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A bit of laziness on my part, but here is a straight copy-over from my old thread. I changed the line color in a few places, but this character remains unchanged for the most part. He has all the tricks a good ‘machiner needs to make a pose pop: facial and costume Zypping, a decent energy effect, shading, a vein bulging on his face, and a massive pink arm holding up a boulder. So why mess with a good thing?
I came up with this guy while I was at work, pushing something very heavy with one hand, and the Psychics contest just happened along, so I got to making him that night, submitted him a day or two later, and he wound up making the polls for that week.
Here’s Terrence Armstrong:
Name: Strong-Arm
Alias: Terrence Armstrong
Team Affiliations: Sixth Street Sinners, The Enforcers, Clockwork (reserve member)
Race: Human
Birthplace: London, England
Powers: Mentally enhanced strength, bulletproof astral arm.
Bio: Terrence Armstrong was always powerful for his age. As a boy, he once tipped a car that had fallen on his father, who had been working on it at the time. As a mixed-race child, Terry was already a target for his less tolerant peers. But it got worse when kids at school heard about his father’s accident and what Terry had done to save him. They called him a freak, often attacking and beating him even though they knew not to mess with a ten-year-old who could lift a car. Young Terry endured the name-calling and abuse for several months, hoping that, like all children, their focus would switch to some other target.
But when his father passed away from complications stemming from the accident, the stress and pain grew too much for him. That day, Terry ran away from home, eventually winding up in a bad part of town, where the local gang hid him from police and the foster system.
Terry would grow up to be an enforcer for the Sixth Street Sinners, the gang that had since become his family, taking the nickname Strong-Arm because of his ability to channel his mental energy into superhuman physical strength. As his powers grew, he discovered he could manifest his psychic strength as a giant arm that he could use to lift anything, or even increase the density of the astral arm to the point that it became bulletproof.
One day, Terrence was sent to intimidate a bookmaker who owed the Sinners a large sum of money. As he was about to beat some sense into the man, a little boy walked in on them. It was the bookie’s son, and the sight of him stopped Terrence in his tracks. Having been beaten as a child, Terrence recognized a look on the boy’s face that he had felt on his own face during those long ago beatings.
With that encounter, Terrence decided to turn over a new leaf, and made it his personal mission to stand up against organized crime, starting with the Sixth Street Sinners.
In his career, Strong-Arm’s former gang affiliation and his extreme crime-fighting methods have brought him toe-to-toe with Sextant on many occasions, usually ending with the pair teaming up against some greater common enemy.I finally got a version of Nihonto’s sister that I’m happy with. As has been the case so far, she’s re-posed and shaded in all her high-tech, defensive glory. Hope you dig her.
Name: Shield
Alias: Shirudo (Romanized Japanese for shield)
Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O’Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Beijing, China
Powers: Enhanced strength & reflexes, Antimatter energy shields.
Bio: When their mother was pregnant with them, she traveled with their father to Beijing, where he had been transferred in lieu of a job promotion.
But on the day the girls were born, their mother awakened from anesthesia prematurely to find that, though the ultrasound she had had in the United States confirmed twins, only one baby girl awaited her in the nursery. Storming through a back door in the nursery, she found her other child in the process of being euthanized (because in China at that time, mothers were only allowed to bear one child). Running on superhuman, maternal strength and a lioness’ courage, she somehow rendered all the attending doctors unconscious and escaped the hospital with her newborn twin daughters, who were both still very much alive. After much domestic turmoil, she took the girls on a flight out of Beijing, leaving China and her work-focused husband for the relative safety of Japan, safety that came with a price.
One day, a Yakuza enforcer came looking for protection money and, finding her financial situation lacking, took the twins as collateral, killing their mother when she resisted.
The girls were raised by the Yakuza, a childhood utterly devoid of all things childish, and eventually became initiated Yakuza themselves. The fearsome Nihonto (Sword) served as chief enforcer, and Shirudo (Shield) became the Yakuza boss’ personal security guard. Having been mutilated as a baby, the woman now known as Shirudo had long ago been given a bionic suit, fashioned from stolen tech, to help her walk and fight. Over her years with the Yakuza’s tech division, Shirudo quickly learned to repair her own suit and made the defensive modifications that would earn her name and position.
Their lives would change again when Nihonto returned from a mission to find her sister being assaulted by their boss, forcing Nihonto to kill the man and making the two of them targets for the criminal organization that had been their family for so long. They managed to survive daily attempts on their lives thanks in part to Shirudo’s defensive armor, until the day they would cross paths with Strong Arm and Sextant, who had come to Tokyo following a trail of Yakuza activity from the states.
