Here is the character sheet for all ten characters in the Pearl Diver. Ruka was the last character I added to give Torquemada a foil to flesh out his character. At the moment the novella is one third done, and I'm still writing the introduction for Ruka's character.
The original concept for the story was a kid trying to find a hero, but another concept is also emerging from the story, namely the retelling of old filipino folklore in a modern fashion. The most popular stories from my childhood were the manananggal, the kapre, and the mangkukulam, i.e. the vampire, the giant, and the witch.
The diver is now becoming a cross between a superhero story and gothic horror. This goes along the same vein of stories told by Marvel in The Tomb of Dracula, whereby Dracula becomes the protagonist fighting evil monsters who are worse than himself. The diver, however, is hardly the prince of darkness.
On a technical note, the final image was completed in an app called Procreate. I wanted to test drive this software for along time on my iPad Pro, and this project made me realize what an amazing app it truly is. This could very well replace Photoshop on my desktop, but I still need to try out the masking features.
