Comic 1122 - True Blue Filler: New Val Costumes
3rd Dec 2021, 11:00 PM
in True Blue Filler
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Author Notes:
We did have a working idea with Val for a long while, but it was kind of hazy and needed refinement; none of these quite match up with it, it was kind of a football-like modification of her existing outfit with more pronounced shoulder pads, but the closest to that look is number 9. We decided it didn't really entirely work for her so we started off retooling it into that one and then it was modified from here, with us taking the design we liked most of the concepts we came up with and running with that as the basis for the various alternate colors being pitched.
Kind of the broad concept of the glowing lines on most of these is that the costume is made of a material that lets her absorb and shoot energy through it, sort of give her a Tron lines kind of look while at the same time being something that would actively be useful to her. If we end up rolling with that concept it'll likely be explained in the next chapter, we already have an idea in mind of how exactly she would acquire this.
The hair stripes were kind of just something I threw in while coloring these, it's not something we actually talked about. Really just boils down to liking how Valerie looked in the previous chapter and wanting to do something to kind of evoke that and make her design a little more colorful while also being more restrained than how she looked during that sequence and from the somewhat similar (if we go with blue for it) look that Sareena's sporting these days in Wright as Rayne. Kind of just spitballing so if people aren't into that idea it can easily be dropped.
Next one of these will prooobably be Nicky, we've actually had him sitting finished for awhile (I think we did him before Lore even?) and kind of have a look in mind for him that we're especially attached to. We're also pretty set on what we want to do with Andy but haven't really prepared a proper pitch image for it so yeah, Nicky'll probably be done next.
Bares noting that part of trying a more diverse range of colors on Val this time around is that on both Nicky and Andy, moreso the former, we're leaning toward really changing up their color schemes, so doesn't really hurt to try some other ones with her as well.
Because yeah, this was a great surprise. I think Martin threw out the Tron lines idea for the costume and it escalated from there; how does Valerie's suit glow in repsonse to her powers? Something else mentioned was the Metroid suit from Dread, and the concept that Valerie's costume could have bare arms that gave her more surface area to fire beams through. I was in the middle of drawing a suit that was ripped up and torn from being overloaded by her power, then got this idea instead.
Worked out great. Before that we'd drawn those two costumes on the bottom left, numbers 9 and 10, and they were just looking boring. Throwing the Tron Lines on made her pop WAAY more while giving her a Sci-Fi bent.
And yeah, we're thinking about making her primary color something instead of white, with Red being the obvious choice since Nicky's will be moving away from red in his new look. Probably. All of this remains up in the air.
The hair bits are fine, though.
If she's going for a Sci-Fi scheme, I'd suggest taking a look at some of her favorite sci-fi shows, and the outfits in that. Take some inspiration from Klingon Armor, or something of the sort.