Character Design Roughs

Expression model sheets

 Happy, determined, smug/self satisfied, angry/dismissive

Upset, confused, scared

Construction Sheet

A construction sheet for her hair is in the works.

5-drawing turn around model

Story

A crack of thunder split the air, and Xanthe sat upright in her hammock in surprise. Her room was tilting around her. She got out of her hammock, stumbling a bit on the moving floor. She rushed out of her room, pulling on clothes as she did. Everything in the main lower deck was swinging back and forth as well, and she rushed through it, dodging crew members as she went. She scurried up the ladder to the main deck and pulled open the trap door leading out, getting a spray of water in the face as she did so. She quickly scrambled onto the main deck, letting the trap door swing shut behind her.

On the main deck, she could see the storm clouds all around the airship, lightning jumping from cloud to cloud. The boom of thunder was nearly constant. Crew members rushed about on their duties, struggling to keep the airship afloat in the storm. Looking at the upper deck, she could see her mom piloting the sails at the main wheel. She rushed over and tugged on her mother's sleeve, wanting to know if there was anything she could do to help. Her mom looked down at her, furious, and shook her off, pointing at the hatch leading below decks. Xanthe felt herself shrink back, and watched for a moment as her mom turned back to the wheel, seemingly dismissing her. Xanthe turned around and slunk away towards the hatch, upset both at her mom and at the fact that she couldn't do anything to help the airship.

Suddenly, she heard a ripping noise, loud even with the sound of the storm. She looked for the source and saw, horrifyingly, one of the side sails flapping free from one of its masts. She rushed over, reaching the side mast just after another crew member. The crew member grabbed a harness, the last one left, pulled it on, and slid over the side of the ship onto the mast. He crouched down and grabbed the sail and started to tie it back onto the mast. He reached out for the next part of the sail just as the airship jerked and started to descend diagonally in earnest, reacting to the missing sail, and fell, the harness jerking him to safety.

The sail was still flapping free, the airship was still going down. Xanthe looked around to see if any of the crew was available to fix the sail and saw everyone completely busy. She clung to the rail of the ship, looking at the sail. She had to fix it, or everyone would die. She glanced around her feet to see if there was an extra harness she just hadn't seen, but there wasn't.

She could feel her fingertips tingling in fear and rubbed her hands together nervously. On one hand, the ship would crash entirely if no one fixed the sail, and no one, except Xanthe, seemed to be free to do so.

On the other hand, she could die if she tried to fix the sail without a harness.

But the airship was still falling, losing altitude way too fast, so she took a deep breath, let it out, and climbed onto the side-mast.

The tossing of the airship was even more noticeable on the mast, Xanthe realized dimly as she clung to it. She shimmied along the mast until she reached where the crew member had fallen. She could see him far below her, tied to the safety rope. She took another deep breath, her lungs almost paralyzed in fear, and let go of the mast with one hand as she reached for the sail. It flapped rapidly past her hand, and when she caught it she could feel it trying to escape her grasp. She held even tighter to the mast with her thighs as she reached carefully out, grabbed the rope attached to the sail near her hand, and tied that to the mast underneath her. The moment she finished tying, heart pounding rapidly, she grabbed onto the mast with both her hands again. Only two more to go, she thought, looking at the still-tossing sail. She shimmied further along the mast and repeated the process to the next attachment-point, tying it without incident. She relaxed slightly after that one. She was on the last attachment. A slight smile of victory gathered at the corners of her mouth as she moved towards the end of the mast. The sail was still violently tossing as she reached for it, and she relaxed her hold on the mast very slightly to allow her arm that small bit of extra length.

