Epiphanis

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]41162[/ATTACH] Lady Crow. Maybe a little more cheesecakey and not as emaciated as I had orignally intended.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]41143[/ATTACH] Vixen. I like her design and my execution of it in this pic, except the pose is kind of meh.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]41142[/ATTACH] Diadem. There have been several published illustrations of her with slight variations to her costume. All had a little hood affixed to what I take to be a round-the-neck scarf, which I thought looked kinda dumb. I made the hood affixed to a little Sherlock Holmes hunters' cape with the scarf, which plays on the chevron-bordered brown-on-tan color scheme in one of the illustrations.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]41141[/ATTACH] Sapphire. I've actually done several roughs of her but this is the one I liked best.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]41140[/ATTACH] Valerian Scarlet. Specifically, a variation of Cryptic's take on "Evil Valerian," somewhat humanized and ditching the floaty tiara/corona thing.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) I've been busy recently, so I let this thread languish. But in honor of the new year, I thought I would resurrect it...

Re: Tigra (Marvel Universe) The character of Patsy Walker is one of the oldest currently owned by Marvel, going back to the mid-1940s. For close to thirty years she and her best frenemy Hedy were funnybook rivals in girls' comics. They were very similar to Archie Comics' Betty and Veronica, not surprisingly given that all four characters were written by Al Hartley at the height of their popularity in the 60s (though Hartley didn't create any of them). She languished in the 70s after girls comics lost traction, making the occasional guest cameo as a civilian in various superhero books largely for nostalgia value and comic relief. Avengers writer Steve Englehart wrote an interesting twist on the character in the mid-70s. PAtsy, who was physically fit but had nothing resembling a superpower and had very little training, decided she wanted to be a superhero -- and damned if she wasn't going to become one! She essentially browbeat Captain America and Iron Man into letting her onto the Avengers, appropriating Greer Nelson's leftover agility-enhancing supercostume after Greer had mutated into the Tigra form and didn't need it anymore. While in the Avengers she met and married Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan (her second husband), who ultimately was semi-indirectly responsible for driving her (more) insane and causing her to commit suicide (the specifics of which have been retconned several times and are kind of hazy). She ultimately was revived and left Hellstrom, and ever since several writers have eeked out cheap laughs that the superegotistical Hellstrom is still kind of hung up on her. She was a frequent member of the revolving cast of the Defenders book, but is rarely thought of as a core member of that team. Although she still has Greer's supersuit, Patsy's only bona fide superpower of her own is that somewhere along the line she became completely immune to magic. Since the mid-90s Hellcat has been largely a background/supporting character, but she is obviously one of if not the favorite superhero of writer Kathryn Immonen Immonen wrote a wonderfully funny limited series about her in the early 2000s and has featured her prominently in several other books she has written since, like Marvel Divas and Heralds. I love Walker as written by Immonen; Immonen perfectly captured the feel that Walker is too crazy to be taken seriously, but also too crazy NOT to be taken seriously. Unlike the majority of emo-angsty reluctant heroes who pine for a normal life, Walker is in costume because she really, really, REALLY wants to be, and nobody is going to damn well stop her.

So, given the DOJ downsizing, what is the probability of the ARGENT/IHA sourcebook coming out? I'm in for the Kickstarter if it goes that route.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40660[/ATTACH] Cryptic Studios has created a new storyline for Champions Online, which features the shapeshifting Malvan slave race of the Roi'Nesh. I have to say that I like their visual interpretation of them. So here we have two major shapeshifting races in the CU: the alien Roi'Nesh and the amphibious Lemurian atavists.

Re: Crossover events (has anyone else actually done this) Not in a Champions game. I was in a D&D 2d Ed game with one of three DMs sharing a homebrew setting they had jointly created (one of them was Kim Mohan, former Dragon Magazine editor). The three DMs lived in seperate cities but kept each other updated on their latest events. My DM's PC group appeared as DM-run NPCs in the other two DM's campaigns, as theirs did in ours.

