HeroMachine Character Portrait Creator

How dare you question me.

Luwalhati “Twitchy” Orongan is a crew member NPC from the Rogue Trader campaign I’m in. She is a pistol specialist recruited from Scintilla to the ship’s security forces. Clearly has experience, has risen in rank and trust very fast. Probably has some very good and sharp reasons for leaving Scintilla. For a former gang member, she is downright pleasant, though she has a tendency to get a bit jumpy and trigger-happy when under stress.

As a bonus, a size reference:

Hey, Suleman, haven’t you used the same damn mountain background like three times already?

Once again, I go over the progress of a design. This time, we’re looking at the Mountain Climber.

Started out with an idea of a character climbing some tall object with the help of a rope.

Worked in a background, shifted from a forest to the mountains, tried to keep the clothing as basic as possible to avoid headaches if I had to change the pose or something. Color-coded everything so that I can see which items are part of which larger piece.

Came to the conclusion that the rope didn’t look quite right, it needed to be more taut.

Decided to change from the old rope-around-the-waist to a more modern climbing harness. Took a look at some online references and made a simple approximation of a climbing harness. Added fingerless gloves and a stubble, because this guy is just fundamentally obnoxious. Started assigning the base colors.

Added all kinds of minor details: the clouds, birds, houses, sweater logo, hammer, drinking bottle, shoe spikes, glasses…

Changed the line colors of each item from black to some lighter color to give the whole image a brighter look like it was being blasted with mountain sunshine. Started with the shading process from the background.

Once the background was shaded, moved onto the sweater, since it’s the next-largest item in the image. Continued like that with the rest of the pieces.

Finalized the image by shading the face. Made some minor tweaks and additions throughout the process.

There you go! I hope this was either useful or entertaining to you.

This took a while! Lots of shading.

Some notes: I realize that the climber’s equipment isn’t actually entirely realistic, but it’s close enough by heromachine standards.

Also, some of you might be asking “Hey, Suleman, haven’t you used the same damn mountain background like three times already?”

First of all, how dare you question me. Secondly, mountains are one of the few backgrounds that heromachine is really good for. I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to make other settings look decent, but mountains never fail.

Here is my part of that art trade, as already posted in JR’s own thread. Apparently the Negadroid is an evil robot from the future is that powered by the pain and suffering from others.

Anyone else up for a trade?

Good to hear that! I tried to channel robot designs from old British comics like the Fury from Captain Britain or any of the robots in ABC Warriors.

Let’s do this again sometime.

Dude, love the “face”, it looks properly alien which is really cool. And I love the colours you used for the energy effects, they really fit the vibe of the character. Awesome.

My half of the art trade. By sheer coincidence, I also picked a mech character: Negadroid.

It’s a pretty big departure from your original, I can get carried away at times. I still tried to stay true to the concept, though!