AfghanAnt Artistic Advances 7/8/16 - Marvel Adventures Exclusives

[Podmark]

Unless my memory is really off, this was the original group on HeroForce. Very impressive AA, you've done a really great job with C6 and Ink, and as usual your skoping skills continue to impress.

[spydermann93]

Bloody fantastic!

[Figure Fan]

Awesome! Ink looks especially great.

[BentonGrey]

Wow AA!  Those are three excellent skins and skopes.  I have to say, I REALLY like that Ink skin.  You've got some great detail work there, and the design itself is just really neat.

[Tomato]

...




So... does this mean if I move over to HF, I get one?

[ShawDAMAN]

sharp, vibrant, and thoroughly depressing as always 

[Bloodshadow]

 
Beautiful skins and skopes

[Courtnall6]

Ahhh the good old days....

Outstanding work as usual AA! For a guy who complains about modern comic characters having overly complicated designs....I sure did over do it on my own AV. I would hate to draw C-6 30-40 times an issue!

Your AV design has always been my favorite....simple and elegant!

[AfghanAnt]

Unless my memory is really off, this was the original group on HeroForce. Very impressive AA, you've done a really great job with C6 and Ink, and as usual your skoping skills continue to impress.

Thanks Pod. I hope you are as impressed when I finish up my "redesign" of your av.

Awesome! Ink looks especially great.

Thanks! The base of the design is by Ink/Courtnall - I just tied him more into this "ninja" archetype and cemented him in my little universe of originals. So you'll notice he's missing his left gauntlet that's because my temporal displaced super-teen, T.J. Max "inherited". I made his staff look more like a lightsaber with metal handle and I equipped him with darklight grenades (on his belt) and some pouches (because multiple pouches are tedious and cool). 

Ahhh the good old days....

Outstanding work as usual AA! For a guy who complains about modern comic characters having overly complicated designs....I sure did over do it on my own AV. I would hate to draw C-6 30-40 times an issue!

Your AV design has always been my favorite....simple and elegant!

Lol it doesn't help I added some additional linework to give it more of a hard plastic/metal look rather than heavy metal on spandex. But I think game art benefits from details a little more than comic art.

...

So... does this mean if I move over to HF, I get one?

*shakes magic 8-ball* "Ask again later."

Thanks everyone! I'm working on my current "teammates" but their designs will be a little more AA-heavy than these. So a little bit of reimagined mixed with the core concepts of the character.

[Podmark]

Thanks everyone! I'm working on my current "teammates" but their designs will be a little more AA-heavy than these. So a little bit of reimagined mixed with the core concepts of the character.

Exciting!

[Sioux City Dynamo]

Hi AA,

These are great!  I look forward to your take on your new team mates!!

Respectfully,

[UnkoMan]

You just gotta bring me out of lurking somehow, don't you?
It is really fun looking between these guys and TJ. I didn't notice before how TJ's lines mimic AA's. I also dig how AA's gotten so much heavier over the years. Heck, so has Unko. I've been drawing him looking sort of Dark Knight Returns lately.

Ahhh! I am really curious to see how these look with refl layers, in movement. Especially C6. It's been so long since I looked at a skin in character tool and I am curious how you are doing them these days.

[laughing paradox]

The colors on these avatars are insanely great. I really like the shade of red on C6.

Let me know if you run out of people's avatars to redo, Saturn King could use a touch-up!

[AfghanAnt]

I guess these could be consider more "alternate" reality versions than redesigns (since I liked all of their original designs).

"Dennō Senshi" Podmark
The scientist/ninja of the group. This is adapted from Courtnall 6's design for Podmark but I wanted to make something more than a "Deadpool" and realized how much the design looked like Japanese Super Sentai. So I added in a little Mr. Q and I really like how it turned out.  Who knows...I might skope and skin the mecha I had in mind.


The Flesh Eater
TUE's avatar has always been an enimga to me so I wanted to explore the idea of "the flesh eater" more. So imagined the sword was housing a demonic carnivore that was released once the sword broke. I stayed true to TUE's costume design but removed the masked because it seemed odd for one to hide his face if his skin is unraveling.


