THE PATRIOT

I'm a confident brick who can take the bullet. And a semi-dramatic role player. Teammates are itching to teach my guy some humility. I believe it may also have something to do with the time a player and I had a combat duel in a danger room scene on a rural farm. Well his energy guy ended up with his head up a holographic cows ass. We're all friends otherwise I would never have done this with just any old player in a gaming group.

The shockwave part is a seperate power in Champions, which is something that I only see heavy bricks like the Hulk or Super Man having. My guys at the 50-55 pts in strength brick. But he could hang toe-to-toe with a slug fest with the Thing for awhile before he would eventually go down because they've established the Thing can take a major pounding (Marvel Two-in-One when he took on Champion). Does anybody know how a the mechanics of a hydrant work? How much presure (punch) would a hydrant pack? Where would a hero find a main gas line under the street? We are duking it out in the danger room between the whole team of heroes to see what we can do and to release some frustrations with are player characters. (Actually I'm a little worried that the whole damn team is going to be trying to nail me in this combat.) I don't mind that though, I just want my guy to take out a few of them before I go down through some creative playing. One guy is a mutant cosmic energy blaster who flies, one's a battle suit with rockets and sensory equipement, one's a teleporting ninja, one's a DareDevil level Renaissance Festival reject who is definately going to try and nail me (but I should be able to take care of.) It's just the one guy who can shrink, grow, shape shift, oh yeah and stretch. I also figure my character is pretty fast and hard to hit. If I just go into dodge mode I can at least make them look a little silly teaming up on me and missing (hopefully).

The gas line and hydrant idea has been running through my head. What would be a good way to send an electrical shock through the water left on the ground from the hydrant?

Re: Re: How to take out a shrinking shape shifter??? You're a brick, use haymakers and beat the tar out of him. [/b] I'm not a super-brick, I'm a semi-brick...I can take more punishment than I can dish out though. I can lift cars and trucks...I don't think I could pull a oak tree out of the ground. I failed to mention this little shape shifting shrinking guy is also a brick. Now what???

Let's say I'm in a holgraphic inner-city danger room situation with a shape shifter who can shrink down to the size of a bug and fly. I'm playing a non-gadget using semi-brick who is combat savy. Using everything at my disposal in a city environment...what could I do to hinder him or detect him in a shrunken state. Any ideas on defeating him while he's in "Giant Man" form???

Oops, I'm busted. I'm so against the gray scaled artwork and then I get busted for using it on my Yahoo Group. Ha ha. Actually, I was trying to capture the look of a black and white photo from WWII. The twisting motion of the guy wearing the cape came out awkward. I really need to study the human form doing a twist of the torso to see how the chest moves and the abs kind of do a funny twist. I also tried to do a bit more simplistic line quality to capture a look of comic art of the 40's. (Kirby and Simon Captain America). It is a challenge to bring everything that you've learned to try and do the style of the first Superman's and Batman's. I have to be careful of my Yahoo Group being posted because I put artwork dating back to when I was 13 in order to pad my world with visuals of back ground characters. I should put up my drawing of Firewing from the Enemies days. I had fun with that one.

You guys really have been great to talk to about your views on art and drawing. It's funny how at this moment in my life I am branching out into so many different aspects of what is art. My wife picked me up a used pottery wheel at a art school, I'm practicing oil painting for the first time (I picked up over 40 vidios from a great oil instructor, Helen Van Wyk), and I can't begin to tell you what you guys have done for my inspiration to apply new techniques to my art work (whether traditional or digital (thanks Nate for the Photoshop tid bits). I have done much classroom work in figure drawing and I'm getting the itch to try it out again now that I have improved over the years. Besides it gives me a chance to see nude chicks with tons o' arm pit hair who look like Slash from G.N.R. (Ahhhh figure drawing models, ha ha) Had an old guy once get up on the platform. Everybody looked at each other with the look of, "great an old guy". That was until he removed the robe and had muscles better than any of us, looked like Sean Connery, and gave dinamic poses like a super hero. We all felt very crusty after that. Like I said before, you guys are a great inspiration for getting the artistic creativity going again. Thanks.

Christopher, thanks I really appreciate the help steering me into the right direction and the additional offer for help discussing the techniques you use. So you might be hearing from me soon. Thanks again. THE PATRIOT The GM Mac Daddy

No Mac vs PC debate here. I just have a really good connection with somebody in a computer company that rhymes with Snapple who has set me up with all my goodies. You mentioned about laying down two different tones of color and selecting the area they share and blending them together for tone. If I explained this correctly, could you explain where the blending tool or option is found? Here's another interesting one question for Photoshop. Can you take scanned in line art and turn all the black outlines of the ink job and adjust them to another color...say red or something. I'm guessing Marvel must being doing something to this effect for the Human Torch, who has no artistic ink lines. Thanks again, THE PATRIOT

NATO, as you can guess from other threads I've been basically teaching myself Photoshop. I started playing with the layers options and came up with this very technique you're talking about here. It's nice to know that I stumbled on a good method for coloring grey scaled artwork. I did one of Dr. Destroyer and the Armadillo drawings in CKC. I'm trying to find time to do the drawing of Dr. Destroyer from the FRED where his hand is touching keys from a holographic control panel. As much as I'm opposed to the grey scale artwork, once it's scanned into Photoshop and colored it does provide an interest texture to the colored artwork. About this drawing tablet for your mac (you have a Mac right?) which one do you suggest? Yes, I've been mousing it for all this time. Yikes! THE PATRIOT

Now this is brain storming. This could be a very interesting way to role play on the fly. It reminds me of the way a friend and I would play by phone ages ago in the 80's when we were just "kids". Heck, I could get the kids to bed and have an hour game segment before cleaning gets done from the mess the kids have made all day...okay maybe after the mess gets cleaned.

