Raymond Weiss (left) and Sae Momono (right), two central characters from my conceptual manga, Absolute Zero.

Art notes:
Once again I tried mixing gradient and vector shading. This didn't quite turn out as well as I had hoped - I think next time I'll stick with vector.
I drew this first on paper before class began. Rummaging through my notes, I managed to find it and thought it'd be a fun piece to try out on computer. And lo! it stands before you now in all its digital pride!
I'll admit that when I drew Raymond I was a bit influenced by Sunabouzu. Desert mantles rock.

--- Everything below here is Geek-speak; you know, the stuff that comes out of people who make up worlds. Feel free to stop reading here if you don't take well to that stuff ---


Story notes:
"Absolute Zero" takes place on present day Earth, a couple of decades after a great System Crash, where the universe glitched and spawned a great number of instances of people (of all ages) with missing or undefined traits (like hair color, temperature, body fat percentage, arm length, etc). These abnormally occuring people are called "Bugmen," and a great portion of these die upon spawning due to fatal bugs such as missing body parts or imploding. The few who survive are integrated into society and live in spite of their faulty existence.
The ability to manipulate one's bug onto oneself or their environment is called "glitching." Glitching potential is dependant on the nature of the bug and the user's understanding of it. I've said pretty much all I need to go into these two characters now.

Character notes:

Raymond Weiss: Despite his concealing getup and large sack, he is NOT some sort of wanted criminal who's robbed Sae of her possessions. That is just an unfortunate result of my lack of planning when drawing them.
Anyhow, the reason for his clothing is his skin. He comes from a subterranean mole-people who are renown for their lack of pigmentation, so he needs to cover himself with layers of clothing to protect himself from our horrible surface sun. He also needs to wear protective lenses under his mantle. He's legally blind, but hey, when you grow up with a nation of people who are too, you learn how to get around.
Ray has a Zero glitch - he can set any value to zero (if he can find it). This includes attention, motivation, interest, etc. He uses this to get out of a lot of situations, and as a result his existence isn't really noticed.
Ray's name is a pun on "Rei," which when translated from Japanese can either mean "Zero" or "Ghost," which partially explains why he looks like that. His last name, Weiss, is German for "white," reflecting his albino nature.

Sae Momono: Considerably less interesting than Ray. When I first made Ray i was just doodling a bunch of random people, and Sae happened to be right next to him. They seemed to go pretty well together, so she somehow ended up being important to the story.
For reasons I've yet to come up with, she accompanies Raymond wherever he goes as a sort of retainer. He's considerably older than she is, so there's no romance between the two. Um...not much else to say on her character. She's quiet and does what she's told. Sometimes.
Sae has a Reject glitch - she can selectively ignore any influence, including Ray's Zero glitch. She's arguably the most dangerous bugman at present, being able to Reject attacks and even Newton's 3rd Law (allowing her to pass her hand through substances/people effortlessly).
There is no significance to her naming. I gave her a Japanese name 'cause she looked Asian.

Maybe one day I'll manga-nize this idea.
*looks up*
Man, that's a lot of text.