As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Graphic Violence Presents: Difficult Powers to Draw! NOW WITH POLL! VOTE!
DJ Eebs
Moderator, Administrator admin
Moderator, Administrator admin
Welcome to the second Graphic Violence Presents: Create a Super Hero/Villain contest! The first one went well, so let's keep it up!
The Theme is: MY POWER IS AWESOME BUT REALLY HARD TO DRAW. Laser eyes? Simple. Superstrength? Have him lift a car. But your assignment is to come up with a guy whose powers are ridiculously difficult to render in art. Good luck!
HERE ARE YOUR ENTRIES: VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE
The Beard - (Lucascraft)
Revoltra - (Servo)
Babble - (Munch)
Negative Space - (MarkGoodhart)
Merle Nathaniel Johnson - (ManonvonSuperock)
Rice A Ronnie - (TexiKen)
Riffraff - (Hayasa)
Snake Oil - (Golden Yak)
Hydra - (see317)
Π-Man - (Thane)
The Theme is: MY POWER IS AWESOME BUT REALLY HARD TO DRAW. Laser eyes? Simple. Superstrength? Have him lift a car. But your assignment is to come up with a guy whose powers are ridiculously difficult to render in art. Good luck!
HERE ARE YOUR ENTRIES: VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE
The Beard - (Lucascraft)
Revoltra - (Servo)
Babble - (Munch)
Negative Space - (MarkGoodhart)
Merle Nathaniel Johnson - (ManonvonSuperock)
Rice A Ronnie - (TexiKen)
Riffraff - (Hayasa)
Snake Oil - (Golden Yak)
Hydra - (see317)
Π-Man - (Thane)
DJ Eebs on
0
Posts
Geebs can I post bad ideas anonymously?
HERO SUBMISSION:
The Beard
Jimmy Mayhew is just a normal guy that does normal things. However, his beard is sentient. And telepathic. Jimmy often does what the beard tells him to do, because he knows it is the right thing to do. But Jimmy is just an ordinary man. When he gets into a scrape with a villain, it is the beard that does the grunt work, although you would never be able to tell. Because it is just a beard. On a dude's face.
Powers: The beard is a strong telepath and has telekinetic abilities which are tied to its telepathy.
Weaknesses: The beard has no control over Jimmy. It can ask him to do things via telepathic communication, but it does not control him.
A second weakness is that the beard's strength is diminished when Jimmy shaves. Because of this, Jimmy must keep a rather lengthy beard, which, while not a terrible thing, has been known to get him some strange looks from passers-by.
Revoltra
Revoltra (aka Ali Factery) was a simple perfume chemical technician for CosMetrix cosmetics company. She served her company loyally until one fateful day...the day she discovered that her boss, Mark Marcus, had been developing and selling illegal mind-control scents to North Korea, Iran, various terror groups around the world, and high-schools eager to quell rowdy students. When the heretofore meek Ali confronted her boss with her knowledge above the vast, bubbling perfume pits deep in the heart of CosMetrix, he responded by pulling a gun! Half-regretfully, he shot his best chemical technician and rolled her into the perfume vats.
Little did he know that their newest aroma, Luciously Lavenderesque, had been infused with rocks taken from a nearby meteor strike, at the behest of a mysterious investor known only as The Nose. When the space-tainted perfume entered through Ali's bullet wound into her bloodstream, she was...transformed!
Now, as Revoltra, she has the ability to manifest any odor at will. From cookies so enticingly sweet that guards are lured away from their posts just for the chance to taste them, to farts so mind-rottingly foul that even a moment's exposure renders one unconcious for hours, Revoltra can produce it all! She now uses these amazing abilities in the fight against CosMetrix and to gain revenge against Mark Marcus. She is helped from time to time by that same mystery benefactor The Nose, but even Ali is unaware how much she is being helped...and how much she is being manipulated...
