Someone Else’s Gallery

[Someone Else]

I’m just starting out here, so almost any advice will be appreciated.

Let’s start out with something I’m uploading for the (now) latest blog contest:

Bio:
TanCred was born from the heart of a supernova when something went wrong in the creation of a black hole. So rather than a black hole, a being of pure inquiry was formed.
He has slowly progressed across the galaxy searching for the answer the age-old question “Why?”.

(That sounded better in my head)

[JR19759]

Welcome to the forums, good start.
Please read the forum rules and have fun posting.

[Herr D]

Well, I must say, if any question could work more like a black hole than ‘why,’ I don’t know what it is!

For this kind of a picture, I hesitate to give advice–the human mind might only see something like TanCred representationally.
If that’s what you’re going for, I might recommend that you PM Snail-Male. Otherwise, I’d have made the star’s rings brighter–bright yellow, white, etc.

–hey, is he nourished by answers? And do people remember them after he feeds?

[Someone Else]

I see what you’re saying about the rings, it would probably look better when brighter. And I really didn’t think through how he would be nourished.

Now as this is a gallery, I will add another character, one with obvious design issues:

Yeah, generic scientist guy here is Keene Whitt, scientist and superhero.
When he was bitten by a werewolf he immediately set to finding a cure. While he didn’t figure out how to completely remove the lycanthropy, he did manage to control it and harness it into a career as a superhero.

Code name: “Free wolf”
Powers: Only has weaknesses when in werewolf form, nigh invincible skin, enhanced night vision, enhanced sense of smell, increased internal durability to point of easily surviving being hit by a truck, enhanced strength to point of lifting up to 500 pounds, claws slightly harder and sharper than military knives, rapid regeneration.
Weaknesses: Only has powers in werewolf form, skin can be pierced by silver or rough iron, burned by contact with silver, just as vulnerable to fire as anyone else, skin does not stop blunt force, burns heal much slower than other wounds, wits are slightly dulled when in werewolf form.

Known problems:
>I’m still figuring out sleeves.
>I should probably stick more than one layer in for backgrounds, eh?
>I can’t seem to figure out how to make hands hold onto things convincingly.
>File naming scheme is awful.
>The werewolf form’s fur is weird because the item I used for it was some kind of hide wrapping.

While the general request for advice still stands, I would rather like help with said known problems. As I’ve got a few more already made hero factory creations the effects might take a while to be seen, so don’t be too discouraged if I seem to disregard your advice.

[Lightningsword]

Awesome! Here are some tips:
1. Use masking. To make a hand hold something, get the hand, put the item you want the hand to hold a layer or two over th hand, put the item over the hand, and then click the item, transform tab, masking button, and click the hand.
2. To make fur, use hair or facial hair.
Hope this helped!

[The Atomic Punk]

His werewolf form looks like he killed another werewolf and is wearing his victim’s fur as a shawl.

Don’t be discouraged. Develop your characters and style.

[Anarchangel]

Punk raises a good point. I see what you were trying to do with it though. Fur can be really difficult to work with. I experimented a bit with a character in my own thread a while back (a were-bear) to see if I could get it looking natural and it took a lot of masking but I think I got it looking ok. I masked a lot of the fur arm bracer thing to shapes around the body and it looked kinda good.

Just a suggestion for something you could try.

[Herr D]

1. I’m still figuring out sleeves.
2. more than one layer in for backgrounds, eh?
3. I can’t seem to figure out how to make hands hold onto things convincingly.
4. File naming scheme
5. The werewolf form’s fur is weird because the item I used for it was some kind of hide wrapping.

For #4, be specific. The efforts you’ve shown so far tell me we’d like you around long enough to run out of generic names. Use the character’s name when possible. KS, then KSInWereForm, etc.
#2, YES. If you want to save time, check out the custom backgrounds and borrow till you’ve had practice with them.
All of your odd numbers could involve masking practice and experimentation. Keene’s sleeves have a good start; just mask something onto a transparent forearm (alpha to 0% on each color) and build a cuff out of something like neckwear. Hands holding something are usually best done in multiple masked pieces. –As for the fur, you might even mask parts of a furry companion onto a few appropriate shapes. Pretty soon people will be saying ‘who was that masking man?’

[Someone Else]

Thank you all for your feedback and advice! I’ll have to keep some of this stuff in mind for later attempts.

But as I’ve yet to post without adding more content, here we go:

Firefighter + Clown =

Yeeeeaaaahhhh, not much to say about this except that he intends to put fires out with that soda can (probably going to shake it up first).

Next an odd sort of superhero concept:

Rick Awesome is capable of pulling off nearly anything if he can make it look ‘cool’ enough. This usually manifests as super-strength or the ability to pull of stunts that no-one else could. He also seems to be able to avoid logistics and health issues as he never runs out of gas, bullets, or cigars and his lungs remain blissfully undamaged.
His chief weakness is that if something appropriately awe-inspiring is used against him, it’ll work just as well as his stuff.
(A related weakness is that anyone who tries to punch him gains a temporary understanding of martial arts)

[Author]

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