The team known as The Enforcers was born, a team that would one day grow into a formidable group of Clockwork heroes….As promised, here is one of the Two O’Clock Warriors, my other Family Contest submission (and my first top-five creation for any contest) from last year. For anyone who is new to Heromachine, The Hallows and the Two O’Clock Warriors are part of my Clockwork Project.
Clockwork is a group of twelve heroes or hero teams, each inspired by an hour of the clock. The Hallows represent Noon (or N’Un, if you like that better) and Midnight, and the Two O’Clock Warriors represent, well, you know…
I went with a yin-yang theme, creating twin sisters with contrasting fighting styles. First is the low-tech, offensive sister:
Name: Sword
Alias: Nihonto (Japanese for sword)
Team Affiliations: The Yakuza, Two O’Clock Warriors, The Enforcers, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Beijing, China
Powers/Abilities: Agility, Reflexes, Skilled hand-to-hand and with daisho (pair of Japanese swords, one long and one short).
Bio: When their mother was pregnant with them, she traveled with their father to Beijing, where he had been transferred in lieu of a job promotion.
But on the day the girls were born, their mother awakened from anesthesia prematurely to find that, though the ultrasound she had had in the United States confirmed twins, only one baby girl awaited her in the nursery. Storming through a back door in the nursery, she found her other child in the process of being euthanized (because in China at that time, mothers were only allowed to bear one child). Running on superhuman, maternal strength and a lioness’ courage, she somehow rendered all the attending doctors unconscious and escaped the hospital with her newborn twin daughters, who were both still very much alive. After much domestic turmoil, she took the girls on a flight out of Beijing, leaving China and her work-focused husband for the relative safety of Japan.
But that safety came with a price. One day, a Yakuza enforcer came looking for protection money and, finding her financial situation lacking, took the twins as collateral, killing their mother when she resisted.
The girls were raised by the Yakuza, a childhood utterly devoid of all things childish, and eventually became initiated Yakuza themselves. The fearsome Nihonto (Sword) served as chief enforcer, and Shirudo (Shield) became the Yakuza boss’ personal security guard.
The sisters’ lives would change again when Nihonto returned from a mission to find her sister being assaulted by their boss, forcing Nihonto to kill the man and making the two of them targets for the criminal organization that had been their family for so long. They managed to survive daily attempts on their lives, thanks in part to Nihonto’s incomparable stealth and ruthless fighting style until the day they would cross paths with Strong Arm and Sextant, who had come to Tokyo following a trail of Yakuza activity from the states.
The four formed a formidable fighting force to face down their felonious foes, finally felling a fearsomely fatalistic franchise (phew! Stan Lee would be proud). So begins the formation of Clockwork….Here’s the final member of the Hallows team, re-posed, re-costumed, and–duh, winning–shaded for your viewing pleasure. I thought her first design was too simple and unoriginal for a team heroine, and that she might get lynched or something if she showed up in ancient Egypt wearing thigh-highs and fishnets with her boobs sticking out. Oh, and I gave her a more magic-looking magic effect. So say hello again to Tempora:
Name: Tempora
Alias: Tempora Hallows
Team Affiliations: The Hallows, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Rome, NY
Powers/Abilities: Time manipulation, witchcraft
Bio: Tempora Hallows is Frank’s mother. She is a legacy witch, and the only surviving member of a coven of time-manipulators. A war has been waging for centuries between the temporals and the other elemental covens, but the temporals have been targeted most frequently for their alleged abuse of cosmic forces and their mercenary status among the wiccan community.
She defected from the war and fled to ancient Egypt, where she met the man who would become Frank’s father. The two fell in love, but Egyptian custom would not allow their mixed-race relationship (a fact Tempora was ignorant of when the Pharaoh rejected her and she cursed him with eternal sleep).
Upon returning to her own time, Tempora discovered she was pregnant with Frank, and put aside her mystic dabbling to raise the child. During her pregnancy, however, Tempora was prone to uncontrollable bouts of astral travel (which amounted to little more than extremely vivid precognitive dreams), and soon learned who her son was meant to become and how through him she would be reunited with her lost love.Here is my new Pharaoh Hi-N’Un XII. I re-posed him and changed his costume a bit to allow for greater shading possibilities (and because I always wanted to do a gunslinger pose like this). I also got rid of the weird sword-gun that I never came up with an explanation for and he never got to use, replacing it with a traditional shotgun.