Also the way his eyes follow me around the room is creeping me out to much to comment further.
golden
That was driving me nuts, because the power set was something I've wanted to do (based on years of using it in other fiction).
Colored smell-o-vision, similar to DD's radar being shown.
I demand these entries to be mo'betta.
Upon graduation, Etta would have had no problem finding lucrative work in any in dozens of fields. But having grown up in a low-income, crime-riddled neighborhood had instilled in Etta a desire to use her unique talents to help those who could not help themselves. Of course, those circumstances had also instilled in her a desire to escape her meager origins, and build a better life not just for herself, but for her family as well.
Today Etta functions as something of a freelance troubleshooter, lending her talents to whoever can afford her fee, and some who can't. Often working in conjunction with the local police department, many of the officers have taken to calling Etta by a nickname, Babble, both as an ironic play on her introverted nature, as well as a nod to her unique talents.
Powers and Abilities: Fluent in every known human language, including many that have not been used in decades or centuries. She has even picked up a few alien languages, during her occasional brushes with the paranormal. While many believe Etta's abilities only extend to spoken languages, she actually has many talents that stem from her innate ability to understand languages. She is a genius mathematician, computer programmer, hacker, and musical composer. Additionally, she can read and interpret body language to such a degree that she can instantly detect a person's disposition, tell when they're lying, and even predict their next movement with a fair degree of accuracy.
What Etta lacks, however, are some of the practical skills required to make full use of her abilities. Because while she might be able to perfectly interpret a person's mood and tell them what they need or want to hear, her undeveloped social skills make it difficult for her to have sincere interactions. Likewise, she can compose and read music, but lacks the skill to actually play any instruments. And while she engages in moderate exercise and can predict an opponent's attacks, she herself is a poor combatant.
Tumblr Twitter
So as time got by, things continue. His parents move out of town and forget to take him. He can't get a job because no one remembers ever speaking to him. He has no where to go until he simply decides to move in with the people next door. And they don't mind because they don't know he's there. He takes what he needs from stores and simply walks out the door and no one complains.
But hey, hes not a jerk. Gregory knew he had to do something for the stuff he was taking and started doing things for people that needed them done. Mrs. Hort lost her dog? Gregory got the puppy back. The president of the United States about to be assassinated by an international gunman? Gregory stopped him cold. Floxnort the Terrible tries to destroy the world? Gregory keeps his stuff there!
He saves the world and can't get noticed.
He lives in...
NEGATIVE SPACE
Powers: Negative Space is completely unremarkable in every way and does so in such a manner that he often actually fades into the background even when people are looking right at him. Like the vase with the two faces on the side in it except no one (in the comic book world) can see him. Artistically speaking I guess someone could draw that but I'm not sure how
Merle N. (get it? har har) is a black American born in 2015 and is living backwards in time for what he hopes to be the full century.
Every interaction Merle has is in reverse time, he's learned to control the affliction and tonality of his voice, essentially speaking backwards so the people he interacts with can understand him, and as it's all he knows, he can understand the people that talk to him just fine. Merle searches out crimes, watches them unhappen, and then seeks out those that would be interested, but there's no bazillion branches of timelines here. If his actions prevent something from occurring, then he did not see it occur to prevent those actions.
Representation:
I could see the sequencing of panels following Merle while everything around him happens in reverse, or following the normal sequence while Merle's interactions are reversed.
The difficulty would come in presenting his interaction with his environment. Could he hold a conversation, because he would only know what someone said to him before he said it and vice versa? How about interaction with physical objects? His timeline is reversed, but how does that affect inanimate objects? If he kicks a ball, does it fly away in reverse time to him or us? Would he even be able to wear clothes, or process oxygen molecules?
Not much to this, but I always thought the "Merlin lives backwards in time" shit was bullshit, and everytime it was mentioned in a King Arthur movie or story, I'd spend the rest of the time trying to logically construct how that'd work.
Rice A Ronnie!
