Character sheets

The approved designs every picture of The Mission is drawn from. All images are made in Codex and checked against the realism checklist before they are published.

The look of the book

• It looks like a real movie. People, rooms, streets and props are photorealistic, like stills from a live-action film.
• Only the binderclips are drawn on. A living binderclip is a real black binder clip coming alive, not a character shaped like a clip. Its metal is photographed for real; its face, hair, arms and legs are hand-drawn additions, like a doodle on a photograph.
• Other living objects (the lamp Bulb, the laptop Ed) follow the same rule: a real object with a doodled face.

Sergio Garcia — approved

Tall, lanky, about twenty; spiky copper-amber hair with short sides; green eyes; a small dangling earring; a long chain with an oval locket; a fitted black zip hoodie over a white ribbed tank top; paint-splattered camouflage cargo pants; white sneakers. On duty: a dark police uniform jacket. This look follows the art director's reference and differs from the text in three points (hair colour, a fitted hoodie instead of his mother's oversized one, an ear piercing instead of a pierced eyebrow); see Open questions.

The binderclips — approved design (V7)

• True clip anatomy. Two silver wire handles hooked into the far corners of the black body, rising in a V to a narrow neck and a keyhole-shaped loop.
• The face lives inside the see-through handle loop, a different hand-drawn face for every clip. Nothing is ever drawn on the black body.
• Hair is a hairpiece hooked on top of the loop; it never covers the metal.
• Artistic line: ink and pencil with a light wash, imperfect and alive, not slick cartoon.
• Limbs: thin dark sketchy arms with white gloved hands; long thin legs with knees (about one and a half times the body), white socks and coloured high-top sneakers, so the clips can sit, crouch and kneel.
• Outline rule: every black part (body, limbs, headphones) carries a thin light outline so it never blends into a dark background.

The six: Sunny (golden buns), Percy (dark tuft, headphones), Maya (curly brown ponytail, pink bow), Ruth (sleek dark-brown ponytail, blue bow), Quinn (ruby-rimmed square glasses, a tiny book), Reece (thin tuft, nervous). The Dubaloms and the other characters are not drawn in the approved style yet.