Nightwing
Took a long break because I just quit my job and am now travelling the world with my wife! (True Story)
I had a lot of fun with the rain effect. It’s the second time I am attempting this after a try on Daredevil:
Used a lot of brushes/layers and spent A LOT of time on them, but it was a great learning experience.
This is still one of my first works.. Still trying to find my “style”
C&C most welcome
Thanks for viewing
Supergirl, dc comics, dc, kara zor el
This piece was very much inspired by Alex Ross’ piece of Clark Kent changing into Superman. Thought I’ll try it out with Kara Zor-el.
For this piece, I (again) experimented with adding a background to the piece. Think it gives the piece more “life”. It’s also the first time I am trying for a more photorealistic face for the subject. I was going for Keira Knightly… Not sure if I succeeded.
What if Joker became the Batman? inspired to do this piece by the Flashpoint version of Batman.
One of the critiques to one of my previous piece was that the background was not exciting enough, so decided to try my hand at doing some background work… a shambled down Gotham with a Bat/Joke signal in the background…
A new piece of mine featuring the Superman and Wonder Woman. (More Wonder Woman than Superman, actually)
I’m trying to recreate the feel of old style bleached treated photography with a bit of overexposure. Another thing I was trying out on this piece was the use of white space. Hence the huge amount of white over the head of WW.
Instead of an all American Wonder Woman, I was going for one with a more sinister feel, contrasting her darkness with the overall brightness of the piece.
I’m trying for a more pastel-y tone in this piece featuring Black Canary…
Definitely not one of my more stellar work but in my defense, I did it in the name of experimentation and working out of my comfort zone… Somehow I’ve never been very comfortable working with pastels, so on the quest of finding my “style”, I decided to give it a try.
To be honest, I am slightly under-whelmed by the results, but I hope that on some level, it worked…
In the meantime, I’ll be staying off pink for a while…
Or how Marvel is kicking DC’s bloated ass in the cinemas when it comes to earning brownie points from fan boys’.
To be honest, out of all the summer comic book based blockbusters, Green Lantern was the one that I was most eagerly anticipating.
And what do I get? An overly loud, grossly pointless, highly forgettable and obscenely disappointing run-of-the-mill Hollywood swill.
Looking over at exhibit B… We have X-Men: First Class that I expected to Suck. I mean, come on… They destroyed all notions of conformance with the comic books by putting Havok, Banshee and Darwin(??!!!) on Xavier’s first team; they mixed and matched (what they think are) the coolest mutants to put in the show, changing the gender and race (Angel) or color and name (Azazel/Nightcrawler) when they have to; worst of all, we have a non-bald Prof X…and that is just wrong.
Yet… in spite of all that, First Class appeared to be stronger of the two films. At the very least. it was the one that I enjoyed more…
So what happened?
I put it down to one word: Simplicity…
I believe DC’s characters have the richer history (or non history) when compared to Marvel’s…
Probably because of this, they tried to dump EVERY Obscure Comic Book History Info into this one film, sowing seeds for what they hope would be taken up in the inevitable sequel (Hello Sinestro). But since it is impossible to cram 50 years of history into one two hour film, they started taking creative “liberties” and changing comic book canon. The alternative explanation is that the writers are too lazy to read through all 50 years of comic and came up with a script based on their own understanding.
In spite of all this, they seem to expect:
A) non fans to follow
B) fans to not complain that they got the history wrong
C) everyone else to not be confused to a point where they give up
Case in point… The villains.
For First Class, we have ex Nazi Kevin Bacon, I mean Sebastian Shaw leading a bunch of evil mutant to incite a nuclear war to hasten the growth of mutanity. There are side plots.. But they are simple and does not distract from the main storyline
For Green Lantern… We have *drum roll* PARALLAX that is possessed by Krona (???!!! Or is it the other way round?) and Hector Hammond. I am a Green Lantern fan and I am hard-pressed if you want me to tell you the whole history of Parallax and Krona in two hours. It is simply too complicated and you reeeeaaally have to follow canon to understand it. YET DC tried VERY unsuccessfully to do that amidst the narrative to flesh out Hal Jordan and the rest of the Corp in that same time frame. Tall order… Is it any wonder they crashed and burned?
Also, a bit of fan service doesn’t hurt either…
Even if it is to tell people to go f*ck themselves…
It’s New Comics Day again!
Really excited about the latest installments of Flashpoint, in spite of myself…
Decided to do up a piece on The Flash….
Slightly different from what I’ve done previously…
The thing about the Flash is all about his speed… Trying very hard to capture his kinetic nature.
It’s also one of my first time experimenting with a non black background. There’s a lot more to consider with regard to the color scheme to make sure that everything “goes”…
There’s also a lot more modeling to be done then the usual works…
I’ve been raving about “Blackest Night” a fair bit on this site, so it’s not a surprise that I am a big fan. What’s not to like? Zombie meta humans smacking each other around.