Ronald Pham is the son of Vietnamese immigrants who came to this country in search of a better life. Growing up, he experienced the merging of Vietnamese and American culture. But this had its problems. Unbeknownst to him, Ronnie was actually the direct descendant of the great Vietnamese hero Lac Long Quan. On the day of his 21st birthday, at 7:08 pm, Ronnie opened a package that came from his father’s hometown in Phan Tiet and found that he now had the ability to control 100 unique pieces of sentient long grain rice, each a representation of the 100 original Vietnamese names. With this odd yet amazing gift, Ronnie uses the resources of the secret CIA organization, Group R (Ronnie is a bit egotistical and wanted his own team of people to help him, see) sets out to defend the world from the evil villains created by the Melancholy Happiness Conglomerate, a women’s clothing manufacturer that is actually a front organization for the combined powers of Sunny Vo, the illegitimate successor to Quan’s legacy, and Stacy Duboir, a French Canadian millionaire obsessed with trying to destroy American society in order for Canada to rape and pillage her natural resources.
Powers: These rice pieces are Ronnie’s to control and form objects with. Anything he can think, they can form. A shield, a sword, anything. The rice is also capable of creating flight, and when all pieces make contact with his skin, they allow Ronnie to have super strength.
Weaknesses: They are only 100 pieces of rice, meaning the objects that can be created are always small in size. One piece must always remain in contact with Ronnie’s skin to channel the power of the king. The catch is that each grain must never be more than 5 cm apart from another piece of rice, lest their link to the ancient king’s power disappears, and they lose their power.
Image (I spent 20 minutes on it!):
Grant Morrison ain’t got nothin’ on me. Great Ten? More like Great Dien Bien Phu, m i rite?
Also, it’s a different interpretation of really hard to draw, as in it can be drawn but it’s really hard to draw it, especially in small panels.
Riffraff
The son of an eighty year old oil billionaire and his smoking hot trophy wife, Richard Rafferty Jr is the old man's heir-apparent by design.
Having spent years trying to have a son to one day take over the empire, Richard Rafferty Sr persisted in his goal by taking in succession eight beautiful wives who bore him only worthless daughters! Argh! Being a good Catholic, and wishing to ensure that his heir was born in matrimony, the mothers all met unfortunate and untimely deaths.
Richard Rafferty Sr eventually gave up on doing things the natural way, having finally decided that he was perhaps getting a little old to do so, and secretly set about contracting for the services of the `eccentric' and imprisoned biotechnologist, Professor Magnus Motley, who for a significant fee and his carefully arranged freedom, constructed the closest thing possible to a clone of the old man.
From no less than 256 different sources, the Professor composited a single embryo that would reflect the genetic characteristics of R. Rafferty Sr in every way. Once a suitable matching mother/host was found (and mindwiped into being a willing wife to R. Rafferty Sr.) the embryo was implanted and the job done.
Richard Rafferty Jr ("Please, call me Rick") led a privileged childhood, and was groomed to take over the empire, despite never meeting his father's expectations. Regularly Rick would be lectured on lacking the killer instinct to the point that these lectures seemed to stick in his head.
It was when R.R. Senior met his unfortunate end (choked on an olive) that the riffraff first appeared; the stress of the situation triggering Rick's entire form to return to its original fragmented state! Dividing into 256 little Rick Raffertys, each with a will and drive of its own!
Spoilered for long:
Personality: Rick is a stereotypical, affable rich guy. He likes yachting, golf and making money. The key to his attitude is that where his father worked for everything he had, Rick hasn’t had to, and in theory is a much nicer fellow for it – or at least, he appears to be. He enjoys helping various charities (not with work, but with money and photo opportunities) and is seen to be a pillar of the community. Rick is only very vaguely aware of what goes on when the Riffraff take over, and does what he can to prevent this.
The riffraff, however, have the same nasty disposition as R.R. Senior; what they want, they will take. They love money, power and status and will be readily led into actions that will see them claim all three. When stuck together as R. R. Junior, they still exercise a certain amount of control over him and are ready to share their capitalist, sleazebag viewpoints on all the issues of the day.
