Pod's: Ant-Man & the Wasp released

[Podmark]

Crain belt it is. It's an easy switch as I created both already.
Interestingly Wolverine, Warpath, X-23 and Wolfsbane - the first 4 members of the team - I used Crain's art primarily to skin them. Archangel, Elixir, Domino and Vanisher - the last four members - I'm using Choi's art primarily. The reason why is that Crain's art got murkier after the first 6 issues and he rarely gave good clear shots of the last three members - the ones he didn't introduce to the team. Choi's art is crystal clear.

Oh, and boo & hiss at waiting for Domino longer! 

It's worse than that - Domino will probably be the last member I skin. Skoping her will probably be complicated, that's why. Vanisher is male_basic plus belt, maybe a thinner body. Unlike the other six members Vanisher and Domino probably won't include any extra skins. I've never skinned either before and I don't really know any other costumes Vanisher has worn. There is one Domino costume I'd like to do but I don't know if I'll include it at this time.

I started the special character, if all goes well you'll see him in about a week and a half. There's a reason I'm skinning this character now.

[Previsionary]

Outside of that basic body suit Vanisher wore just before his X-force one (which chuckles skinned last year), you wouldn't be able to skin his other costumes on the same mesh. His first and second costumes were... unique. Think snake skin + green diamonds + quilt + hood.

[rmt]

Finishing X-23 is next. Finished one reskin last night, working on the Fang costume today. Looking for skoping parts is the big thing on this one, I'll be really happy if I can find something for the skull heads. I'll probably use the belt from Tommy's Tigra but I might have to skin on the other parts.

Was X23 ever released?  I see a pic of an X-Force costume of her on your site but don't see a d/l link, but it looks like you moved on to other X-Force people.  Did you re-order your plans or am I just missing her d/l link on the site?

[Podmark]

Finishing X-23 is next. Finished one reskin last night, working on the Fang costume today. Looking for skoping parts is the big thing on this one, I'll be really happy if I can find something for the skull heads. I'll probably use the belt from Tommy's Tigra but I might have to skin on the other parts.

Was X23 ever released?  I see a pic of an X-Force costume of her on your site but don't see a d/l link, but it looks like you moved on to other X-Force people.  Did you re-order your plans or am I just missing her d/l link on the site?

Yeah she isn't released yet. The X-Force skin is done, but I wanted to finish her reskins before releasing, 2 of 3 are finished. Fixes slow me down so I'm trying to keep momentum by moving from skin to skin, when I've got everything ready I'll release the skins. I hope to have them released by the end of Second Coming (Beginning of July) or earlier. Sorry about the delay.

[rmt]

Please don't apologize.  I hadn't followed the thread until now and it sort of jumped topic from her to the other skins about a month ago so I thought I had just missed it. Glad to hear you're knocking out the team as I had hoped to add Domino and X-23 to my roster.  I know you usually make them for vttr only, but I have at least some luck recreating the skopes and adjusting the skins to add to my FF1 game.  It's never quite the same, but beggars can't be choosers.   

[Podmark]

I promised I'd skin a special character for this week. I skinned this character last week in preparation for the events of this weeks X-Force #26.

Spoiler

Nightcrawler is dead. Killed while saving mutant messiah Hope, he was impaled by the robotic villain Bastion.

I correctly guessed this death months ago, though back then I was just guessing who seemed most likely, more recently I used information from solicits, interviews, and Second Coming Prepare to determine that Kurt was going to die. I like Kurt, he's an enjoyable character, it's sad to see him go. His death was pretty good, but it's just the typical crossover death which weakens it somewhat.

So I've skinned his most recent costume. I kinda like this one, it's fairly simple but with a bit of complexity. Actually over time I've grown to like most of the SF costumes. The only thing I didn't like about Kurt's Bianchi design was the hair but it's rarely been used in the actual comics.

Skin is still a WIP. There's some things I want to work on. Also if anyone wants to suggest a different part for the hair I'm listening.
Vanisher will probably be next.

[Gremlin]

Good show! The colors are fantastic!

[BentonGrey]

Really nice work on his face, Pod.

[Podmark]

Thanks guys. Two releases today:



I managed to figure how to add a gun to Cyclops, yay!

Cyclops includes:

• Manifest Destiny (Current) costume
• Astonishing X-Men Torn and Unstoppable costume
• What If Cyclops was in X-Force costume

Nightcrawler includes:

• Manifest Destiny (Current) costume
• Reload costume
• Blue and Gold costume

[murs47]

Sweet! Thanks Pod!

[John Jr.]

Cyke and Kurt are just great, Pod!

[detourne_me]

Thank you Podmark.  Thse guys are great.  Seriously the new costumes you are skinning are inspiring me to read the new issues,, which is in turn inspiring me to start playing FF again.  thanks.

[pr1983]

love that cyclops. still trying to figure out how to remove the guns from non-torn skins, but still very nice all in all.

silly me. he didn't have it when i tried rumble. great skin, and thanks again.

[Podmark]

Unless I messed something up in the zip, the guns should only be visible in the ranged_gun animations. However, I found that if you don't allow those ranged_gun animations to finish the guns will continue to be visible in other animations.

[pr1983]

when i played the rumble, he just had blasts from the visor, no guns (as i was using the normal x-men skin and had to be comic accurate lol). he didn't have the guns at all during the actual gameplay. during the bio sections and character select, though, he has em. no biggie, though.

[Podmark]

during the bio sections and character select, though, he has em. no biggie, though.

Odd. I'll admit I haven't actually played the game in quite some time so none of my work is game tested.

[pr1983]

ah. well i can tell you that in-game, cyclops looks nothing short of fantastic.

[Podmark]

Was asked to help you Grenadier with a standard skin. It was a pretty easy design so I took a short break from X-Force to help out.


Wild Child in his Gamma and Alpha Flight uniforms.

Available now with lots of other awesome meshes in Grenadiers section at Champions of Freedom. I hope my fellow Hero Forcers will forgive my treachery.

[murs47]

We at Champions of Freedom appreciate your treachery.

[BentonGrey]

LOL!  Nice looking Wild Child, Pod.  Good work on the faces, but I think the one on the right could maybe use a bit more definition on the line between his costume and his chest.

[deano_ue]

We at Champions of Freedom appreciate your treachery.

you say treachery, we say sneaking in to plant stuff

[laughing paradox]

Nice job on Wild Child, Pod! I ended up doing a skin of his original look, too, but I'm really diggin' yours. The face looks great.

[Podmark]

After over a year, X-Force is finally done!



Still have to finish off Archangel and Wolfsbane, but all the primary costumes are complete.



New for this week is Vanisher and Domino:



Vanisher's costume was easy, tricky part was finding good reference for it. I prefer to use art from the characters main artist - which for Telford would be Mike Choi. But Choi only got to draw his costume in one issue and that issue didn't have any good images of the bottom half. Crain just gave him a black body suit. So ended up using Ibraim Roberson and Lan Medina's art from New Mutants 13 - which may have been Vanisher's death scene.
Had great reference for the tattoos and they weren't hard per se, just time consuming. Very time consuming.

Domino was another time consuming skin. Choi likes to put all kinds of extra details into his art. It's his strenght as an artist but it's a pain for me as a skinner.

If you've got any suggestions or comments for Vanisher and Domino, please fire away.



So yay the main costumes are all done not I just have to finish up the extra skins and we're all set to go .... wait, whats that you say? In the last issue two new members joined the team?

So yes I will be skinning Cypher and Cable (been wanting to update my old skins of them anyway) but I'm going to finish off the current team first. For one thing I need more reference art for their X-Force costumes.



So here's the X-Force status:

• Wolverine: already released
• Warpath: already released
• Cyclops: already released
• Vanisher: done, just waiting for feedback
• Domino: I want to do 1 or 2 extra skins with her
• Archangel: need to fix up the X-Force skin and skin his Manifest Destiny costume
• Wolfsbane: Need to finish up her other X-Force forms and skin her New Mutants costumes
• X-23: 2 extra skins to complete
• Elixir: need to update his old skins.

So Vanisher will be out soon and the rest will follow as their ready.

[murs47]

Pod, you deserve monies for making this set. But, our countries are at war so I can't send it to you.

Vanisher se tre excellent, oui? Oui! My only suggestion for the tattoos is to give them a very subtle green tint.

Murs happy.

[pr1983]

those look really great. can't wait to see what the finished set is like...

[Podmark]

My only suggestion for the tattoos is to give them a very subtle green tint.

I'll give that a try.

Also the second Domino skin will be her costume from Cable & Deadpool, which I believe also serves as her current X-Men costume, and I was having some trouble creating the blue for it - so I checked out your video tutorial and that worked pretty well. Just got to play with that a little more. So yes your video tutorials help people. Or me. Do I still count as people?

[murs47]

Excellent. Speaking of which, I haven't made my quota for the week and I have 10 hours to do so.

So, what are your skinning plans post X-Force?

[Podmark]

So, what are your skinning plans post X-Force?

Well I'm still a ways from being completely done. I might do Cypher and Cable once it's done or save them for a little later if I want a break from black and gray. I've got a bunch of stuff that I want to do mostly recent X-stuff but also some Avengers stuff and some Spidey stuff. I'll probably run another poll - but this time it's just going to be for single skins, not sets. I wasn't happy with how long it's taken to finish X-Force.

[ElijahSnowFan]

Hi, Pod!

Just wanted to stick my head in here and say, "well done." I know you said it's taken you far longer than you would've liked to close out X-Force, but as always, when creators release is when they release, and we always appreciate it when you do.

[Scorpion13mk2]

Hi, Pod!

Just wanted to stick my head in here and say, "well done." I know you said it's taken you far longer than you would've liked to close out X-Force, but as always, when creators release is when they release, and we always appreciate it when you do.

I just wanna tell you both, good luck. We're all counting on you.