So what are peoples opinions on using OpenRPG? Does it add or take away from a person's enjoyement of playing? THE PATRIOT

I have a great deal of respect for the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul. I mentioned MCAD because they actually or at least did have, courses in "applied graphic illustration" translation in my world-super duper hero artist. I did take an introductory course in this at MCAD and found it interesting at the time but program was in a transition with not having instructors extremely familiar with many of the electronic aspects of production. Which brings me to this question. What's the best way, or professional way, to add word balloons to an illustration? Let me put it this way. When I've worked in Photoshop...the word balloons come out looking way too bitmaped. so there's got to be a way the pro's do this that I'm still working on. Do they have templates that you can use say in illustrator and export them onto an upper layer in photoshop? Or should I just stop using Photoshop for illustrations and teach myself how to finish my inked artwork in Illustrator or some other application? Everybody's been a great help so far and I'm getting more useful advice than I've hoped for. THE PATRIOT

So PRIMUS do's support the registration of heroes secret identities? Isn't there also a bit of tension between PRIMUS/SA's and masked heroes because they do keep their identities secret? Is this something that got translated into the new CU?

Macs Aaaah the lower case characters is where I've been screwing up. I can be such a pudding head.

Thanks for the information on the book. My next questions that I have would be what kind of ink do you recommend and what kind of paper or board do you use (cold/hot pressed, thickness, etc). Also, do you recommend saving images as TIFF's or JPG's for web usage? Have you had problems posting images on discussion boards such as these using a Mac? I love my Mac but it can be frustrating at times. I respectfully enquire this because I've read the schooling some of you guys have had and I have had to put that on hold do to twins being born 4 years ago. Also, the only art school here is MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) is the only one that teaches comic book techniques...and they charge as much as a medical school. Yikes! I'm already eating enough Hamburger Helper...ha ha. Again thanks for the info.

I'm looking to see what types of pens or tips you use for inking. Also, do you prefer Photoshop or Illustrator for coloring in illustrations? Last but not least any advise on what type of layers to use for coloring (specifically grey scalled art)? Also a question for fun. When was the last time you did a drawing and without scanning it in, colored by hand the original and make any copies of it. Thus keeping it a rare one-of-a-kind. Thanks guys I appreciate the skills and talent you bring to all of us here. THE PATRIOT

I should have mentioned I'm working with an Apple Cube with OS 9.4 and OS X. Do you know if any of these work with Macs? Getting access to the goodies out there is deeply affected by having a Mac...but for graphic arts I can't get better.

Okay so I'm looking into PBEM possabilities and I was directed to this site. Problem is there doesn't appear to be any specific information on just what the product is. Can anybody give me an idea and recamendations? THE PATRIOT Real heroes take the bullet. Especially when it bounces off your chest.

You've got to email me a drawing or two if you have any of Patriot. I'll send some of my stuff your way too. I am continuing to poste here because other Vanguards are reading this. They've created a user name but haven't been able to poste yet. I have such respect for your bond to Patriot. It's great there's the amount of history there that can fill 30 pages. The Patriot of New Britain

I just heard today about the MSN chat room with the whisper feature. I'll poste something to see if anybody's ever done this before. Did you ever watch The Tick cartoon? I believe my Patriot would be like when a guy named Barry used to call himself the Tick and our blue friend wasn't going to give up being called The Tick. No matter what Barry did, he just could stand up to The Tick. That is unless many, many, many points are spent on vehicles, bases, rich and powerfull friends...ha ha ha. Wait a sec...My Patriot is an ex-United States Senator...he is rich and powerfull! Bring it on cosmic Patriot...wait till I fling a man hole cover at ya. Okay that's me talking...not The Patriot. He wouldn't be too pleased with me egging on a challenge like that. Although, in his past he did have to deal with several so called costumed heroes calling themselves Patriot. You see as a lad my guy actually had a rare meeting with the real legendary Patriot in the 1940's, so he figured he had more say so for carrying on the name, reputation, and the legend of The Patriot. So a few "heroes" needed convincing to give up the name. The Patriot

Oops, my bad. I believe I might have been confusing another member who has one and I was getting the Chicago setting all mixed up. I'm going to check into how to pull something like this off. Do you guys play face-to-face or PBEM? I've only done face-to-face and in some ways I would like to combine the best of both elements. Have my guys in one room and your guys in another and through instant messages or a chat room with the GM at another screen we might pull this off. I'm looking into what resources that might be online and I'll make a poste looking for suggestions. Of course this again falls on commitment from those that I can do no more than ask if they can do this. When did you create the Patriot? JJ

By the way Patriot (if that's who you claim you are?) can you give a link to your "Windy City" web page?