Tag Archives: Otto Octavius

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.

Kevin Newburn’s Ock Vs Spidey (Colored)

Another of our own Kevin Newburn’s drawings, colored by my good self.. Another different effect here, I used Eyecandy’s Chrome filter in conjunction with the colorize function to do all the coloring on the characters. This gave an interesting effect. I softened down the reflections a little and hey presto. Hope you like it Kev 🙂

Spider-Man 2 Animated (Almost)

This started life as a Tracie Mauk inking of Spidey and Ock, digitally colored in my own inimitable style… colors, textures, gradients, chrome filters and this time a bit of masking on the background together with brush filter. The web in the corner is a texture on a couple of layers set to screen and the logo is cut from a Spidey promo pic. I know I should have metalized all the webs on spidey.. but..i’m afraid laziness got the better of me…

Spider-Man 2: Escape from Doc Ock

I watched Spiderman DVD again and had the germ of an idea for a scene I wanted to manip. The idea was for a scene from the next Spiderman movie incorporating the DVD menu/border frame.

 

The base pic was an old black and white pic of body builder Bill Davey posing in a spotlight. He wasn’t as bulked up as he seems to be now. The pose seemed good for spidey preparing to swing off. As opposed to my usual style, first thing I did was create a background for the pic by using a layer filled with a brick texture. I then deformed part of this to make a ledge for him to ‘stand’ on. It was originally going to be a ledge on a building but I remembered my old Spiderman game with spidey escaping through the sewers being chased by Doc Ock and that set me on the way.

Used Xenofex Little Fluffy Cloud filter with a lot of noise added to add the green slimey texture to the wall and ledge. The spotlight on the original pic gave me the idea that it could be the light from the sewer entrance case on the wall. I used vector circles to recreate the spotlight (which was incomplete at the bottom and side where it went off the original pic) and deformed part of that to match the angle on the ledge. This was softened and the blend mode set to soft light.

The original shadow was also cut off at the edges so I used the vector tool to draw around it and extend the arm. Ock’s shadow was created from scratch using vector drawing. This was blurred and the layer set to soft light to give a sense that the shadow was cast from further away. Now for Spidey himself. Cut out the model from the base pic and promoted to a new layer. Used the smudge and soften tools to remove the edges of his shorts, facial details and generally smooth out the body so it looked costume like.

I created a new layer filled with a chainmail texture. This was colorized blue. Using the body to create a selection, the extra was cut away, leaving just spiderman’s shape. I used the lassoo tool on this to select the areas of the body to be colorized red. I nearly forgot that the red strip down his extended arm would be twisted around, due to the angle of the wrist. I moved the body layer above the colour layer and set it’s blend mode to overlay. This gave me the highlights and shadows of the body providing definition to the costume.

Time to take a deep breath and start the webs… using the vector point to point line I layed out the verticals upto the collar. I worked out the pattern on the face using a quick pencil sketch. Extended the verticals up from the collar to meet over the nose. The horizontals and face circles done in the same way. This was fiddly but didn’t take as long as you might expect. This was done using a silvery metal texture as the pen color. Used the webbing as a selection and create a drop shadow slightly offset. This gave the 3d look (i hope) This shadow layer was set to multiply at 50% opacity.

The spider was created much larger in vectors, used to create a selection. This selection was used with Eye Candy chrome filter to get a 3d look to it. I shrunk this down rotated it to match the pose before placing it. Eye created in the same way. The web flying out the pic was created using three straight vector lines (with own drop shadows) with a squiggly line drawn over the top also with a drop shadow. Added a shadow web coming from the shadow arm.

At this point I was about to add some logos and stuff, but still thought it looked a bit bland. So copied the layers to a new canvas, and merged them. I then used Flaming Pear’s Flood Filter to create some murky water. This was cut out and placed back into the original picture. I think this added a whole new dimension to the pic. Time to add the little extras. The rat was found on google, cut from it’s original pic, reshaded and recolored. Added drop and wall shadows for it and placed it against the wall. The cobwebs were created from a texture downloaded from the net. The texture was rotated to various angles and used to fill layers set to screen which made the black areas see through.

The layers were built up to give some depth. These cobwebs were to form both part of the scene and the DVD menu frame holding the scene selection panels and the corner logo. The logo itself was cut from a promo pic of a Spider-Man 2 poster. The three picture panels (supposed to be for scene selection) were created using photos of the model of the movie Spiderman from various angles combined with excerpts from a panoramic view of Manhattan at various angles. The panorama was actually a daytime shot which i made negative, then colorized a pale green, and set to multiply over the original pic – and made a night view. The combined model and background pics were tinged grey/green and a border added to make it look like a nightvision photo. Sections were cut using a rounded rectangle (from the vector used on the borders).