I particularly like the bit where Hal Jordan’s New Guardians faced off against Black Lantern-ed version of heroes who have died and “cheated death” before. Seeing as how characters are moving through the revolving door of comic book death so fast these days, that is A LOT of Black Lantern powerhouses, including Superman, Wonder woman, Impulse, Green Arrow and one of my personal favorites – Superboy.
Conner Kent started out as a bit of a joke after the (*irony alert*) “Death of Superman” event.
What we initially know was that he was created by Project Cadmus to replace Superman. He was artificially aged to mid-teens and implanted with the necessary knowledge of someone his biological age (in regards to general studies, such as math, reading, etc). When Superboy arrived in Metropolis, he went by “Superman” and had no real name. While glibly asserting he was the original Superman, he quickly rebuked any insinuation he was the original Superman. In fact, he told anyone who’d listen that he was a clone of Superman.
This clone thing went on for quite a while in an age where “cloning” was a considerably dirty word, thanks to the whole Spider Man “Clone Saga”.
It was later on in his life that it was revealed that Conner Kent was a part of Project 13. Project Cadmus did a total of twelve failed experiments. They grafted what they could of Superman’s DNA onto human DNA and that process stabilized the extraterrestrial genes-thus Superboy was born, fifty percent Kryptonian and fifty percent human.
It got more interesting when the fifty percent human DNA was found to belong to one Lex Luthor.
This evolved Conner Kent into an interesting figurehead for storylines about “Nature vs Nurture” dichotomy.
Anyway, I was quite disappointed that Conner didn’t get to lay the smackdown on anyone in the Rainbow Brigade. So here’s my latest render – Black Lantern Superboy!
A while ago, I showed my render of Poison Ivy.
Over the past few days, I have been trying to pose and post process the Poison Ivy model.
This is a first draft of my first creation.
It’s definitely a work in progress.
It’s been a reeaaaaally long time since the last post. What have I been up to?
Well, this and that… mainly getting tied down with a wedding ring.
So, besides transforming the Girlfriend into the Wife, I’ve also started tinkering with some 3d software.
My first creation? Poison Ivy, of course.
It took some time to model Poison Ivy, and a hell lot more to pose and do the rendering work.
So here it goes… my first 3D piece…. “Off with his head!!”
Can’t really capture the sexy dangerousness of Ivy, but I think this is a start.
Will try to upload more pieces as the days go by…
“TRY” being the operative work…
The blockbuster event of this summer.
2 years in the making and featuring a cast numbering in the thousands.
It’s darker. It’s more mature. It’s edgier.
It’s not Harry Potter and the half blood prince.
It is way cooler than HP for the pure and simple reason that it contains zombies!
At least that’s what I think they are…
For a storyline that’s been set up for 2 years and 2 books into the saga, I honestly still can’t tell you exactly what a Black Lantern is.
All I know is that they scare the hell outta me and they are cool as hell.
Geoff Johns is a VERY strong writer for character comics. He single-handedly sparked my interest in the Justice Society of America, a team comprising of relatively old, silver age heroes which should have no business in today’s world whatsoever. They represent a generation of values that just does not make sense anymore. Somehow, he managed to make these old foggies relevant and develop these characters into ones that the reader can care about. No mean feat, considering the membership of the Society is dynamic (at best) and said membership consists of anything from 5 to 50 characters.
He is also really good at rejuvenating old concepts and retelling the mythos of over powered, over exposed characters like Superman and Green Lantern to make them interesting again. He lifted these characters from the “fight with the monster of the month” monotonous storylines to something else altogether. Cue the Sinestro Corp War, the War of the Light and New Krypton.
One genre which he never really touched so far is that of Horror and Gore, normally more the niche of writers like Garth Ennis and Jason Aaron.
Geoff Johns’ tales till now might be a little dark and slightly angsty, but they normally end with a message of hope. He’ll even try to show the more humane side of “evil” characters such as Black Adam and even Brainiac, which adds another dimension to their characterization and make them more compelling characters. I don’t think he really believes in Evil for Evil’s sake. Green Lantern #43 and Blackest Night #1 seemed to be proving me wrong as he shows he can out evil and out gore the best of them. Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis was supposed to depict a scenario where evil won and all hope is lost. But seriously, the final scenes of Blackest Night #1 were one of the most “f%& me blind” scenes I’ve seen in a comic for a very long time. It shows how absolute the Black Lanterns’ potential for mischief could be, and Johns is milking it for all that it is worth.
He paints a scenario that seems totally hopeless for the heroes to overcome. Case in point: the scene below.
Which I should probably mention: Spoiler Alert!
Sidenote: Is it me? Or is this Dark/Black theme the “in” thing for the moment? I mean… Marvel is having their Dark Reign event going on too… Certainly makes one wonder about the ideas are coming from…
Clones are people two 
