Tag Archives: Angel

Deviant DSC Weekend Challenge: X-Men First Class

This weekend’s sketch challenge  [link] was a 2 hour rendition of the X-Men (your preferred perfect class in the original uniforms.  Well the Original or First Class was my preferred choice so here we are:


Characters: X-Men, Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, Jean Grey
Copyright: Marvel

Tools: Paint Tool Sai
Time: 2 hours
Fun: Lots!

And here are a couple of WIP steps for those interested in that sort of thing:

Nomads: In Defence of Beastly Memories

This is a collection piece I did using mostly images I had previously submitted, pulled together as part of an image based on my current Character in the Marvel-Boards.co.uk RPG – Nomads. The only new parts, are the unmutated Beast created from a bust (recolor, replace head, new eyes) and The Beast in the corner (colored form the Ultimate Beast). My Character is Hank McCoy aka The Beast. This depicts him remembering his former Defender’s team mates – Hulk, Valkyrie, Iceman, Angel – and himself before his transformation.

Nomads – Profile: “The Beast”

Real name: Henry “Hank” Peter McCoy

Occupation: (current) Adventurer, (former) Biochemist

Identity: Publicly known

Legal status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record

Other aliases: None

Place of birth: Dunfee, Illinois

Marital status: Single

Known relatives: Norton (father), Edna (mother), Robert (uncle)

Group affiliation: (former)X-Men, Defenders

Extent of education: Ph.D. in Biochemistry

Base of operations: Mobile; (former) Xavier Institute, Salem Center, Westchester County, New York State; Defenders Mansion, Colorado;

History: Henry McCoy’s father, Norton, worked at a nuclear power plant where he was exposed to massive amounts of radiation during an accident. Norton was unharmed, but the radiation affected his genes, and as a result his son Henry was born a mutant. Unlike most superhuman mutants, Henry showed signs of mutation from birth: unusually large hands and feet. Thanks to his superhuman agility, strength, and speed, Henry became a star football player as a teenager. His remarkable athletic abilities attracted the notice of Professor Charles Xavier, who was forming the original X-Men.

He joined the X-Men, taking the code name “Beast.” A brilliant student, McCoy completed his doctoral studies under Xavier’s tutelage, and finally left the X-Men and Xavier’s school to reorganize another super-hero group, the Defenders, into a more formal combat organization. His X-Men cohorts Angel and Iceman served in the Defenders along with him, alongside The Hulk and Valkyrie.

After battling and subduing the Absorbing Man, Hank took it upon himself to try and find a cure for Creel’s situation. Valkyrie returned to Asgard and obtained a sample of the herbs used by Loki to give Creel his powers. Developing a serum he believed would cure Creel, Hank was preparing to inject Creel when he broke loose. As Hulk and Hank struggled to subdue Creel once more, Hank was accidently injected with the serum. The serum interacted with Hank’s mutant gene and the ambient Gamma radiation from the Hulk causing radical physical changes.

His skin turned green and he grew fur over his entire body, his ears became larger and pointed, and his canine teeth became larger, resembling fangs. The serum also further increased his superhuman agility, endurance, speed, and strength. Driven over the edge by the pain of his transformation and his changed appearance, Hank turned on his fellow Defenders, badly injuring Warren and Bobby, while Valkyrie and Hulk were concentrating on Creel. Hank then disappeared into the wilderness.

Tracked down by Xavier using Cerebra, Hank is finally coming to terms with his transformation but is still troubled by terrible rages which he struggles to keep under control, knowing that in losing control he might free the animal within him and lose his humanity forever. Now known as “The Beast”, Hank has become part of a ragtag group of adventurers, pulled together to try and mend the rips in the fabric of time and space. His Current Team mates are Sinistra (Victoria Essex, daughter of Nathaniel), Marie LeBeau (wife, and mother of Gambit’s as yet unborn child), Sam Guthrie (Cannonball, in his 50s had more or less retired from active heroics), Otto Octavius (New York’s premier hero after saving it from many menaces, including his long time foe The Spiderman), WildChild (The teams other beastly member.. beastly by nature and personality), Scott Summers (a young mutant just beginning to understand his optic blasts), Collosus (former member of Weapon X, now battling against them) and Eve (the younger daughter of Kurt and Wanda Wagner, niece of Magneto). Together they are “The Nomads”.