Just then, a line of lighting flashed through the storm, followed almost immediately by the boom of thunder. Xanthe jumped slightly and started to fall off the mast. As she felt herself falling she flailed her arms out, trying to catch hold of something, anything. There was an interminable moment when she wasn't sure if she could grab the mast, when her hands made contact with it. She immediately latched on, and swung her legs up to grasp the mast as well. She clung to the underside of the mast like a sloth, acutely aware that she wasn't wearing a safety harness. She could feel her limbs wanting to shake and just clung to the mast all the tighter. The sail flapped lightly past her face, and she detached an arm from the mast to grab it. She somehow managed to tie the rope onto the mast without falling off, her mind blank with terror and adrenaline. The last rope tied on, she shimmied back to the deck. Distantly she noticed that the airship was starting to rise again, instead of fall. She felt the side of the airship with her feet and clambered and wiggled her way over the railing back onto the deck, where she collapsed in a heap.

A pair of boots entered her view, and she felt hands on her arms and shoulders. They dragged her mostly upright, then yanked her into a hug. It was her mother. Xanthe felt her hands starting to shake and threw them around her mom's waist. They stayed like that a moment, then separated. Xanthe's eyes drew back towards the sail she had just fixed, and saw the crew member that she had helped initially being pulled back onto the deck. She glanced at her mom out of the corner of her eye and saw her mom smiling at her. Xanthe looked more directly and the smile was still there. A moment passed, then Xanthe smiled back. Neither of them said anything, the boom of thunder around them too loud, but Xanthe was sure that her mom's smile was worth a thousand words.


OUTLINE
First Act
Xanthe wakes up- the airship is tossing
She goes outside, sees its storming
Tries to ask her mom if she can help
Motions her to go back inside
Sees the broken sail
Second Act
Helps a crew member try to fix it
He almost manages, but then falls (and is caught by the rope)
She sees everyone else is busy, the airship is still falling
She climbs out to fix it herself
She almost falls
Third Act
Catches herself

Manages to fix the sail

Climbs back on deck

Hugged by mom

Character Development

Backstory: Xanthe Naftise

Xanthe Naftise is a twelve-year-old girl with short yellow hair, tanned skin, and hazel eyes. She isn’t very tall and she never wears skirts. They would be impractical, anyway, seeing as she lives on an airship, and the wind was always blowing up above the clouds. Her name is often shortened to Xan, especially by her parents.

Xanthe has lived her whole life on her parent’s airship, and still is living there. Her mom, Janice, is the captain, and her dad, Flavian, is the first mate. They are mostly a ship-for-hire, meaning they do a great variety of freelance jobs for money. Mostly they seem to end up transporting goods from one place to another. Sometimes they transport people, which is a job that Xanthe really loves- she likes hearing stories about people’s lives.

One particularly memorable job was when they were hired to fly banners above a parade. The banners were enormous, with strange designs and words spelled with letters that were taller than two of her dad; and at the end of the parade the people involved set off fireworks that exploded in reds and greens and yellows across the nighttime sky, almost drowning out the stars.

Xanthe loves the color yellow. She loves how the color looks against the blue of the sky and how it seems to be able to brighten up any room. She loves how bold and cheerful yellow is. She especially loves that her hair is yellow and that her name means yellow. Whenever someone comments on her name, she grins and informs them, “It means yellow! Like my hair. It’s my favorite color.” She tries to wear a bit of yellow all the time.

Xanthe’s life on the airship is fairly structured. She is sent to her hammock to sleep around nine o’clock every night and wakes up around five thirty. She puts away her blankets (no leaving loose possessions just rolling around on the ship. They might make their way overboard and she would never see them again. She learned that the hard way, after losing some of her toys to the wind when she was younger) and heads up to the kitchen and dining area. She tries to wake up early enough to help the cook, Ji-Won, make breakfast. Ji-Won had gotten tired of Xanthe tripping her up in the morning asking for an early ‘pre-breakfast snack’ and had enlisted her as a part-time pupil in making breakfast. Xanthe beats eggs for her, usually, and fetches ingredients.

On fair weather days, after helping to make and eat breakfast, Xanthe follows her father around on his duties about the ship in a tradition they started when she was very small. She watches and helps as he checks on the different parts of the ship to make sure it is all working, from the many sails to the magic array on the bottom of the ship that keeps the whole thing afloat. He also talks to the crew and makes sure that they are all in good spirits. After their rounds, Xanthe’s father sits her down and teaches her, generally about history or literature, but sometimes biology, until lunch.

