Ok, I think i’m getting an obsession for this character as I try to do it justice. Thanks to WonderWomanGoddess for letting me take a few more liberties with her baby for the purposes of a theme day. I didnt want to change the existing back story too much, but i thought she might fit into a Exiles storyline quite well.
WWG’s Original Concept: “She’s called Judgment. A near death experience gave her the power to see into a persons soul, to see their most extreme sins and virtues. She’s a vigilante, and uses her power to determine if those who cross her path live or die. Visually, she has red hair, pale skin, green eyes. Her eyes have a supernatural green glow. Her standard outfit is a black or dark green tank top, black mini or pants, and old school black cowboy boots. The only distinguishing feature about her outfit really is her belt buckle, which is a metal pentagram with a green eye in the center of it.”
My X-Men Concept: “Born in Texas just after the first Sentinel attacks, she’s called Judgement. Barely surviving a subsequent attack in which her parents were killed, the near death experience kicked her mutant power into gear. Her ability is to see into a persons soul, to see their most extreme sins and virtues. Once she has made eye contact with a person she can mentally cause them to experience any of the pleasure or pain that they have inflicted on another individual. Visually, she has dyed multihued hair, pale skin, green eyes. Her eyes have a supernatural internal green glow.
Her X-Uniform consists of blue bodysuit with black X and green pentagram on her chest and matching cowboy hat. She wears special emerald quartz sunglasses designed by Professor X which enable her to focus her power more easily as well as supplying additional information from a computer built into her suit. The only other distinguishing feature about her outfit really is her belt buckle, which shows metal pentagram with a green snake eye in the center of it.
Judgement has studied various mystical arts and uses the belt as a channel for these powers. Judgement keeps roots, herbs and potions handy in her strap on leg pouch. Grabbed from her own timeline by the Timebroker, Judgement must help the other Exiles put right the fractures in time and someday return home.”
How I got here: The base for this pic was a nude of model Kim Foreman standing in a room wearing a white couwboy hat and a belt. The first thing i did was smooth out the skin, removing any blemishs. Next I removed her nipples(ouch!) and smudged and blended the area between her breasts where her suit would be stretched. I smudged and smoothed the original belt logo and added my own pentagram using softened lines on layers set to overlay or multiply. The eye is an actual snake eye made to look glassy. Green glow added to buckle and hands.
Now it was time to start the suit. I had a couple of attempts before I decided on what you see here. I used the fauxsuede texture (that I used in my Angel – Back in the High Life manip) to fill a new layer. I colorized this layer blue, then cut away the extra to leave only the areas that would be the suit or the hat. With the initial cutting complete, I duplicated this layer twice. the original layer’s mode was set to color. the second layer’s mode was set to burn at 25% opacity. the third layer’s was set to multiply at 75% opacity (obviously i had a bit of experimenting) but these produced the best results.
Next thing was to start drawing the zips, seams patterns on the costume. In order to get some neatness to the whole thing, I first used the vector shapes tool to draw a five pointed star, which i deformed to the look as though it was sitting on the stretched uniform at her chest. I then did a very large X in Arial Black ( @ 244pnt) which i deformed to match the placement of the star. I then used the freehand vector tool to draw the initial lines in white(set to overlay) and black. the black layers were duplicated set to multiply and gaussian blurred at about 3. I think this gave a nice stitched effect.
A similar routine for the wrinkles. The central zip line was done in the same fashion but with an additional blurred black layer to give more depth. In order to get a bit of realism, I added the little horizontal stitching at the bottom of the zip, and the actual zipper at the top was cut from another photo and pasted in. A bit of judicious cutting and coloring and it blended in nicely. Next was the collar and cuffs with the additional stiching in the same fashion as on the chest. It looked a bit bland with just the stitching so i used the lassoo tool to select the large chest X and then used that selection to desaturate the textured multiply layer, giving a two tone uniform. I decided to color the pentagram on the chest too, and I think i managed to achieve a raised plasticy feel to it.
Some small X insignias were added to the collar by the zipper to increase the uniform rather than costume feel. The leg pouch was created from scratch following the same pattern as the rest of the uniform. Drew some lime green semi circles free hand over her irises set to dodge at 50% opacity. This gave some nice green lowing eyes. The green glasses were made from scratch, in a similar way to my earlier Transgender piece, and i think i got the shadow and glass looking a lot nicer this time.
The hair was the models own(blond). Because of the new layers fro the costume I had to add some new strands to make up for the sloppy cutting out i did. This was then given a gradient color. The background is a woodland one I had on my hard disk for ages. I put it on a lyer over the top and then cut out the model shape using the texture layer as a guide. This seemed simpler than cutting away the original background. Well.. i think thats about it.. Once again, thanks to WWG (hope i didn’t stray too far from your concept). Hope you all like it and enjoy the film too.