Height: 5 ft. 11 in.

Weight: 355 lbs. Eyes: Yellow/Orange

Hair: (originally) Brown, (currently) Green

Other distinguishing features: Covered with fur, unusually large hands and feet, pointed ears, fang-like teeth Known superhuman powers: The Beast has the superhuman strength, agility, endurance, speed and dexterity. He is strong enough to lift (press) 4,000 pounds. His legs are powerful enough to enable him to leap 30 feet high in a standing high jump, and 50 feet in a standing broad jump. He is able to crawl up brick walls by wedging his fingers and toes into the smallest cracks and applying a vise-like grip on them. He has enough power to smash through a eight-inch thick oaken door with a single blow or tie a six-inch solid steel bar into a knot.

He has the agility of a great ape and the acrobatic prowess of the most accomplished circus aerialist and acrobat. Ha can walk a tightrope or a slack rope as easily as most people can walk on a sidewalk. He can walk on his hands for many hours, or perform a complicated sequence of gymnastic stunts such as flips, rolls, and springs. He can easily match or top any Olympic record at gymnastics apparatus (such as flying rings, climbing ropes, horizontal bars, trampolines). Further, his manual and pedal dexterity is so great that he can write using both hands at once or tie knots in rope with his toes.

The Beast is quite fast, able to run on all four at approximately 40 miles per hour for short sprints. His stamina is approximately quadruple that of a well-trained athlete in his prime. His physiology is durable enough to permit him to take a six-story fall without a broken bone or stain (providing he lands on his feet). At the time of his further mutation into his present furry form, his metabolism underwent a period of accelerated change. As a side effect, he was able to metabolize and recover from penetration wound to his body within a matter of minutes. Since then, his body’s metabolism has stabilized and he no longer has quite such a rapid recovery rate. He is still able to recover from most wounds within a few hours.

COSTUME: A Portrait of an Angel

I wanted to take part in this theme day, AND fill a request.. Brian Gaskill in the red Angel uniform (dunno if I got the right one though.. as he had a couple).

So here we see Angel admiring a painting of himself in his original X-Men uniform. The red uniform is a recolor of the previous blue uniformed Archangel I previously submitted. The wings have been desaturated and brightened. The background pic was painted using my wacom tablet over another image of Brian. Everything is new other than the eyes and mouth area. Tried to give a cloudy sky impression in the background. Added a perspective shadow on the wall from the front Angel.

Not X3: Archangel

Keeping with the tradition of a new blue person in each movie.. hehe.. not really.. We had a request to see Brian Gaskill as Archangel, So here it is my own take. Costuming from scratch using the usual techniques, background from xmen, a pic of an Angel Bust, and a smaller unfinished Brian Gaskill/Angel manip as screen type box outs. Body donor was Antonio Sabato. Tried to give the wings a metallic look but not sure if it really pays off.

Fallen Angel

Just a quick piece I threw together one slow saturday morning. This started out as a cover preview I saw over on CBR ( for Lucifer #40). The minute I saw it I thought.. hmmm thats Angel that is. First thing I did was color the hair. Then using masked overlay layers I added the Apocalypse Bust (Bowen), and a couple of trading card pictures from the net. These were all smudged to match the painted style of the original base pic. Lightning added using dodge and overlay layers. To add more interest, there are a couple of overlayed textures hopefully making it look like a mural painted on tiles. The border mask is from PSP frames.


Angel – Back in the High Life Again

This is the follow up to my Angel Introspective manip using model Marcus Schenkenberg as Warren Worthington III (while still in his post Apocalypse blue phase).

