Zulu's art

[zuludelta]

I've got plans to do The Shadow and Lee Falk's Phantom down the line... any excuse to draw a guy double-wielding a pair of semi-automatics, John Woo style  :D

As for giant monsters and whatnot... I might tackle King Kong at some point (I've always wanted to paint an image of King Kong tearing a t-rex's jaws apart and spitting down it's throat  :lol:) and maybe Voltes V (my favourite giant robot show from my childhood).

[BentonGrey]

I absolutely love that Daredevil....I mean, if you made that into a desktop, I'd use it, it's that awesome.  I like that thing too...but everyone knows I'm a sucker for Kirby's style of all of his characters.

[zuludelta]

I absolutely love that Daredevil....I mean, if you made that into a desktop, I'd use it, it's that awesome.

Glad you like it. Here's a wallpaper, hosted, unfortunately, on Imageshack (Photobucket's on temporary server maintenance), so you'll have to deal with a pop-up ad or two:

[zuludelta]

Here's Invisible Woman, using her powers:



Just kidding  :lol:

Here she is:

[BentonGrey]

Awesome, thanks ZD, consider it background-ified.

[Carravaggio]

i like the more real life figure on IW. Some artist portray her with the proportions of a porn star, which i find both disrespectful and hard to believe. Your rendition of sue storm looks like a real woman.

[GhostMachine]

i like the more real life figure on IW. Some artist portray her with the proportions of a porn star, which i find both disrespectful and hard to believe. Your rendition of sue storm looks like a real woman.

Agreed. In my opinion, Sue looked best when she was drawn more realistically. I do think a few artists have drawn her more shapely without going overboard like some artists, though.

As for the background, Zulu obviously decided to draw a picture of her trapped in Limbo starting to turn invisible with an invisible force field around herself that's bigger than the pic.  :thumbup:

[zuludelta]

Glad you guys like the build I gave Sue. I was never a fan of drawing every superheroine with DDs. I mean, it's fun when you're thirteen and all, but it gets boring after a while. Now I only draw every other superheroine with DDs  :lol:

Here's the Human Torch:



I considered going the classic route and giving him the vertical black lines but decided against it... that type of rendering detail seems to be diametrically opposed to the overall "flat"/vector art look I'm going for.

Not entirely sure about this one, though... I was trying out a different angle and using exaggerated perspective. I'll give it a few hours and if I'm still satisfied with how it looks, I'll let it stand, otherwise, I might try a different pose.

[psychopanda]

Lined Torch?

[Uncle Yuan]

I think he looks keen!   :thumbup:

[The Pwime]

Glad you guys like the build I gave Sue. I was never a fan of drawing every superheroine with DDs. I mean, it's fun when you're thirteen and all, but it gets boring after a while. Now I only draw every other superheroine with DDs  :lol:

Here's the Human Torch:



I considered going the classic route and giving him the vertical black lines but decided against it... that type of rendering detail seems to be diametrically opposed to the overall "flat"/vector art look I'm going for.

Not entirely sure about this one, though... I was trying out a different angle and using exaggerated perspective. I'll give it a few hours and if I'm still satisfied with how it looks, I'll let it stand, otherwise, I might try a different pose.

'tis very neat indeed.  I like how you coloured  it in such a way that you can see the different parts of his costume, but it still all flows together very smoothly.

[UnkoMan]

For IW, I've got to say try fading out the outline more. It stops a little too harshly. I think it would look better if it just stayed the same opacity as the fill in.

Johnny looks pretty rad. Like Pwime said, seeing the costume is nice. He does appear to have an enormous read end, but I still think the perspective works pretty darn well besides that. The more human face is a good idea, too. I mean, no face is alright, but Johnny's an emotional character. He needs a way to show that visually. The pose is very dynamic on him.

[zuludelta]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys, reading your input and suggestions always helps. My biggest reservation with the Human Torch drawing is that he doesn't fit in with Thing and Invisible Woman in terms of pose and perspective. I'm planning on putting them all together in a tight group image but the way Johnny is, he'd only make sense in that pose if he were flying at a distance above the ground. I might do a more traditional hovering pose that displays the "4" on his chest more prominently (so anybody unfamiliar with the Fantastic Four would still get the idea that he's wearing the same costume under all that fire).

Lined Torch?

Hey, that looks pretty good!

For IW, I've got to say try fading out the outline more. It stops a little too harshly. I think it would look better if it just stayed the same opacity as the fill in.

I was a little torn on how I would do the fade to simulate her invisibility power. If you notice, I don't use any colour gradients or tapering line thicknesses, at least in my more recent images, but I couldn't think of another way to get the invisibility idea across that was consistent with that little rule I set for myself. The Invisible Woman image ended up being a compromise: a fading gradient on the fill-in, but a non-tapering line that cuts off at a point. I'll see if I can come up with something else (I'm not entirely satisfied with it myself).

