The Forgotten Freaks

Hello, all!

Okay, so I was making a small tutorial on how to create a basic digital painting brush for a friend of mine (this can be found in my scraps) and started looking at my old artwork for the fun of it.

I found myself in my "Snailsvenue" folder looking in the "Old Stuff" subfolder and was reminded of how many characters I threw away before the series was known as Snailsvenue (it was known as Freakshow, which is the base of my namesake on here).

The story revolved around 12 "freaks" who were constantly warring with "the popular ones." The main character of the story, Landon Landerson (one of only four characters - not pictured here - that survived the cut), was instantly grouped into the "freaks" category by the ever-so-popular Holly Randolph. It was at a time going to be a comic book, and detailed the events of how the freaks tried to overthrow the popular ones. It had a lot of quirkiness and style, but honestly very little substance and many characters were just filler, leading me to this image.

The characters here were only slightly redesigned so as to break the utter monotony that they used to convey. I like them better now.

NOTE: I don't expect you to read the ridiculous text wall that is coming up in just a second here, but you get bonus points if you do read it. ;D This is just for people who really want to know more about these now-defunct characters.

Each one of the characters pictured here was ditched for one reason or another. Here are some explanations of them:

Double: A boy with the soul of a little girl trapped inside of him, he could only control himself half of the time because of his ghostly parasite. That explains his mismatch of boy and girl clothing. This was my favorite of the originals that was cut, but I ultimately took this character's design and split personalities and cut him in two - effectively creating Snailsvenue's very own Verono twins, Bruno and Bludo.

Lizard Boy: Half boy, half lizard, what more can I say? He's neat, but ultimately useless, which is why he got the ax and never returned in any other form.

Celia Winston: A girl who died in the early 1900s and re-emerged a zombie not so long ago thanks to the pendant around her neck. Only Landon ever knew she was a zombie - the others just thought she looked strange, and there was no convincing them otherwise. Celia was cut because her premise was actually too strange for the story back then and she simply didn't fit. But her whispy, pale, sullen design heavily influenced a current Snailsvenue character, Olina Vaudel.

Con: Always caught committing some horrible sin or crime, con was known for his complete lack of morals. He was Zoe's right-hand-man in planning the dastardly deeds against the popular clique. Con was cut from the lineup because he made Zoe seem less frightening. At the end of the day, she'd probably rather do all of these terrible deeds herself, rendering Con useless.

3-Eyes: A so-called psychic who could see farther into the future than anyone ever claimed, 3 Eyes' idea of a reading was simply looking into her (plastic) crystal ball, waving her hands around, and shouting incoherently. Her wand took AAA batteries, for what it's worth. 3 Eyes was simply a gag character and nothing less, adding to the then-comedic Freakshow, but her nasty-yet-nonchalant attitude still lives on in Olina.

Rooster: As a baby, Rooster was hypnotized into acting like a chicken every time he heard a bell. This was troublesome, since the school's morning bell would ring, causing him to act like a chicken throughout the entire day until the dismissal bell rang, which is why Rooster was absolutely dumb. Rooster is one of those characters who fell victim to my personal trends fading: I lost him because I lost interest in his design, and the character himself didn't seem deep enough to bother redesigning when Freakshow eventually became a more serious affair.

Voices: Just as her name suggests, Voices hears...voices in her head. But unlike most voices in peoples heads, Voices considers her voices her very best friend and most interesting debate partner. In fact, there was a time where the voices themselves had names, but I don't remember them. They were sort of...how should I say...non-characters, if you will. Based off of the original design for Snailsvenue's own Izzy Arcaney, Voices was ditched largely for the same reason Rooster was, only she was ditched before any of these other characters were. At some point, her design became boring to me and I had come up with another character to replace her. But Voices was actually really too genius for me to realize that at the time. It was her normal design that made her ever deceiving - you would never expect someone like her to have issues with the voices in her head, which is why it was brilliant. But alas, she was bested by a girl who ate too much sugar, a character I've only ever drawn twice in my entire life and plan to never draw again. Voices, on the other hand...

Honestly, I should tell you that I actually drew one other character that I meant to include here, but the drawing was so horrendous that I couldn't subject you to that out of complete respect. Her name was Technicolor, and she was a girl who carried a flower pot (with one single flower in it) on her head. She was named for her rainbow scarf. But honestly, just like the character that replaced Voices, she was so insignificant that there's really no need to present her here anyway.

Alright, at the risk of driving you all insane and boring you all to tears, I'll close this one up.

Adobe Photoshop CS, about 3 hours for all of them combined.

Please full view and enjoy!