Re: What Champions Universe character would you gender change? I have to agree on Gargantua, strictly on the name. Also Stiletto, for the same reason. I like Cheshire Cat as a male, though.

Re: I've... forgotten how to run Champions... Even if you aren't looking for advice... well, have some. In your current state of mind, don't GM Champions. If the GM isn't into the material, the game sucks, and only the most obsessively one-tracked players can get anything out of it. Like a bad romantic relationship, if its not there for you, everybody is better off if you just end it. Go do some other genre. Maybe be a player for a while, and try to learn from someone else being in the GM seat. Just because your head isn't in it now, doesn't mean it never will be again. I've gone long stretches not interested in the superhero genre, and have always eventually come back to it. The same goes for sword-and-sorcery. And swashbuckling. And SF... basically, every 6-8 years I find myself fascinated with Traveller again for a few months to a year before putting it away again. Chances are, at some point something will catch your attention and pull you back into it with gusto. If not, it isn't meant to be; move on.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) Thanks. Viperia is intentionally somewhat elongated, to convey snakiness. I realize I made Stingray's shade of green too day-glo bright when it should have been more a subdued teal. I actually tried to tone it down with a blue color filter, to convey a sense of seeing-through water, but it didn't come out right. I want to bring up that there are two characters I'd really like to do but am having trouble with. The first is Mechana from Book of the Machine. I hate the pink-faux-boob-chassis design of the illustration therein, but I haven't been able to come up with an alternative that I liked that matched the written description. Everything I've tried comes out too much like a crap version of Sorayama's "Robot Sexy" work, or maybe of Jocasta from the Avengers. When I try to make it more inhuman it becomes apparent that I suck at drawing machinery, and the feminine aspects (and even the anthropoidal aspects) get lost. I'm finding it quite hard to convey femininity while maintaining robotic abstraction; it may well simply be beyond my skill. The other one I'm having a problem with is Valerian Scarlet. I've been trying to adhere to "official" descriptions as much as possible, with Cryptic materials trumping DOJ materials if there is a direct conflict. Cryptic made two character models of Valerian for the online game, but in my opinion the character models don't translate well into hand illustration. There are elements of each version that I like but they don't mesh well when I try to draw them. Particularly the weird physical floating tiara/half-halo thing on the evil version of Scarlet looks dumb when I try to illustrate it. I'm probably going to do a hodgepodge integrating different elements from the multiple versions but leaving out others.

Re: Storn's Art & Characters thread. On the Serpent's Teeth cover I like how the curve of the blades draws attention to the woman's stance, with the left-hand blade prepared for a diagonal upward slash.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]40167[/ATTACH] Viperia.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]40166[/ATTACH] Stingray.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]40165[/ATTACH] Silver Avenger Mayte Sanchez.

Re: Gigaton question... The simplest retcon would be that Gigaton was recruited into the organization during Zerstoiten's reclusion and was not active prior to the Battle of Detroit. His own enormous power allowed him to take a supervisory role of the organization in Destroyer's absence. There wasn't really anything pre-Detroit that Gigaton absolutely had to be a part of.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) Every few years Marvel puts out a Women of Marvel swimsuit special. Frankly, superheroine swimsuit pinup art is what floated most of the comics industry through most of the 90s. As much as I like that sort of thing, the resurgence of actual writing in the 2000s was a welcome relief.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) The thread title is to rope in viewers. I've actually composed and abandoned several group beach pics with bikinis. Eventually, I will work one to the point I'm satisfied with it and post it here.

Re: Lady Shiva - Transgendered Goddess ? You do know there is an established DC character named Lady Shiva?

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]39968[/ATTACH] Lynx.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]39966[/ATTACH] Dawnbird.

Re: Women of the Champions Universe (Fanpictorial) [ATTACH=CONFIG]39965[/ATTACH] Amnesia.

Re: Any online campaigns? There have been a few MapTool based chat/virtual desktop online games recently, including one I attempted to run for a short time last year. I intend to attempt it again one day, but not anytime soon.