Émile is happy, social. He's always eager to converse and likes to keep the tone light-hearted. He can find the beauty in almost anything, if he has no one to talk to then he will simply enjoy the scenery or his own artwork. Even in the face of difficulties his solution has always been to shrug and smile. In conjunction with his cheerful nature, Émile is very patient and calm. It would take a lot of effort to make him lose his cool and raise his voice. As long as the person apologises and promises not to act that way in the future, they will be forgiven. Glass-work is a very demanding art form. It can be very difficult to correct mistakes, meaning work has to start over from scratch until you can get it perfect. This suits Émile just fine. He loves to find the details in things and take his time getting things just right. He takes this approach with people too. Émile's upbringing could not be described as 'healthy' and as a result his values developed poorly. He cares little for people's feelings or the concept of 'right' and 'wrong'. He does as he pleases, kept in check only by the tangible consequences that might arise. His most dangerous trait is his controlling nature. While not apparent on the surface he is obsessed with twisting the world to his whim. Unconcerned by the feelings of other, and with few repercussions, there is nothing stopping him from slowly moulding people into an image that pleases him through conditioning and, when he can, hypnosis. Émile is forgiving, because he simply needs to correct that flaw, he is cheerful because it's only a matter of time before he has made a world perfectly tailored for him.

History

When he was 16, Émile’s family moved from France to Malta. They said they wanted a change in scenery, he didn’t mind. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the new country. Émile roamed the streets of Malta on his own, take in the pristine streets and architecture. He sought out any excuse to be away from home as long as possible, it was quiet and oppressive there. His parents worked long hours for high end businesses, but when they did see each other the conversations quickly turned sour, occationally violent, as Émile was regularly bullied for not meeting impossible expectations. It was daily, precise work, combing each and every street, cataloguing any interesting location in his phone… but eventually one place stood out from the cafes and shops he was used to discovering. A large studio occupied by half a dozen people, working on their own to create various glass items. Even from open garage door, the sound of the huge furnace has been enough to catch his attention. He let himself in, at first avoiding the attention of everyone there but curiosity got the better of him and he asked a young man what he was working on. The man had been confused by Émile’s unannounced arrival but obliged, explaining what he was making and the process behind each of his actions – how if you heat the glass like so you can bend it and twist it, and if you use the jacks like so you can separate the glass from the blowpipe. They talked until the studio closed but Émile wasted no time returning the next day. He joined classes, paying out of pocket and learnt all the basic skills involved in glassblowing. Émile mastered glassblowing with relative ease, he had always enjoyed art in school, sketching and painting allowed him to make something from nothing. But this was different. Glass was something concidered to be hard, unmoving, but with the help of a furnace of blowtorch he had the power to change it into whatever he wanted. He graduated to more difficult and experimental methods of sculpture, trying everything at least once before moving on. Over time he started working on his first major project, a scale replica of himself, including a skeletal structure and circulatory system under frosted glass that made the ‘skin’. The sculpture was made of hundreds of individual pieces, each bone and artery was made separately before being fused together. The ‘skin’ hid most of the precision work, just like a real human body, although getting the glass to cover the rest of the structure without damaging it was a challenge in of itself. The other sculptors had helped him with heavy lifting, they couldn’t say no, but the planning and innovation was all Émile’s own work. The head of the studio also helped to promote the piece which quickly gained international fame within art circle, which doubled as the news broke of the artist’s young age. With that fame came some privileges. A tidy sum to start with, as various galleries around the world bid to host the piece. And an invitation from Hope’s Peak Academy, which Émile accepted without a second thought.