Nato

Hey, that's a good idea. I'll definitely do that. So is anyone else inspire to do some repaints or custom jobs based on the CU guys? I'll probably do a dr. destroyer mini using the dr. doom mini first. Should be a fairly simpy job.

Good ideas! I was thinking of cutting the head off of one Hulk, and sanding down his shirt. Then flattening down his shoulder some. Then I was going to cut another hulk, whole upper torso, and fixing that to the other chop job. Then filling and sculpting with the green stuff. Will look around for a suitable head though. Thanks for tips on the horns!

Hey, pretty cool image there. The character has a nice light-hearted feel to him.

Interesting technique. I had a teacher who worked in similar fashion using rabit skin glue. So after you've sealed in your pencils with the clear gesso, it looks as if you've applied the paint in a very liquid form, almost like watercolors? I'll have to give that a try.

OK, everyone run over to this guys site to look at his custom suPEhero miniatures. He does an excellent jub of converting HeroClix figures into complete custom characters. He chops and combines, resculpts, repaints these things into pure works of superhero art. The link to his site... http://www.quindia.com/archetype.html But best of all, he has posted a tutorial for his technique on the M&M boards so that we can all give it a try. http://www.greenronin.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2045 It's very cool. I'm going to give it a try soon as I have an excess of HeroClix doubles sitting around. May try to make a Grong mini by combining two Hulk clix. Wish me luck.

Don't you HATE that? That's why I've pretty muched stopped going to my local FLGS. They never have what I want. So I just order online now. Usually from FRP. They're in Cali so it usually gets here in two days.

Right. But what I guess I'm wondering is if you just hold your action instead of actually covering your hostage, can't they just run away. Uh, duh. Never mind. You'd just use that held action and blow them away. What about the traditional "grab hostage around neck, press gun to head" scenario. You'd always have the gun on them, but could easily turn the gun on a rusher. So is that basically a grab maneuver, then you just hold your action? The hostage could always choose to struggle free, but they know you could still pull the trigger. Cool. Og course, once you turn the gun on a rusher, the gun is no longer to the hostage's head. Since that hostage has in a sense been holding their own action, they could now make a move while your gun is off of them. Interesting. OK, I think I talked myself through it. I'm fairly certain I'd know how to run that scenario now.

Everything said previously makes sense to me as far as using covered and held actions instead of aborting to an attack. But it raises a question to me as far as which to use in this instance. So as described above, a gunman has a gun to a hostages head. Some fool decides to rush the gunman. The gunman then turns his gun and shoots the would-be hero. Now, to have a hostage at gunpoint, that is using the "covered" option right? Well if he's already covering a hostage in this manner, how then would he turn the gun on the rushing hero suddenly - since he can't use cover and hold an action at the same time right? Or would you just rule that he doesn't really need to use an action to cover the hostage? Then he can hold his action and either use it to shoot the hostage or the rushing hero right? Thanks.

Great lines like this... ""To the Ninja only cowards use guns. Ninja is more than a way of life, it's a way of death!!" Anyway, found another link to it on Amazon. Says release date 1987. The "Life of Ninja" ones are 1985. Maybe they rereleased it as "Deadly Life of a Ninja" later. Who knows. http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/exchange-glance/Y02Y0451159Y9840574/qid=1046584642/sr=1-2/102-0222978-6111377#details The cover has a blurb that reads "Live Killing Machines." Good times indeed.

Susano, just wondering if you, or anyone else for that matter has ever seen a movie called 'Deadly Life of a Ninja?" I believe it's also known as "Life of Ninja." Or am I and my old high-school buddies the only ones? It's of course extremely cheesy with horrible dubbing. It will kill you! We used to make any new friends watch it as initition into our group. Some highlights include: 1) The Japanese cops with Texas accents. "I recon we found our Ninjer." 2) The scene where a woman is assassinated in the shower. The hitman climbs into the room, opens a briefcase that is refregerated and is holding a large icicle. After he stabs her, it melts. Voila, no more murder weapon. Ingenious. 3)The scene where where two women ninjas, clad only in bikinis, mud wrestle as part of their grueling ninja training program. 4)After that, a giant Chinese wrestler gets shot head first through a bamboo wall with a giant rubber-band catapult, to toughen him up of course. 3) The scene in which a prostitute rides a john around the room like a horsey, slapping his but and screaming "heeyah." 4) A flashback scene of our main protagonist, thinking back to a checker game with his blind master, Ta Ge Ge (sp?). Outside the paper house, ninja's scale the walls. Ta Ge Ge senses this, and flings a checker through the paper window, killing the ninja. 5) At the end the big boss finally meets his dead arch-nemesis' pupil. In a very Groucho Marx voice he says, "So, ya rilly aaaare Taaaaa Geeeeee Geeeeee's Chiiiiiiiiiiiineese disciple. How are ya?" You can actually even get it on Amazon! http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005B6LJ/qid=1046584088/sr=8-7/ref=sr_8_7/102-0222978-6111377?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846 It's also at Blockbuster according to their website. It funs to watch, if only for the laughs but there is a lot of fighting going on and even some wire stuff.