Starting with the previous manip (minus the ornaments), the first thing i needed to do was recolour the skin to a more natural tone. After a few failed attempts, i found that by selecting the blue skin area, promoting it to a new layer, making it negative, and setting the blend mode to colour, i got a nice tanned look. I cut away the areas of the new ‘skin’ where i still wanted the tshirt to be blue but i found it was too washed out. so i again selected the blue skin promoted it to a new layer and set the blend mode to multiply to get a richer blue. A similar process was done to create the white central strip.

The halo was done using the vector tool and highlighted and shaded manually. The collar and sleeve edging was also done using the vector tool. wrinkles on the tight tshirt body and sleeves drawn as small Vs, then smudged to give a nice feel. The tshirt still looked a bit flat, so i had a look through some of my textures and found a nice one called fauxsuede that i applied over the top on a soft light layer. The background buildings are simply lots and lots of gradient filled boxes layered on top of each other. The car i used is the Pagani Zonda, again on a soft light layer. Between the wings I added a magazine scan i downloaded from the net of Angel in costume but still with his long blond hair to match my image.

Angel Introspective – Warren Worthington III


Time for a quick manip. Here is model Marcus Schenkenberg as Warren Worthington III (while still in his post Apocalypse blue phase – but with regrown natural wings). It was created from two pics of Marcus, a small grainy one i found of him sitting in a very orange room with wings.. and a second larger black and white image. Enlarging the winged image, I cut out the wings and put them on a layer behind the black n white pic. Much smudging and cursing later and i got it looking reasonable. I smudged the black n white pic and colorized the skin and jewellry. The hair was done on a seperate layer and turned out not bad although it is still a bit smudgy at the ends. The pic at the background is Stirling Castle. The logo font is Federation.

Target: Warren Worthington

Just a quickie really. After i submitted the Beast pic, I figured I could do the same to classic Angel. Again it was a bust on a rock, found a matching background (The eagle eyed among you may recognise it from an early hulk manip i did). A bit of cutting n blending and a few filters and i had a painty pic. i added the heads up display as though a Sentinel was targeting him – hence the title. The red ‘beam’ through the pic is Cyclops clearing a path through the Sentinel for Angel.

Blast from the Past: We all stand together!

Another of my older manips that i didn’t submit at the time. This is just a collection of busts plonked together in a ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ kind of pose. At the time i wasn’t confident enough to try and give the colossus bust arms, so the placing of the other characters is more or less to hide the fact he’s (h)armless…

On the Wings of Revenge

Angela Braddock Worthington, only daughter to Betsy Braddock (Psylocke) and Warren Worthington III (ArchAngel). Born in an alternate reality where the Sentinel have hunted mutants almost to extinction, Angela has been on the run with her parents since the day she was born. Her parents have been killed. Angela is all alone. She has had enough. Using her fathers old costume, she fashions a new identity for herself and takes the battle to the Sentinel. She becomes Angel.

Powers: Angie is a mutant who can fly by means of natural wings, which span 10 feet from tip to tip, augmented by telekensis (both powers inherited from her parents. Her anatomy is adapted for flight: her bones are partially hollow like a bird’s, her body is almost devoid of fat, she possesses greater proportionate muscle strength than a normal human. Angie also has the ability to manifest a molecule thick energy field, endowing blade like objects with the capability of slicing through virtually any substance. Her telekenesis means she has the ability to levitate herself and up to 500 Pounds.

Well thats the story…. here are the facts… Base Model: UK Actress Anna Friel How it was done: duplicated original picture and greyscaled it as a new layer. erased and smudged out the face and hair. removed some blemishes from the body, then added the classic blue costume. eyes coloured blue. mask and lipstick added. wings added and shaded/coloured by suit reflection. three bladed claw with hand grip added, shadows and reflections worked in. added glow effect to the blades and added corresponding highlights to the hand and grip. finally added part of the halo to the chest, and the text. Hope you like it. LH;)