Next up on the MISSES character reveal—Character No. 4.
No, that's not her name. We'll get to that in a moment.
For those who have been following the reveals so far, you will notice a change in art style. There's a reason for that. More on that later.
If you're interested in reading about the other three reveals so far, try these links:
MISS Inform, MISS Able and MISS Peak.
Meet MISS Fire
Brigitte Madrigal, a founding member of Team MISS, has three years under her belt at the Millennial Institute of Social Sciences (MISS). Prior to that, she lived with her family in our equivalent of northern Honduras, where she grew up in very different circumstances than any of her predecessors (MISS Able, MISS Peak), or her contemporary (MISS Inform).
She led a primarily happy life, and was content with it.
That is, until a change in employment that happened to coincide with the time of MISS Able's accident. Brigitte's father had won a contract to work on a military base. There would be times when Brigitte would come to visit him for lunch with her mother. On those occasions, for unknown reasons, things would fail to work properly. Missile tests, guns at the shooting range, even vehicles would start having engine problems.
It didn't take long for the military personnel to start blaming her for their mishaps. At first, her parents defended her, but as the strange mechanical failures continued, they realized that something had happened to her. The only thing these incidents had in common was she was there, and they would happen en masse. When she was not there, everything ran like clockwork.
Unable to understand it, but realizing there were strange correlations to the behavior at home, her parents decided to seek some kind of help. In their online searches, they came across MISS and discussed the idea with Brigitte. She was not keen on the idea at first, but when it became apparent that she either would need to keep to herself for the rest of her life, or seek help at the Institute, she chose the latter.
Her mother accompanied her to MISS to make sure she was settled. It was a bittersweet moment when they parted, as you can well imagine. When institute officials saw what Brigitte was doing to their own mechanical systems, they promptly brought her into the MISSES Endeavor.
Thus, Brigitte was on site when MISS Peak's monitoring exercise failed. After the explosion, she along with many others at MISS discovered that the negative abilities they had were now controllable. No longer did machines and other devices automatically fail doing simple things. Now, it was only when she wanted them, too.
Fast forward another year, into the present, when a fellow classmate of Brigitte's, Noelani Kekoa, goes to test her limitless powers at the bottom of a dormant volcano. The MISSES scientists decided not to take any chances this time, and with good reason. Noelani's test also goes awry. In this case, a massive amount of energy is released, much more than the previous times. Because of it, again many of the MISSES find their abilities have changed, and chief among them is Brigitte.
She came to MISS as Misfire. Now, she is MISS Fire, with the ability to create and control fire, along with accurately fire any weapon, and a few other abilities.
Concept Art
The Sketch
This time around, unlike the previous three characters, there is only one sketch for MISS Fire. For the most part, it was close enough to what I wanted to see, that we could move on without more sketches.
I had asked the artist to give her something that would make a fashion statement. MISS Fire, along with the rest of Team MISS, would be wearing similar uniforms, and while some of the other girls were fine with that, I thought MISS Fire might want something to differentiate herself with.
However, I didn't like the hat. It didn't seem like it would be very practical if she were moving around a lot. As you'll see, though, the sash around her waist and her knee high boots do make it through.
Inked
The hat is gone, but now there's a multi-tendril background to her. At the time, I wanted one, kind of another way to contrast the characters, and possibly add some context to what their abilities were. With other Team MISS characters, it might not be so readily apparent.
Colors
This first color version is good. I wanted a dark uniform, but similar to MISS Inform's, I didn't want it to appear to be latex, vinyl or something else form fitting. I got this instead. Close enough for concept art, though. The background stands out much more prominently, but so does the sash and boots.
There was one change I wanted here, and that was with the fire in her hands. At first, I thought they should be circular, ball-shaped, but then I didn't like them because they looked like MISS Fire was actually making snowballs. I wanted the color of the fire to burn white hot, though, so that meant changing the shape.
This second version of the fire is closer to what I wanted, though now it could be misconstrued as wind, I guess. That might mean I will have to get the fire color changed, but this was the final version I went with. There gets to a point where good is good enough.
Different Artist
MISS Fire's art, and the next four characters, as well, were drawn, inked and colored by an artist for hire who goes by the name VShane. You can see some samples of his other illustrative work by following the link.
That takes care of MISS Fire. Coming up, another member of Team MISS.
Until next time... Enjoy!
Images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen