Fantastic Four: Fashion Forward – Rough and Ready
As promised, here’s a post including larger versions of my finished Fantastic Four costume redesigns, complete with the roughs that lead me there. Project Rooftop tweeted recently that the winner of the FF: FF competition will be announced soon, so good luck to all those that got their entries in on time 🙂
As always, click on the image to enlarge, this may help when trying to read my hastily scrawled notes, or if you want to look at one of the alternative FF logos or even just fancy a better look at Reed’s equipment… *cough* (warning: I forgot to resize one of the Invisible Woman roughs, as well as one of the Human Torch’s, so they’ll be quite large).
For my thoughts on the finished designs, or explanations to any thing you see here, please visit the original post, which you can find here: Q.U.A.R.C.S – everything should be covered, I went on quite a bit…
Mister Fantastic
Invisible Woman
The Thing
Human Torch
The FF Logo
Spider-Man Redesign
It hasn’t really sunk in for me that University is now over… projects are “completed” (some may require some ACTUAL finishing) Assessment is over (I passed!) and my work is framed and currently hanging in the end of year show (I might do a blog post about that in my new blog… when I BUILD my new blog…) – but it doesn’t really FEEL like it’s all over. Having been to three Graduations already (none of which were mine) I’m well aware that not everyone goes… seems strange that apart from random encounters, I’ll never see some of my classmates again. While I never got to be as close friends to some as I would have liked to, I’ll miss you guys – good luck with all you hope to achieve 🙂
*ahem* Anyway, to celebrate the end of deadlines, and some actual time off before I start my job at Mecca (thrilling as THAT will be) I now have time to catch up on all the drawing I haven’t been able to do, including birthdays and anniversary cards (whoops!) I simply haven’t had time to do until now… but before all that, I wanted to draw Spider-Man 😛
I’ve had this design in my head for a few years now (see how long it takes me to get around to things) and I think it started to evolve in my head whilst I was watching an old episode of the 90’s Spider-Man cartoon. As awesome as it was (and still is in many ways) it was annoying me at how bulky they had made him – Spider-man should always be spindly, and light-looking in my opinion, like spiders themselves. I originally had planned this Spider-Man simply to be a mutant replacement for the original (maybe he had abducted the original… maybe he had been drafted in by S.H.I.E.L.D or something) simply called ‘Mutant Spider-Man’, but in drawing it I started to develop a proper character behind the ‘mask’ – a mutant named Facsimile; who’s mutant power enables him to replicate any superpower in his own, unique way (an interpretation of that power if you will). He is limited to one power at a time, and can’t successfully replicate weapons (such as Thor’s hammer) or machines (Iron-Man’s armour) to their full extent. There was more, but hopefully it won’t be years again until I get to draw him, or other superhero Facsimile forms (such as the Hulk), so I’ll say more about him some other time.
Here’s a few sketches showing him doing ‘whatever a spider can’ to demonstrate how the design works…
And a few alternative colours for a Black Suit/Neon version (I saw Spidey in a neon costume recently… not sure what it was for)…
So that was fun! Better get on with those cards now…
Incidentally, I’m attempting to build myself a website, so unless I can find a way to splice it with this blog, this could be the last time I post here – or at least when I post that I’ve successfully completed the website, THAT will be the last post – thanks so much to those that follow me, stay tuned for more ramblings; different web-time, different web-channel!
Chris
Invincible: ‘Viltrumite Vogue’
I’ve been knocking out and putting up a lot of shop-based work in the last couple of days in an attempt to finance Christmas, and I couldn’t have done it with out my beautiful (and very well organised) girlfriend MIZZ Lucy Benson 🙂 (blog post with details to come…)
But as it’s a bit of a slog to get it up and running, I decided to reward myself by entering a competition I’d had my eye on, the afore mentioned “Invincible: Viltrumite Vogue” by Project Rooftop – a chance to redesign the costume of young hero Invincible (Image Comics) with the entries to be judged by the artists of the comics themselves!
My Design
The idea behind my design concept was basically… I thought it looked cool (hey, at least I’m honest!) but the finished design ended up looking quite armoured, and therefore rather redundant on a character who is as he is named… Invincible. So then I started thinking about WHY he would need such a costume:
1) Invincible loses his powers! – The new costume could be a ‘power-suit’ of sorts, designed to mimic his old abilities until he gets them back (if he ever gets them back!)
2) Invincible’s secret identity is at risk! – this costume covers him up entirely, meaning that if his identity were to come under suspicion, he could dress a superhero buddy in the new costume, and appear in his civvies right next to him with no-one knowing the difference!
3) Invincible needs to be in space longer than a week! – According to Wiki, Omni-man was able to hold his breath for an entire week once, on an extended trip to space – it wasn’t clear exactly how long Invincible could hold his, but even if it was the same, what if it took him longer to get there? What if he got lost? This costume could be a modified space-suit, with a small oxygen canister for the long trip (and a built in MP3 player to help relieve the boredom of flying for a WHOLE WEEK – yeesh!)
4) Invincible needs to avoid that virus like the plague! – The original Scourge virus wiped out almost the entire Viltrumite race, so what if Invincible had to fight a creature made of out of it? Or Zombie Viltrumites infected with it? Well he’d need a costume to protect him wouldn’t he! Or would he? (does being a hybrid protect him?)
Thoughts…
I do like my finished design – the body proportions are way off in places, but the general design concept is fairly clear, with the extra heads showing that the character can still be expressive and ‘human’ (a feature I think is important to include in a hero character) despite having his head enclosed in a full helmet. This mini-project was pretty frustrating in many ways: it seems that i had almost completely forgotten how to draw superheroes, and at one point I thought my computer was going to crash before I could save it, but it was a fun alternative to the large, and in terms of the comic I’m working on, rather over-bearing projects I’ve got going at the moment – I just hope that, although I SENT it before the EST Midnight deadline, they RECEIVED it before too 
*EDIT*
And receive it they did! I got an ‘honourable mention’ and some very kind words from fellow Projects Rooftoppers! I really didn’t expect this, so big thanks to P:R and all the comments, I look forward to entering the next one!
Q.U.A.R.C.S 