Unkoman
I alway knew I wanted to make him this roboust and when I saw the animation for Gren's Volstagg I knew it would be the perfect mesh. I gave him a glass beer mug instead of metal because it seemed funnier in my head for him to be constant smacking villains over the head with a glass of beer. Oh and I didn't noticed until I had already saved the image but I saved the wrong layer for his left boot - it will be corrected for the final version.

You just gotta bring me out of lurking somehow, don't you?
It is really fun looking between these guys and TJ. I didn't notice before how TJ's lines mimic AA's. I also dig how AA's gotten so much heavier over the years. Heck, so has Unko. I've been drawing him looking sort of Dark Knight Returns lately.

Ahhh! I am really curious to see how these look with refl layers, in movement. Especially C6. It's been so long since I looked at a skin in character tool and I am curious how you are doing them these days.

HA! Yeah, AA has evolved into this more massive frame especially if you compare it to the original sketch I did.

I'll try to release these soonish but there is a lot of craziness going on.

The colors on these avatars are insanely great. I really like the shade of red on C6.

Let me know if you run out of people's avatars to redo, Saturn King could use a touch-up!

I actually really love that design so maybe I'll take a crack at it.

[Podmark]

Sweet! All three are very cool. I'm loving your version of Podmark but it's Flesh Eater that I like the most. It's a really cool design and one neat skope and that hair is excellent. Good job on Unko too. Your creativity always impresses me.

[Bloodshadow]

Very cool stuff AA
I love that Unkoman

[ShawDAMAN]

Great!

[vamp]

Heh, unko should probably lay off the beer. I love Flesh Eater, though this take on him looks a bit younger. And the whole broken sword concept is pretty awesome.

Stand out favorite is Podmark though. Kinda reminds me of DeadShot in Batman: Gotham Knight. His eyes and mouth (or should I say grill thing) sorta remind me of a Kamen Rider. Very cool

[deano_ue]

ok dude i'll be honest with you i always had an idea where my av would walk through the 3 planes, heaven, earth and hell and his appearance and the sword would change depending on his location. your design is perfect.

you've kept the concept i had and tweaked it enough to make it your own take i love it. the face work is superb and you really have to tell me how you did the texture on the jeans


for people confused

Spoiler

my av's name is flesheater, the ultimate evil is kinda like his amazing or uncanny. he took the name from the sword he carries because it has a
reputation in the demonic world he some times has to deal with. the blade was forged in the fires of hell for the devil or his lead general in the final battle against god himself. angels were sent into hell to sabotage the creation and placed a curse on it, if used by a person of pure heart it could be used against its creators. hence the inscription he who controls the blade, will be the wielder of the ultimate evil.... the flesheater (yeah i know thor rip off, shut up)

during a fight the blade was cast down to earth where it has remained hidden in plain sight for all time, depending on the person inner self the sword will change shape and placed down through historys great evils Genghis Khan's Scimitars, hitlers dagger, al capones flick knfe etc.

the blade was finally captured by a cult who's intentions was to return the blade to the use of its original owner, by sacrificing a soul to lead his armys. many people were captured and tested if the blade would respond to them, until my av was chosen. he was experimented on to using generics and occult magic.  the ritual was near completion it was stopped by detective alex brown, on a arms raid the cult used to fund they're ideals

long story short the blade bonded to my av, and with his "pure heart" he was able to use it for good. he signed signed up as a freelance agent with the citys supernatural division(just go with it) under alex, his captain and they're team. who kitted him out with materials to create his uniform.

this then leads in to stuff like my other characters sundance, bloodflow, soul stalker, C.O.N (creatures of the night) alex brown and his team etc

i apologise for hijacking AA's thread but know the backstory has been told you can see how much more this design works and how sweet it is

[murs47]

Mhm-mhm yes! I like it!

[JKCarrier]

The texture and scoping work on these is amazing! They look like they could be models from some brand-new game. Outstanding work.

[laughing paradox]

These are all awesome! The work you did on the clothes (jacket, jeans, etc) is truly spectacular stuff.

[Figure Fan]

The colors are so crisp. I think that Flesheater really stands out here. I love the way the demonic half blends with the human half. This may seem like a shameless request, but I think you should re-imagine some other avatars on the forum because these are really quite fun and arguably some of your best work to date.

[Tomato]

K, I'm going to be up front and say that my response is probably going to be a bit rambling, but even a few days later I'm still blown away by these skins, more from a conceptual perspective than anything else.