After lunch, Xanthe’s mother teaches her physics and math and a little bit of magic. During the afternoon, Xanthe is usually free to help about the ship or play or read or do whatever else she feels like doing that day. After dinner, she spends time with both of her parents and/or the crew, talking and singing and maybe even dancing on some nights, until she is sent to bed. On stormy days, she is usually sent below decks. She waits the storms out helping in any way she can to keep the ship working.

Xanthe very much admires her mom. She thinks that her mom's competence and confidence is amazing, and wants to be very much like her some day, and become the captain of her own ship. She thinks her dad is cool, too, but not as cool as her mom. She loves both of her parents very much, and does not mind spending lots of time with them. Despite being on the same ship as them almost all the time, she doesn't feel stifled by them. If she ever feels like she wants other interaction, she talks to the other members of the crew, who are, on the whole, amenable to talking to her.



Despite listening to story after story of people living most of their lives on the ground, Xanthe remembers very clearly the first time it really hit her that people really could and did live their whole lives Earth-bound. She had been playing with a friend of hers, a girl named Grace, who lived in one of the towns her parents made land in. They were climbing trees when suddenly Grace giggled nervously and said, “I think this is the highest I’ve ever been off the ground.”

Xanthe laughed. “We aren’t even at the lowest regulation airship flying height!” she said.

Grace, suddenly solemn, looked at her. “How do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Fly so high up.”

Xanthe could think of nothing to say to that; she had always lived high in the sky. The thought of being hesitant about heights had never even occurred to her.

“I don’t think I could do it,” Grace continued. “I would always be afraid of falling.”

Xanthe looked at the ground that was so close beneath her, and at the rooftops that were closer still, then back to Grace. Grace’s face was slightly paler than it usually was, and she was looking down like the air beneath their feet would attack her if she took her eyes off it. Xanthe looked down again, at the houses underneath them that still seemed ridiculously close, and said, “I have never been afraid of falling.”

She had never realized before that some people couldn’t live the way she did, that some- most- people were afraid of being up on a ship above the clouds. She had known that most people seemed to prefer having their feet anchored to the ground for whatever reason, but for the first time, she really understood that the way she lived was different, and that so many people would never delight in flying through the endless blue of the sky.

The realization just made her happier that she lived her life the way she did, always flying.

Also, living on an airship meant that she didn’t have to attend school, which was nice. Her parents had made her go to a school on the ground once, when their ship was being repaired, and it had been horrid. She much preferred the schooling she got on the ship, from her mom and dad, and sometimes whatever assorted crew member had free time and the desire to teach her.




Attributes

Inquisitive

Pushy
Carefree
Blunt
Clever
Organized
Impatient
Daring
Impulsive
Confident
Dramatic
Bossy
Willful
Uninhibited
Bold
Loyal
Stubborn

Tollbooth Troubles

Xanthe sits in the drivers seat of her car, waiting for the line in front of her to just move already so she can get back to pushing the speed limit on the highway. She’s pretty sure toll roads were invented to test her patience and make her hate being grounded even more than she does already. The air is still in the car, even with all the windows rolled down, and the lack of breeze is compounding her irritation at the whole situation- the waiting, the being on the ground, the not-moving-forward, the closed in car, the waiting.

The car in front of her finally moves forward, and she watches the bar lower itself back across the road, blocking her way forwards. She very carefully maneuvers the car so it is stationed next to the tollbooth- her seat is scooted as far forward as it can go and her feet still only have tenuous control over the pedals. She reaches over into the glove box and pulls out the wallet she keeps in there just for this tollbooth. She opens the wallet, looks into it, and realizes there is no money in it. A moment passes.

“Wait, what?” she blurts out. No money! That means that she can’t get back to the ship. Not good. “I could have sworn there was money in here,” she whispers frantically to herself.

Xan shakes the shock away and stuffs the wallet back into the glove box. She pulls her bag from the backseat into her lap and tears through its contents, even though she knows she doesn’t keep money in it. She piles what is in the bag onto the passenger seat after ascertaining the object in question doesn’t have any money on or in it. When the bag is empty, she turns it upside down and shakes it for good measure. All that comes out is fluff, and she angrily tosses the bag on top of the pile of stuff now on her passenger seat.

