RECAP: In November 2010, I participated in the 30 Characters Challenge and created 35 new characters. In December, I gave them all away (for the most part). I decided that one of my projects in 2011 would be to add to that list of 35 and, by December 2011, create 100 new characters total. Every Monday, I will post a new character. This is the twelfth:
the Phantom Queen
Concept: To fully grasp what I’m doing for the next few weeks, we have to go to Facebook. I posted all of the 35 characters from November into an album, and in that album, fellow creator, Nigel Flood, asked me, “Any Irish characters Vito? March is just around the corner 
” (By the way, this is a direct quote from February 8th.) I’m always one for a challenge, and so I accepted the gauntlet and went to it. I had one condition; try not to do anything that was a direct (possibly racist) stereotype. So, when creating a character for a nationality or background that I’m either vaguely or completely unfamiliar with, I look at that country’s mythology.
The Phantom Queen is based on the Morrígan from Celtic myth. I didn’t really think her powers through when I was creating Samhain. See, she should have mystical powers, but I gave those to Samhain, and it feels like a cheat to have to magicians/magick users on the team. So, for Phantom Queen, I wanted to do something a little backwards. PQ has telekinesis, but it is so advanced, she can use it to appear as if she’s using magical powers. The green power is actually an illusion that she creates with her mind, as is her flight abilities (she is really just using her mind to lift her from the ground). She also has low level telepathy, but she rarely if ever uses it. I like the idea of someone having a power and just ignoring it to the point of almost atrophy.
I don’t really care for the crown, but after thinking about her colors and the relation to crows, it kind of adds a little oomph. We’ll keep it.
The Phantom Queen first appeared to fight alongside the Celtic Clan, but now uses her powers and mastery of the mystic arts to fight Lord Albion with his fellow Celts, Samhain and Balor (calling themselves the Children of Cian).
As you can see, I’m now using Fábrica de Heróis because, as far as I can tell, there are no confusing copyright issues (everything is in Portuguese, so I might be wrong). I used Version 2009 (for some reason 2010 and the, I guess, 2011 versions aren’t working for me). I plan on plugging their site from here on because if they’re nice enough to let me own my character art (and again, I’m just guessing), then I should send folks their way. I’m fairly certain that I’m going to use Fábrica from now on, but I have a backlog of characters already created with HM, so if I can’t get around to redoing them, you’ll see the HM versions.
And, as promised, you are free to use this new open source character with this Creative Commons license:
Phantom Queen by Vito Delsante is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.vitodelsante.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.vitodelsante.com.
ARTISTS – If you’d like to take a swing at drawing the Phantom Queen (daily sketch, etc), let me know so I can post your art here on the site!
See Also:
#36: Effigy – aka, Christopher Sinclair
#37: Die Twenty
#38: The Gear(s)
#39: The Scout
#40: Nightmare
#41: Sparta
#42: Primus
#43: Agent Mummy
#44: Eclipse
#45: Samhain
#46: Balor
Next week, another Open Source/Creative Commons character but this time, we’re going to London!
Copyright © 2011, Vito Delsante
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