With this week's character reveal, I'll introduce the second member of Team MISS, and the first of two characters who are related.
For those who are keeping track, this post is No. 5 in a series of MISS reveals. If you're interested, you can find MISS Inform, MISS Able, MISS Peak and MISS Fire by following the links, or you could try here.
Now, without further ado...
Meet MISS Time
Tokemi Morais, like Brigitte Madrigal (last week's character reveal), is also a Member of Team MISS. She has been at the Millennial Institute of Social Sciences (MISS) for nearly four years, where she has been a part of the MISSES Endeavor nearly all of that time.
Tokemi hails from an area that takes up part of Brazil on our world. The place is home to largely the upper middle class, so Tokemi grew up without much worry regarding the necessities of life. Not everything was idyllic, however. Especially as her abilities began to manifest in ernest.
Since she was very small, she'd had issues with timing. Her hand eye coordination was bad, which made it difficult for her to feed herself. She couldn't quite get the spoon in her mouth while it was open. As she grew, she was never picked to be on anyone's team for games or sports, because she just wasn't good at any of them. As it was, she had a hard enough time walking without tripping over herself.
Fortunately, her parents could afford tutors and specialists to try to help her, and to a degree, they were successful. It took a tremendous amount of effort on her part, but as long as she remained calm, she was able to do normal activities without an accident.
However, when things got stressful, nothing she did could overcome her inability to time things correctly. Her parents finally decided they couldn't solve this on their own, and through her father's brother, who had similar issues with a daughter, they learned about MISS, and how the scientist there were working on treatments. So, off to MISS Tokemi went.
That means Tokemi was there when the incident involving MISS Able occurred. Afterward, Tokemi's ill-timing was suddenly reflected outward. Others became awkward around her. Not only that, but inanimate objects like clocks and other timing devices would not function properly.
Her mentors and instructors began helping her with these newly directed abilities, but with little success. She could control them for a time, but when she was tired or tried to sleep, things would go haywire around her. The officials at MISS moved her to an isolated wing of the campus to try to help mitigate her situation until they could get it under control.
Tokemi was alone for quite sometime. If not for the MISS Peak tragedy, she might still be there. Suddenly, Tokemi, like others, had full control over her abilities, and once she was no longer confined to solitude, was able to manipulate them at will.
It wasn't until what happened to MISS Ion, though, that Tokemi's abilities powered up. She went from being able to make someone trip, or weapons fired to miss their moving targets, to being able to manipulate time itself. Now, he could make time slow down or speed up at will. Lesser abilities also manifested.
It was then that Tokemi went from being known as Mistime, to MISS Time.
Concept Art
The Sketch
As I mentioned last week, MISS Time, like MISS Fire before her, was drawn by an artist known as VShane. She was actually the last character of Team MISS he drew, so the process was quickest with her. Again, only one sketch was needed, and while I couldn't totally tell what was going on in the background, I liked the way MISS Time looked, and so we went onto the next phase.
Inks
If I didn't exactly know what was going on in the background before, I did now. It was some sort of cityscape behind MISS Time, and she appeared to be falling.
The idea with the background was to provide some sort of sense to how the character's power worked. I'm not sure if blurred buildings did the trick, but I was fine with the idea. She could be slowing her ascent with her time abilities, however she managed to get up there.
I liked the way she was turning out, too. I'm not sure how apparent it's been from the previous art, but I tried to communicate to the artists that I did not want typical superhero looks to these characters. In other words, the virtually impossible body types where everything is exaggerated. I wanted these young women to more reflect what a typical teenage girl would look like.
I don't know that I succeeded in getting exactly what I wanted, mainly because it goes against the natural tendencies of an artist depicting superheroes to do it. I think with MISS Time, thought, it was pretty close to what I had envisioned for her.
Colors
Pretty subdued, I think, compared to the colors MISS Fire had with orange, red and yellow. I think it does help to put the focus squarely on MISS Time, especially since the background is blurred. This is meant to be concept art, and not representing any particular scene or event, so the main idea is to get MISS Time to a point where she's more or less what I had in mind. I think that happened here.
With MISS Time, I am now halfway through the characters I have concept art for. Three more from TEAM MISS, and then the final two characters.
Until next time...
Enjoy!
Images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen