Tomato's whateverz: Random Artworkzez

[MikeB7]

Whoa, that's a lotta cool stuff in different mediums!  You's talented!

[Tomato]

So, with all of the huballo about getting a proper CSA Aquaman, I finally broke down and decided it was high time I designed Anti-Tomato (he's still "Tomato" technically but Antimato rolls off the tongue). Set to premier towards the end of Influx' first "Volume," Antimato's world was similar to ours, except on his world, a war between the earth's heroes had driven him insane. He set to create a perfect world under his rule, killing all the world's heroes (save Teknos, left alive "for sport") in the process. He then set about building a device to let him conquer other earths... but Teknos was able to steal the device, and use it to contact the primary earth's Influx (ala Anti-Luthor). They win, Teknos sets about rebuilding "Anti-Earth," everyone's happy. The end.


Just kidding. Love Mirror Mirror stuff too much 4 that (However, the rest is in spoiler tags... In case anyone cares about being spoiled for a series I'll probably never do properly anyway  )

Spoiler

The way the story is presented, Antimato is supposed to be another one shot villain... the "obligatory antiverse" story, as it were. There'd be some cryptic hints as to what caused "the Hero's War" but overall it'd just be a filler arc in the middle of a larger story, and an excuse for Influx to have a few other time/reality adventures before the end of the Volume.

It isn't until much later we find out that one single choice separated Antimato's world from ours. This one simple alteration (which I won't go into just yet... however, it sets up a whole string of delicious anti-verse related subplots and crafts "reversed" versions of all five protagonists) created a butterfly effect on the rest of the universe, causing none of the other members of Influx to arrive on Earth when they were supposed to. And without Ch'nybe there to suggest forming a team of their own, Tomato would instead work with his former friends from "Freedom Fans," a website that had dedicated itself to supporting superheroes even prior to EF's original defeat of Randy Ripoff. Because of the member's close ties to the superhero community, several members (including Tomato himself) had gained powers of their own.

These super-powered "Freedom Fans" would turn out to be an incredibly successful team, even more so than Influx. Perhaps too successful... the team soon discovered a plot Hint: Villains Reborn that shook the superhero community, turning heroes against one another. The resulting war left the hero community decimated, and the populace disheartened. Driven insane by the carnage, Antimato resolved to "save" the world by becoming a villain capable of uniting it, as Randy Ripoff had once done. He then set about creating a device to bring the one person capable of realistically stopping him (a heroic version of himself) and spared former-villain-turned-freedom-fighter Tobias Rhied (Teknos) to trick him into using the device for its intended purpose.

In the end, Antimato would apparently perish at Rheid's hands (Rheid would "kill" Antimato with a stolen weapon after his defeat at Tomato's hands). His arc would serve a threefold purpose for the series: To open things up for other Antiverse fun later on, to start the ball rolling on the Villains Reborn sub-plot, and finally to introduce the lethal application of Tomato's abilities... See, the reason Antimato would remain pretty much unstoppable was that he could kill an opponent regardless of his defenses, merely by focusing all the heat from the air around him/her to one specific point. Tomato himself would be forced into using this ability at the very end of the volume.

That about wraps it up for Antimato's past... so onto the design itself. The idea is that in his insanity, Antimato would alter his appearance to reflect his own twisted vision of himself. Because he sees himself as the villain, the "Antiverse" Tomato, his costume and overall look reflects that... thus why you see elements from both Trek's "Mirror Mirror" and DCAU's "Justice Lords"

[Tomato]

Woo, I is on a roll!



Again, putting background in spoiler tags for those who don't want spoilers

Spoiler

Years before the formation of Influx, in worlds very far away from our own, Warriors of Light and Darkness did war upon one another. On one side, the "Fallen" a group of warriors intent on universal conquest using an army of creatures formed from the souls of their victims (Mazoku), and on the other the righteous souls trying to stop them. And on either side, two "brothers"... Peter, an immortal hero of legend fighting to protect his new friends; and Darek, a mercenary cloned from stolen DNA, jealously seeking to destroy his predecessor. Over the course of the conflict, they crossed paths many times, culminating in a final battle on Peter's own home world. Disarmed and defeated, Peter stared defiantly at his clone, whose cursed blade stood poised to end his life. But at the last second, Darek tossed the blade away, unable to defame his honor by committing such a cold blooded murder.

At least, that's how it happened on our world.

On another, Peter's life was taken from him, his soul turned into a Mazoku and forced to do his murderer's bidding. Forsaking his honor and his last ties to humanity, Darek would soon amass greater power then even his former Master within the Fallen. Forming an alliance with Amatsu and Voght, Darek would soon seize power over the entire fallen, plunging the universe into an even greater shadow then it had been before. And despite amassing hordes of Mazoku in the years that followed, he would always delight in turning his brother's soul against his former friends, in eternally torturing what little remained of his brother within the demon's shell.

The design for this is pretty much straight forward, it's a cursed version of Peter's normal gear (for those not aware, Peter is Kid Rocket. After the events of Volume one, most of the characters start wearing attire skin to what you'd see in a Final Fantasy game) thus why I was able to complete it so quickly. Even so, the aura took some fiddling with to get right.

[TonmaFan]

This is wicked. I'd take ages to come up with just the aura in CS5!

--
I love your doodling 'style'. I draw figures the same way. :

[Tomato]

Well, to be fair here, for the most part they're just design sketches... doodles I put together to nail down how I want to do the characters, which I then do a quick color job on (I'd say the whole process usually takes less than an hour). The idea with these is to give me something to work from when doing skins of the characters.

Peter's aura is two different techniques layered overtop one another... the background flames were drawn with vector shapes and then motion blurred and smudged around for better effect, and then I duplicated the main artwork and smudged it about to get some deeper texture closer to the artwork.

--------------------------------------

The next 3 were all sketched more or less right after one another, but because each has his/her own story I'm going to be coloring and posting them separately, rather than trying to lump them together.



Here's the first of the "Warriors of Light," Yami Herotoshi, also known on our world by the alias "Marauder."

Spoiler

Born to a warring people, Yami Herotoshi was instructed from a very young age in the ways of honor and death. However, when a freak storm tore the boat he was sailing on apart, Yami was left stranded on an island far away from his home and his people... far away from the war that had previously defined him. There, he made friends with others that had been similarly stranded, and slowly was able to put his warlike past behind him.

But even on a peaceful world, war will always loom somewhere over the horizon.

Seeking to test their newfound army, the first members of the fanatical warriors of dark, the "Fallen," sent their Mazoku to Yami's home world, seeking to destroy it. Unprepared, the inhabitants of the island were no match for the onslaught... but using ancient magics, many were able to escape. These survivors banded together to stop the oncoming tide of darkness, Yami chief among them. He had lost everything he loved, and he would cast his vengeance against all who allied themselves with darkness.

Of all the characters in Influx, Anti-Yami is seemingly the most unchanged from his main earth counterpart. In Influx, Yami's role is to be the guy who will suggest the most practical method of achieving a goal, even if that method is either distasteful or relies on using lethal force. This attitude is exaggerated on Anti-Earth, where Darek's takeover has led to more brutal action by both sides. This unnerves our Yami, because he sees very little difference between himself and his "Mirrored" counterpart. But as Peter later points out, there is a fundamental difference in the two character's motivations. In our reality, Yami's desire to end conflict quickly is primarily intended to defend those he cares for, whereas Anti-Yami's purpose is to cause as much devastation to his opponents as possible.

One thing I should probably mention before closing this off: For the sake of simplicity, I have up until now presented the Fallen as the bad guys and the Warriors of Light as good guys. However, things are rarely that simple, and the Antiverse stories are intended to underline that. The Fallen are unquestionably the "bad guys" of the story: Led by an evil version of Darek, they seek to take over the world and will use whatever means they deem necessary to satisfy their own needs and desires. However, the light is not really any better. Ruthless and cold, the Light seeks to make the universe into what it deems a "perfect" society, with little tolerance for anything it sees as "unclean" or "less than perfect." The Warriors of Light mean well, but their own self importance and arrogance about what is "good" leaves little room for the common person to make his or her own choices. As such, much of Influx' second foray into the Antiverse is spent dealing not only with Anti-Darek and his forces, but also in keeping Yami and the other Warriors of Light in check.

Now, those of you who remember his the sketch I did awhile back (unfortunately the image has been removed from imgurl and I don't have the sketch handy to rescan and upload ) will remember that Yami's attire nods toward typical White Mage designs. I wanted to do the same sort of thing with his counterpart, but sections that would normally be white on a typical WM outfit are gold instead. In Anti-Yami's mind, this is supposed to make himself shine brighter as a beacon of light.

[Tomato]

Decided I wanted to make a few custom tee-shirts featuring my/fr characters, so I'm trying to nail down the style I want to use.

[Outcast]

A custom tee shirt sounds pretty cool Tomato. What other styles are you considering? Is it a bigger design? Maybe a big Tomato Head in the center like that smiley logo for "have a nice day" or something? Are the designs in the front, back or at the sides of the tee shirt?

[UnkoMan]

Ahhh more of the Antimato story. I dig.

The style you are going for for the t-shirts seems pretty cool. Also, it seems easily animatable, if you ever figure on doing any cartoons of those fellas...

[Tomato]

So I had to restart my minecraft game a few months back, and I decided I needed to make a house that was a little more obvious from a distance (I play the dragon block c mod, and I have to travel to different biomes on occasion.)



This is what I came up with

[Tomato]

I was so disappointed in the Kid Zoom outfit that Pod recently reminded me of, that I decided to try my hand at something a bit better. There's still a lot of similarities with the Kid Flash Uniform, but I doubt anyone would have trouble figuring out which to the two was the evil one at first glance.

[Podmark]

It's pretty good, but honestly I think it would be better if it wasn't yellow on the top. The way it is it just doesn't seem like a Reverse-Kid Flash, seems more like Kid Flash gone evil. How would it look if you swapped the yellow and black?