-Podmark. I'll admit, this one kind of underwhelmed me at first... looking at it from my tiny cell phone screen (I was at work when it was posted) all I really saw was Pod wearing a trenchcoat. But more and more I'm noticing all the cool little touches on it, such as the skinwork of the nose and the shape of the face, all of which really adds to the look of the character. No more Deadpool-clone for Pod (which is just fine, Murs is enough Deadpool-lite for the boards anyway)

-Flesheater. When you first started doing these, my mind immediately jumped to TUE's av. Whereas I felt like your style could work really well with Podmark and would absolutely nail Unko, TUE's general skinning style is perhaps one of the most different from yours. While all your skins always feel very clean and polished, TUE tends to a much more dirty, realistic feel... and his avatar especially reflects that aspect of his work.

That said, I think FE is the one I like most of the whole set. While I don't think it's a replacement for TUE's own skin as the "classic" version of the character, it's almost like "this is TUE after the world goes to s***" and I love that. And the skinwork isn't too shabby either... the demon stuff is good like everyone's saying, but what I love about FE here is the work on the clothes. Specifically, the jeans. I normally hate skinned jeans, because I feel like the folds often make them look unnatural and it just turns me off on the whole thing, but these look... right somehow.

-Unko. I'm not going to lie, this one is going to take some getting used to from me. Don't get me wrong, conceptually I like the idea and all, but there's still that part of my brain that has been looking at Unko's old skin for forever and doesn't match the two together. I'll get there, but right now I'm still like "WTF"

Anyway, all that said... I agree with FF. This is some of my favorite work to come from you to date, and even if I never see an "AA-ized" Tomato, I would love to see more avatar work from you. The concepts are great, the skins polished, and there's obviously a lot of love put into these creations.

[Sioux City Dynamo]

AA,

Thank you so much for sharing these with the community!  The designs, skopes, and colors are incredible!  I really like your take on these avatars.

You are an incredibly talented individual!

Respectfully,

[Figure Fan]

..This is some of my favorite work to come from you to date, and even if I never see an "AA-ized" Tomato, I would love to see more avatar work from you. The concepts are great, the skins polished, and there's obviously a lot of love put into these creations.

I just wanted to say that I'm with Tomato here in saying that I don't expect you to do my avatar in particular.

[Cyber Burn]

Is that sword on FE meshed/skoped to look broken? It looks awesome!

Great skins/skopes, but for my interests, the sword just really stands out.

[UnkoMan]

Okay, first of all... If you DO do more avatars I would think that is a great thing. I love seeing alternate avatars, and have always loved your skin work. You have a solid, classic style, but you also aren't afraid to try crazy stuff and be creative.

For example, Unko... that is hilarious. I can't stop laughing. Plus, I can totally see it. Actually, what I like about all these skins is, like mentioned, they are the characters after the world goes to heck.

Pod gets more focused. TUE gets more hardcase. Unko basically quits and lets himself go. I'd see them finding him in a bar like this, drinking himself into a stupor because the world no longer has time for comedy relief. It's like HeroForce meets the Watchmen.

While people seem to really dig TUE's, I think I am liking Pod the most here. I really do get that Japanese vibe from it. Plus one of his shoulder straps is unbuttoned. The gun looks swell too. I dig it, all around.

TUE's is good too, don't get me wrong... The wrinkles under the knees/around the boot area look a bit off. Maybe it's me. And while, yeah, you don't skin nearly as gritty as TUE's stuff, you still managed to pull off something that looks good. Actually, I almost want to just see TUE skin this version of his avatar, just to see how it would look. Actually, times two, I kind of want to see all of us skin these versions of our avatars. Actually, times three, maybe we should just all redesign each other's avatars. Actually, times four, maybe I should stop talking before I have to do some actual work.

But yeah, this is totally cool, AA. Totally.

PS: Forgot to mention... I love how Unko's U is usually huge but now, since he has gotten so big, it is tiny. Nice touch.

[Figure Fan]

It's like HeroForce meets the Watchmen.

THIS. This is probably why I like these so much.

[cmdrkoenig67]

Those look really fantastic, AA.  I really like the demon-y Flesheater and Hefty Unko.

Dana