[zuludelta]

updated Invisible Woman (adjusted the outline):


re-done Human Torch (changed the pose so he'll fit better when I make the group shot, changed his hair colour):

[Uncle Yuan]

On the whole - good changes.  The Invisible Woman fad-out looks much better, and Johnny has a great pose - dynamic, yet more fitting to your overall composition (at least as I understand it).  I do think you need to darken Johnny's costume's primary color.  It's noticeably lighter than the original - almost pinkish.  I also prefer the lower contrast between the reds of the first costume.

[zuludelta]

I do think you need to darken Johnny's costume's primary color.  It's noticeably lighter than the original - almost pinkish.  I also prefer the lower contrast between the reds of the first costume.

Funny you should think that it's lighter... I used the same RGB values as in the first Torch figure (and same contrast values, too)... it's probably the darker flame aura creating the illusion that the reds in the main figure are lighter. Still, thanks for the suggestion... it would've never crossed my mind that the effect of having the darker flame aura could be seen as such. Anyways, to offset that, I did go and dial the brightness on his costume down a few notches:

 

I'm way more satisfied with this now... I think it's different enough from the standard Human Torch rendition so that it stands out, but doesn't deviate from the original so much that he's unidentifiable.

[Uncle Yuan]

Better!

I agree - it's a great take on the character.  I really like the way you can still see his face and hair, I also like that the iconic F4 costume is still recognizable.

[UnkoMan]

Okay, actually... I like this Human Torch WAY more. He just looks like a hardcase here. That pose is great. The head shape looks a little off to me. Squished or something? No wait. Let's say too wide, after comparing it to the body.

A cool idea would be to see if you could get a flaming four on him. Unless you don't like that look. I always have, though.

But yeah this will go more with the dynamic. Actually Thing might look a little too casual now... But I can totally see him just standing around before going "Oh fine... I guess it will have to be clobbering time now."

[zuludelta]

Quickly adjusted the size of Torch's head:


I'm a little uninspired to do Mr. Fantastic, so I figured I'd do a non-FF related drawing while I wait for inspiration to strike me, here's a quick take on Deathblow:

[psychopanda]

I'm a little uninspired to do Mr. Fantastic, ...

But he's one of the funnest to draw!! You can just go wild!  :lol:

F4 is looking pretty good. Love the colors on Human Torch, they work so well. One of these days I really need to learn how to color!

[zuludelta]

But he's one of the funnest to draw!! You can just go wild!  :lol:

That's probably the problem for me. Without the constraints set by normal anatomy (or normal as it pertains to most superheroes), I find myself a little lost when drawing him all stretchy-like. I actually toyed with the idea of just drawing him not using his powers, but felt it would be a bit of a cheat. In the end, I didn't draw him first as an individual image the way I did the other three members of the FF, intead I arranged the Invisible Woman, Thing, and Human Torch the way I wanted to in the final blocking in my head, and then just drew Reed to sort of fill out the scene.

So here's the final Fantastic Four image (click on the picture to view a larger version):

[Uncle Yuan]

I think Mr. F looks great, and I love the "4" background!  I also like how Mr. F balances Johnny in the overall weight.  My only concern is the eyes - they're all looking in a different direction.  Mr. F and Thing appear to be looking at the viewer, Invisible Girl appears to be looking over the viewer's right shoulder, and Torch is looking completely off stage right.  Taken all together it makes for an odd group shot.

The Invisible Girl's eyes should be easy to shift a bit more to the center line without needing to change much else, but Johnny's whole head would need to move.

[zuludelta]

Thought I should post this update on the Deathblow pic I previewed earlier back:

I think Mr. F looks great, and I love the "4" background!  I also like how Mr. F balances Johnny in the overall weight.  My only concern is the eyes - they're all looking in a different direction.

I dunno... the eye thing doesn't bother me as much (or at all). Probably because in my mind, the pose is in the context of them sort of squaring off against a mass of enemies or some such.

[Uncle Yuan]

Well there ya go - context is everything.

[zuludelta]

Been somewhat busy the past few days so i haven't been drawing for myself as much. Anyway, here's a second Snake-Eyes image, based on the 25th Anniversary toy (I'll probably revise my first Storm-Shadow drawing in the future):
EDIT image updated, see my later post

[GhostMachine]

Awesome Snake-Eyes.  :thumbup:

[zuludelta]

Here's something of an accident:



The whole thing was actually supposed to be an original character design for a project I'm working on but I decided to discard this particular concept. I felt like it would be such a waste seeing as how I put in a couple hours worth of work into it, so I just changed up a few things and turned it into an "Ultimate Batman" piece.

[MJB]

Nice stuff Zulu.

-MJB

[The Pwime]

very nice, Zulu...i'm trying to picture him with the goggles down, though, because Batman just seems a bit odd with his normal eyes clearly visible...

still, very, very nice work.

[MJB]

very nice, Zulu...i'm trying to picture him with the goggles down, though, because Batman just seems a bit odd with his normal eyes clearly visible...

I'm not trying to step on Zulu's toes and I hope he doesn't mind...



I had Photoshop open and was playing around when I saw Pwime's post. I did a quick edit of Zulu's pic.

Again, I hope you don't mind Zulu... I was just messing around.

-MJB