The Kid Zoom outfit is pretty disappointing. I like the idea though.

[Tomato]

See, I'm kind of on the opposite end of that though: part of why I did this in the first place was because I didn't like the lack of yellow in it... making the costume Red just feels like we're right back to the Flash's, and making the upper half black with a yellow lower have throws the entire outfit out of balance (the reason the costume works is because the lighter yellow draws your eye to the upper half of the costume). I did the best examples of each just to show what I mean-



And one in full on zoom colors, just because.

[Cyber Burn]

While each pic has it's merits, I have to say that the color balance just really doesn't work for me. Maybe the concept of a "Kid Zoom" should just fade away. 

[Tomato]

Honestly... I more or less agree. As I said in the Kid Zoom thread, I much prefer his costume as Inertia (it gave him something unique and it actually worked better AFTER Bart became Kid Flash, because it served as a reminder of how far Bart had really come as a character). Ironically, the only one I actually like was the last one, which is more or less the original reverse flash costume without part of the mask.

[Podmark]

I much prefer his costume as Inertia (it gave him something unique and it actually worked better AFTER Bart became Kid Flash, because it served as a reminder of how far Bart had really come as a character).

I agree.

As for your designs, I do like the 2 versions with red/black on the top, but none of them blow me away.

[Tomato]

Was never really happy with the version I did awhile back using the fabrica character creator, decided to redo it in actual JLU style. Still a WIP, but I obviously traced the original GA character model.

[Tomato]

Done with JLord GA.

[Podmark]

Looks pretty good. Should fit in well with the others.

[Tomato]

So I've been on a major spider-man kick lately, and as part of that, I went out and read "the REAL Clone saga" miniseries from a year or so ago. It was an enjoyable, if a bit TOO condensed (I feel it would have benefitted from having a few more issues of breathing room... damn trade paperback itis) but it got me thinking about Kaine... while I certainly like his modern design stylistically, there's very little about it that screams "Kaine." Between the fact that his degeneration has been cured in the modern books, and the fact that the design has almost nothing to do with the original design... he ends up looking like Spider-man alternate outfit #215. I wanted to create something that was a bit of a hybrid... Something that wasn't the horrible 90s abomination that the original Kaine design was, but still retained just enough to still be identifiable as the same character.

As you can probably tell, the design is mostly Kaine's Scarlet Spider outfit, but with a couple palette and design choices that make it look closer to the original Kaine design.

[Podmark]

It's an interesting design. I like the new colours, but I'm not sure about that collar. The hair certainly makes him look more like Kaine but the spider eyes plus visible facial features isn't working for me.
I think a 2099 style cape or some underarm webbing might work well with this design.

Nitpicks aside, really cool costume idea. I'd like to see Marvel go this route with Kaine.

BTW I quite enjoyed the Real Clone saga. Good mini.

[Tomato]

Yeah, I agree about the collar... honestly, the only reason I added it was because I was trying to add SOMETHING to the neck area to break up the area between neck and mask. I'll keep playing with that and the face (I'll post some variants, I wanna see how he looks with smaller eyes and without the nose/mouth.)

As for the arms... I don't think I like the idea of the 2099 cape (mainly because I don't see the 2099 cape piece working on a bigger figure) but I was considering adding arm webbing before anyway.

[Tomato]

Upgraded to FH16 (I actually wanted to use that last night but I had to order it) so I pretty much redid it from scratch.



Personally, I'm leaning more towards the middle design... It feels most like Kaine and less Spider-clone. I don't like the no-eyes look at all (it works ok with the 90s design because the mark of kaine makes it visually interesting) and I don't think the large spider eyes look works as well with the hair.

[Podmark]

Yeah, the middle one is the winner. Though I do appreciate the faceless one.
Good job!

FH16?

[Tomato]

Fabrica de Herois version 16. It doesn't have as many cool filters as the previous version, but it's a lot cleaner and generally easier to use. I didn't even know the previous one had masking functions, but this one has both that AND a proper layers list.

[Tomato]

So while I was going over the Electro designs for my Sinister foes of the Spectacular Spider-Man thread, I came to the conclusion that while I love the classic Electro-with-goofy-mask in THEORY, the simple fact is... they're all just plain AWFUL. And don't get me wrong, if anything, the modern version is WORSE... that stupid blue tattoo/scar thing can go back to whatever hell it spawned from.

So, I made my own. I'm still torn on which version I like more overall... Aesthetically I think the black underoos work best, as it balances the black from the mask, but the yellow is more classic and there's something to be said for the underoo-less outfit too.

[Panther_Gunn]

I like the one in the middle most, but all are perfectly fine reworks of the classic.  I agree, that blue & black one doesn't do anything positive for me, either.

[Podmark]

All of them are solid designs, but the middle is the winner. Balances the top black perfectly.

[OrWolvie1]

Personally, though I like them all, I prefer the one on the right myself. But that's just my opinion