Name: Pharaoh Hi-N’Un XII
Alias: Peter Hallows
Team Affiliations: The Hallows, Clockwork
Race: Human
Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
Powers/Abilities: Expert marksman and gunfighter, extremely skilled with all manner of ranged weaponry, former Egyptian monarch, rumored to be more than 2,500 years old.
Bio: Pharaoh Hi-N’Un XII is Frank’s father. After spurning the advances of Frank’s mother, who is a time-travelling witch, the Pharaoh was mummified and entombed, cursed by the witch with eternal sleep. Some time in the American Wild West era, the tomb was disturbed and the curse interrupted. Pharaoh Hi-N’Un XII soon took up a gun and became a truly immortal folk hero, with his name being attributed to the classic midday duels for honor that marked his life and the history of the American West.Thank you Vampyrist!
Now for Frank Hallows’ second villain, the team leader of the Power Suits. You can tell his ego is huge because he named the team after himself…
Name: Power Suit
Alias: William Ernst
Team Affiliations: The Power Suits
Enemies: Frank Hallows, Deus-X, The Golem Queen
Race: Human
Birthplace: Geneva, Switzerland
Powers/Abilities: Superior intellect, copper/Knavium battle armor (Enhanced strength, Electro-kinetic weaponry, Absorbs electricity)
Bio: William Ernst is the founder and CEO of the Nernst Corporation, a rival company of HallowGen that uses its comparable (but inferior) technology for military applications, often with highly controversial consequences. Ernst has been the orchestrator of many attempted hostile takeovers of Frank Hallows’ company, the latest of which led Frank to purchase and shut down the Nernst Corporation and have his rival deported back to Switzerland. A vengeful William Ernst would spend months working in seclusion to complete his Power Suit, a battle armor with similar offensive capabilities to Frank’s P.A.T.C.H. suit, but is composed of a special copper/Knavium alloy that absorbs and magnifies electric charge.Notes: William and Ernest are the names of the two men who rescue Victor Frankenstein at the beginning of Mary Shelley’s novel. Nernst is a kind of incandescent lightbulb.
Here is my shaded re-design of the Frank Hallows villain, The B.R.I.D.E. I originally created her for a Public Domain contest last year but didn’t get too much of a response about her. I changed her dress, continued that machine-pretending-to-be-human aspect of her into a new set of legs, and added some shading and glowing effects.
Name: The B.R.I.D.E.
Alias: Elizabeth Victoria Stein
Enemies: Frank Hallows, Deus-X
Race: Android
Birthplace: Ithaca, NY
Powers: Superhuman strength, Energy claws, Absorbs (downloads) human memory by touch.
Bio: Dr. Elisabeth Victoria Stein (Evie to her friends) was once a prominent scientist at HallowGen, contracted by founder Frank Hallows to research the connection between computers and the human brain. Her work would soon form the basis for the interface Frank now uses to control the P.A.T.C.H. suit. But Dr. Stein’s ambitions reached much higher. She wished to push the boundaries of ethical science by attempting to have human brains directly interface with computer hardware, and even convert human memory into binary data for storage on computer mainframes.
Fearing the devastatingly godlike potential this would have in the wrong hands, Frank shut down Dr. Stein’s program and fired her, retaining the rights to all of Stein’s research and keeping her findings under the highest level of security possible.
Weeks went by without incident, but Dr. Evie Stein would return in force, breaking into HallowGen with a bang and escaping the ensuing chaos with her research and several million dollars’ worth of stolen HallowGen technology.
The bomb she planted below her former employer’s office would leave Frank paralyzed from the waist down, dependent on the newly completed P.A.T.C.H. suit for his mobility and survival.
Meanwhile, the disgraced Dr. Evie Stein would continue her work in secret, fashioning the Bionic Remote Interactive Digital Envoy from her cache of stolen P.A.T.C.H. and X-2 technology and taking the fatal risk of using her own brain as the upload source for what would prove to be her final experiment.
The transfer was a success. Dr. Evie Stein’s human body was now an empty, soulless shell. But what did it matter when she had a stronger, faster cybernetic body at her command? But the collection of firing synapses that comprised the essence of Dr. Elisabeth Victoria Stein would quickly fall victim to the numerous security subroutines embedded in the patchwork of stolen HallowGen tech, leaving behind only a heavily armed, psychologically unstable automaton with a now-baseless hatred of Frank Hallows and an unwavering desire to possess as much human knowledge as possible. Beware, for The B.R.I.D.E. is alive!My new signature is up now.
Plus, to get more traffic for HM and my own blog (wherein I review movies, books, music, etc.), I have begun a new blog series called Heroes Are Made, that brings a piece of the HeroMachine world to my small readership on Blogger.Nytol
