Vanessie Jazmine Loch

I probably made this character for the longest time now. She was created after I saw Monsters, Inc. when I came back from a terrible Vegas trip for New Year's in 2010. No worries, I didn't do anything wrong there, and I never will, since I hate Vegas.

Anyway, in Vegas, I noticed at a store that Monsters, Inc. was released in Blu-Ray already and I REALLY wanted to see it again in high definition, so when we came back home, we rented and saw it. Quite surprisingly, I had a different view of it. Before, I used to have a huge crush on Mike Wazowski. But from then on, I had a huge crush on Randall Boggs.

So what did I do? Create a Mary-Sue OC of myself as Randall's lover. That was it. Nothing more.

I was a freshman in high school when I created this. Even looking for this drawing was a pain, since I shun my old drawings sometimes. XD But yeah, I created this character for only one purpose: to be paired with Randall. There wasn't much more to that.

And... Of course, being young and stupid, the character was supposed to be me. Already, she was pretty much a Mary-Sue, as I recall now. Even her design was very lazy. In a way, she was designed as another Randall: a reptilian character with multiple limbs and three fingers or toes on each hand.

And indeed, the design was very... Random, too. Her color scheme was very... I don't know, random like I said. She had blue skin, magenta underbelly, red ear-fins and butterfly wings. The butterfly wings were only to signify my name.

Well, I'm too lazy and too... Disgusted to even look for the rest of my old drawings... XD So yeah, she didn't really develop a personality. It was then that I changed her from being reptilian to being mammalian. And I dubbed her to be the Loch Ness monster. Or Vanessie

Then I finally developed a story for her. If anyone remembers, Mike refers to Loch Ness as one of the monsters who were "banished", so I made a story where Nessie, Vanessie's mother, was banished a long time ago and conceived her daughter in the wild. There, she raised Vanessie. That's where we got a character that's too much like Ariel from Little Mermaid. Vanessie gets curious about the Monster World where others are like her. And what more? She has a betta-fish friend.

Wow... It was too much. After her mother was killed by hunters before her eyes, she gets so scared that she runs away and accidentally enters the Monster World. Long story short, IT... WAS... TOO... MUCH. 

I changes her to have a mammalian catlike body. Her stubby snout is supposed to give away the porpoise side of her like a dolphin since she is an aquatic monster. It was slightly better, but she had the same color scheme and butterfly wings.

She meets Randall Boggs, who also came back from the Human World, and they have a hostile relationship when they're paired together at MI, with Vanessie as the assistant. I remember writing this much as a fanfic, but after that, I just gave up. To me, this story was just atrocious and I couldn't even bring myself to think that it'd be a good story in the end. Even if I did try. So it just continued on as art for the fans (who were so very dedicated for a character with very little characteristics, oddly, as I think about it...) until I stopped completely.

It was then that I heard about Monsters University and I got excited for it. As for many Randall fans, I was anxious to find out what was in store for Randall in this film. When I saw the first poster art of him with glasses, I had hope.

I don't know, I feel that Randall had a wide range of ways for being redeemed. He looked like the kind of person who was very stressed, who wanted something to make up something else in the past just seeing how dedicated and willing he was doing the things he did in the first film, just to leave that short.

Then, my family took me to Vegas again for New Years 2013, and my aunt took me to the movies to see the re-released Monsters, Inc in 3D. We didn't see it in 3D, but it did trigger my fondness of Randall Boggs again. When the release date was coming close, I did something I thought I would never do again: bring back Vanessie.

This was draw this year. After two years of not drawing her anymore, I re-designed her again. This time, taking action to make her more appealing and more lifelike. This time, I used a color scheme that I used on my self-inserts. Light aqua skin with red fur/hair. Her underbelly is a lighter color of light aqua and her ear-fins the same. So she had consistent colors than colors that were randomly out of place.

Even though I wanted her to look like myself (I had red dyed hair in the summer before I made this), but I didn't want her to be ME. I wanted her to be her own character. Even though she had my name, I wanted her to be a independent character and for people to forget that she and I have the same name.

She is an aspiring artist like me, but she wants to be a painter, not an animator like me. She also has struggles I never faced in my life, but I tried to illustrate them in the best way I could.

She became more appealing to draw and much more fun since she had an enticing personality.

Her story was that she had a very close relationship with her mother, Nessie. Until she gets into high school, in a very intense age in her life, her mother disappears out of nowhere. She hears news say that she was banished or she simply ran away. During that time, her father raised her, but spent so much time out figuring out why his wife and the mother of his daughter was gone and went to the place Nessie worked: Monsters, Inc. Soon enough, Vanessie's father was killed by a mysterious person.

After Vanessie becomes orphaned at a young age, she becomes depressed and desperate. Her friends left her, thus deteriorating her trust in people. She did manage to graduate high school on her own, but she had no aid to go to art school like she wanted. So instead, she finds a job at a family friend's café, Hidden City Café (which I know is featured in MI). It pays well for her rent, but she needed more money to provide for herself. But every second job she tried, she was always let go.

In the end, she had no other choice but to be a legacy at Monsters, Inc. She didn't want to work at MI at first because she felt tension at the place where her mother worked. But since by now, being in her twenties already, she thinks that working at MI would fulfill her mother's dream of making children happy since it's now a laugh factory.

See, Nessie was known to be a great female scarer, but deep inside, she resented what she was doing. When she was scaring children, she always felt that she's doing a charity to something she opposed; traumatizing children for their own benefit. She always dreamed of making human children happy and unafraid of anything. And she taught her daughter that. But even though she hated scaring kids, she did it for the good of the community, and she did apologize to the kids she scared quietly before she left them.

Anyway, Vanessie gets hired at MI, the now laugh factory, and is paired to be with Randall as his assistant. As before, Randall came back to the Monster World to make himself a better person, but he and Vanessie don't like each other at first. Because of Vanessie's being judgmental and sassy towards him, he begins to resent coming back and makes no effort to improve himself. 

Until things come to the worst, they come to each other to open up and understand each other. From then on, they work together as friends and warm up to each other more.

What I wanted do do with Vanessie was to give her a very prominent role along with Randall Boggs in my story. Even thought it's merely a fanfiction story, I wanted it to have deeper meaning. They both make each other better and more open to their feelings. Randall comes to a distraught and depressed Vanessie and shapes her into a strong and hopeful person. Vanessie comes to an angry and selfish Randall and shapes him into a sweet and caring monster like he was in Monsters University. I wanted a character that Randall could have sympathy for and to help him to slowly become a better person in his own time. She teaches him her values, mainly her mother's and makes him more compassionate and patient. Soon enough, they fall in love, but they keep their feelings in for such a long time, both very nervous about how they feel for one another. I wanted her to be the one to bring out Randy again; the person Randall used to be and truly is.

Some more concept sketches.

So all in all, she became an enticing character, and she's developed a good number of fans for the new updated version of her. It's great to see people liking my OC for her lively personality.

Just to pay tribute to my fans. :)

I really have to thank my fans for being great supporters of this character. :)

If anyone is curious about the story about this character, since I did mention I wrote a story for her and Randall Boggs, it is in my fanfiction account. http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8955197/1/Winds-of-Change But it's great to practice character development in an already canon film series, and Monsters, Inc. is a great way for me to practice that.

Thanks for reading. :)