“Okay, think, Xanthe,” she says to herself. “How do you get past a tollbooth without money?” Nothing occurs to her for a moment, and she swears that the letters on the tollbooth claiming “Toll: 3 Dollars” are mocking her. Her eyes fall on the bar stretching across the road in front of her and she considers just powering through it. The fantasy of the bar breaking from the weight of her car is wonderful and tempting. Maybe it would even take the tollbooth with it somehow. But, however wonderfully tempting the destruction of the bar, it would not be a good option. Firstly, it is very illegal to destroy what she assumes is state property like that. Secondly, it would not be good for her car. It would at least break one of the headlights. Also, the paint transfer from the bar to her car and from her car to the bar would make it easy to track the perpetrator. Not many people had bright yellow cars, and reflective red paint would show up all too well against yellow.

No, just flooring the accelerator was not an option. Maybe she could just drive around the tollbooth?

She glances to the side. It seems that whoever made the tollbooth considered that people would try to skip the toll by going off-road, and had accordingly put up barriers on either side of the road. How disappointing, going around seemed like such a good option. She would have to look for a road that went around the toll.

Xan knows the toll road was fairly well travelled and doesn’t want to get stuck sitting in front of the tollbooth, so she decides to go back along the road and look for a rest stop or somewhere similar to park while she looked at her map. She carefully reverses her car and drives backwards for a while, until she sees a rest area on the side of the road. She pulls into it and sighs as she reaches across the car and pulls the map out of the glove compartment. She glances out the window while unfolding the map and freezes.

The rest area does not have a barrier around it.

Xan quickly refolds the map and shoves it back into the glove compartment. She stuffs the things she pulled out of her bag back into it, uncaring of how they fit, and tosses the bag back into the backseat.

“Looks like I won’t have to find a new way,” she says aloud, in a rather epic way, in her opinion, a grin spreading across her face. “Or at least, I won’t have to find a new road.”

She drives her car carefully out of the rest area and onto the grass surrounding the road. She drives parallel to the road, careful to keep it in sight, watching the barriers around the road appear and hem the road into a single lane. She passes the tollbooth and sticks her tongue out at it, imagining victorious music playing. She speeds up slightly, hoping that there will be a break in the barrier soon. Not too long after seeing the tollbooth, she sees a break in the barrier and directs her car back onto the road, accelerating to match the speed limit, feeling the movement induced wind blow through her short hair. She chuckles. “I’m glad there weren’t any cops,” she murmurs to herself, watching as the stupid tollbooth recedes completely into the distance. “Although, I do wonder what happened to the money in my wallet. Maybe I used it to buy ice cream too many times?”




This character is from my fifth concept, "Flight". The proposed character has been changed to a girl.

Concept/Development Art

The Girl and the Sky

The story of the girl who makes friends with the personification of the daytime sky. She lives in a place similar to the Great Plains of America.  

The Rain

The personification of the rain. He knows he is looking for something white and fluffy to rest on, but he doesn't know exactly what it is. When he takes off his hat, his hair becomes rain. 

The Curious Cuttlefish

The Curious Cuttlefish is quite curious about everything, and is always getting into trouble because of it. He goes about the ocean, examining everything and trying to match his colors and patterns to what he sees. At one point, he swims into an ocean trench and sees phosphorescent fish, but eventually gets frightened and runs back into the brighter part of the ocean.

A Persephone Tale

A version of the myth of Persephone- a girl finds her way into the underworld/death's realm, and ends up having to stay there for some amount of time. In this tale, she is lured to the realm when she tries to pick up a purple-blue flower, but the wind blows it into a cave, and she follows. In the end of the tale, she takes the realm from Hades by force and becomes Queen of the Dead. 

Flight

The tale of the adventures of a boy who lives on an airship. He has bright yellow hair and can do magic, and is willing to (and does) fight to protect his ship.