I hear they're doing wonderful things with plastics these days.

I was scared when I saw the title of this thread!!! I thought I was going to be blackmailed for sure. As far as for the colored pics, you should check out the superhero showdown board. Every time there's a new fight, both companies post colored art of their characters. I colored the Champions ones, plus you'll get some cool GOO art. Also, check out the Free Stuff section for the wallpaper I did. Has all the Champs, plus a little more "effects" coloring. Oh, and check out Storn Cook's website. He has a few of his enemies from CKC in color posted there. Very cool. Other than that, the images belong to DOJ, and I want to respect their intellectual property rights. It's really up to them about any other colored stuff I may have done.

Re: A Matter Stream Uh, I've never even heard of that before.

Me too.

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. - I really enjoyed following your boot camp thread on RPGnet. You have a great talent for teaching and critiquing. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll have time to get involved in the next one just for kicks.

Hey Storn. I commented a bit on it on the other thread, but I really dig this picture. And the style used to make it. I know it's a sketch, but that's largely part of the charm. The textured pencil strokes on the pant legs and near the fit are my favorite. Just gives it a lot of character. As far as the character and the overall feel for the drawing, it honestly reminds me of Silvestri's X-Men run and those baddies the Reavers. I appreciate the color schem myself. It shows some excellent restraint, which is a sign of a seasoned artist in my opinion. Great art is all about firm decision making and you've chosen your palette wisely. OH, a question for you. I know you like to do your work in color most of the time, even if it's published in black and white. I was computer coloring in just grey before - but then I said "what's the point." I may as well use color. It doesn't take much more time, and it's just as easy to monitor contrast and value. My question is, do you tweak it for black and white publication after you finish the coloring? This is what I've been doing lately. I'll color it completely, but using more layers than I normally would. Then I convert it to greyscale. The separate layers make it much more convenient for me to alter the contrast between to shapes. Just wondering if this is perhaps a similar approach to what you use. Anyway, thanks for sharing with us. Always a blast to see artwork someone uses in their game. -Nato

This is true, but just having a huge list of different disadvantage examples wpuld be helpful. For generating ideas and stuff.

I'm glad you like the cover Bob! Since it's mainly your baby, that means a lot. I haven't been able to read much of it yet, but I enjoyed your intro so far. Good writing style. What did you think of how the book came out? BTW, I hear the book sold quite well at the DDC this weekend. I'm not sure how many copies were sold, but there was definite interest in the book!

Wait, I think the real way to go would be to make a disadvantages pack for Hero Designer. And then just cram 100 truckloads of disads into it.

I will only say that the other book in the garbage is not a Hero product.

Re: Oooh. I missed that one.... Ah, the cover is one with Shannon Elizabeth on it. Hmmm, not the BBB. Not too far off really. When Andy, Hero's Art director saw this piece he e-mailed me back... "Have you and my wife been conspiring to throw out all my favorite things?" Cracked me up.

You know what, it sounded silly at first - but I kind of agree. I don't think it will ever be a book itself, or even a large section of any one book. But there's no denying it, having a resource like this with just TONS of disadvantages would be extremely handy and help spark ideas for characters. I know sometimes it gets tough finding 150 points of disadvantages. After the first 75 points or so I find myself really straining my brain to think of new ideas for disadvantages.

There's still more stuff in the dumpster. If anyone can name the video tape near the action figure on the front color - I'll sketch their character for them. Or the book that's next to the Maxim and the X-Men.

Re: The Ultimate Vehicle... Great eyes, especially since the cover somehow got slightly pixelated somewhere in the printing process. I mean, the cover still looks OK, just if you look really close some of the minute details get fuzzy. Which is wierd, because the interior black and white copy is fine. Anyway, the magazine got a little obscured. IT's a copy of every guy's favorite magazine - Maxim. Yes, that is an action figure. Not Sentinel though. It's actually an action figure version of a OC in my campaign name Thunderhawk. Pattern Ghost was always asking me to put Thunderhawk in a book since I started working for Hero. So I threw him in there to get him to stop bugging me. The X-Men book is actually The Essential X-Men Vol. 2, which contains the Death of Pheonix story arc. Well, I hope the dumpster keeps people entertained for a little bit. I know dumpsters are always very entertaining to me. Oh, to anyone who gets the book, please let me know what you think of my artwork inside. Since I've been posting to theses boards since before I started doing art for the books, I'm curious to know whether you guys like it. Most of the pieces are digital paintings and are near the back of the book. Hope you guys like the book. I got mine the other day and have been reading through it slowy. It seems like an excellent resource for anyone who uses vehicles heavily in their games. It's even got giant robot stuff in it. There's even odd stuff like flying carpets and skateboards. There's some cool artwork in it too. Brad Nault has some good stuff in it, as does K-Ski and Chris Stevens. Chris has some beautiful line-art this time around. His inking is superb on those. High-contrast straight black and white line drawings. Kind of reminds me of some classics like Tarzan or Prince Valiant. Great work to all the Vehicle artists!