entirely. If you sit reading this hanging on to your moral values of what you believe in karma, should you believe in it, then you have no idea how far you are from the truth. If you choose not to believe in such a thing, then perhaps you are safer being entirely oblivious. We say all things have consequences, but exactly to what extremities? Should you chop down a tree, be prepared to explain yourself to an orchard. Karma isn't that bad? That's what many believed, then the gases came.
Before long - fogs flooded through cities, thick mists that brought grit to the throat. Was it merely a fault of weather? Many believed so until the land was submerged with such a bleak cloud. Then slowly, people started disappearing. Most took refuge from the fogs, they hid in bunkers, shelters, anything that could be sealed from the mists. Though the rich watched as thousands suffered, they sealed themselves in facilities known as Arks, storage facilities. Nothing more than giant steel coffins filled with cryogenic chambers that could have held millions, but were reserved only for those willing to pay the price. The wealthy and their families took refuge, sleeping in their iceboxes as the needy perished to the fogs, as they disappeared into the depths. Though they never quite disappeared, they were merely replaced... These gases weren't being emitted from some volcano or nuclear fallout - they were rising from the very crust of the planet itself. The bitterness within the vapors was being fed into the bodies of those who remained vulnerable, and soon those who succumbed to the air began... changing.
They were infected, though sadly they had no idea. One cannot begin to think of how to break such news, to tell you that you now belong to the Earth; that you are in fact one with the ground beneath your feet. Though soon it would not matter, you would either pass out from the fevers or shiver to death in the beating sunlight and there wasn't a single thing that could prevent it. Perhaps the crystallised formations around your eyes or the hardened weight of your internal organs gave you some warning, or perhaps the sudden blackening of your flesh which you feared was internal bleeding. Though you never quite imagined you could be one with the very elements. It's never one's desire, to merely be some... elemental creature. Though the world needed an army, and so it chose you. How else could this planet return to its thriving beauty? How else could the mountains return to stone and remove such corruption from the fields of succulent fruits and bountiful vegetation? There was no room for the human race any longer, the world gave us a chance, and we took it. We turned it into an abomination, a half-body piercing impaled through the Earth reducing it to nothing more than a yin-yang of steel, glass and rock. The world was fighting back.
6 months later, En awakens from her slumber and finds herself in a collapsing building surrounded by the elements, they were here and the safety override had kicked in just in time. She can't remember who she is, where she is, what she's doing here or who put her in this facility, let alone what these beasts of the soil are - she only sees the scribble on her chamber's sorting plate, you are L:: En, run.
Stay tuned for more info!