Power: When exceptionally stressed, hungry, or when a special effort is made to do so, Rick splits into 256 little people, each representative of a piece of his original in vitro creation. Each has the strength and toughness of a full-sized human, stands about 4.5 inches high and weighs about 60 grams.
The Riffraff are like little locusts, and are naturally drawn to foodstuffs high in energy; their desire for such is that they can be persuaded to do things in return for a reward of such - at least, if they don't feel they can take such a reward by force.
Weaknesses: The key weakness of the Riffraff is that if they run out of energy, they will naturally revert to being Rick; if one is able to keep them in a space that the strength of 256 humans couldn't breach, this is achievable.
Similarly, keeping Rick calm and on a sensible diet (which he tries to do himself) will keep the Riffraff from emerging for prolonged periods.
Only very few people know that Rick is the Riffraff.
Costume: None. The Riffraff appear as 256 little naked R. Raffertys, adding to the difficulties in drawing them.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Origin - Snake Oil was once a small-time crook who took a black market super-drug designed to endow the user with super-human abilities. Generally resulting in a temporary boost to strength or speed, or bestowing limited energy projection, a small number of users had an extreme reaction to the drug, developing spectacular and deadly super-powers. Snake Oil was one such user, and quickly established himself as one of the most dangerous.
Powers - Snake Oil can psychically generate a tide of metamorphic black ooze that flows out of the air around himself. This living oil slick invariable shapes itself into hordes of writhing serpents, constantly manifesting out of the slime and being reabsorbed. Their jaws and eyes are lit from inside by an eerie red light. Snake Oil can psychically direct the snakes to attack whatever he wants them to. They can flow through the smallest cracks or form into gigantic creatures capable of crushing armored vehicles.
-
I didn't spend a whole lot of time of the origin story obviously (rates just below X-Factor in terms of originality I know) but I was more focused on creating a unique super-power that was also difficult to draw. And say what you will, drawing thousands of oily writhing snakes bifurcating and recombining every panel would drive any artist mad.
And incidentally, Negative Space is the best.
Hydra was born in ancient Sparta, and quickly rose to a position of prominence in the military.
A night of drunken debauchery found him boasting of his courage and skill in the temple of Heracles the night before a battle. Boldly he spoke of the brutality he had inflicted in the past and that he planned to glory in in the coming battle. Predictably, his boasting drew the attention of the Immortal Heracles to witness what would surely be true bravery in combat.
In the coming battle, the Spartan forces found themselves outnumbered by a vast army. Terrified beyond imagining the man who would become Hydra placed himself to the rear of the phalanx formation. As the initial charge of the foes army shattered into and through the heavily armed phalanx, Hydra dropped his shield and spear and retreated from battle. He turned his back on his friends, his brothers, his people and his honor that day.
That night, he was visited by Heracles, who came bearing a reward for his actions...
This was 1300 years ago.
Powers
Cursed by the gods for his hubris and cowardice, Hydra's primary ability is regeneration which also provides him with immortality. Like his namesake, Hydra regenerates two of any limb, organ or bodypart that is seperated from his core, unless the wound is immediatly cauterized by fire.
Currently Hydra is restrained to a planning role in his criminal organization, as his mass of limbs is difficult to control in a direct physical fight. Having several brains allows Hydra to devote himself to considering several problems and plots at any time as well as allowing him to discuss his plans to find any potential flaws. However, should enough of his limbs be removed and cauterized to render him near-human again it may be found that he is still a spartan hoplite and quite capable on the battlefield.
Appearence
Hydra is a freak. His body is a twisted mass of limbs, stumps and ancient burn scars.
His constant regeneration leaves him in continual agony as any tooth that is broken or knocked out is immediatly replaced by two teeth attempting to grow into the same spot (and with 5 seperate sets of teeth, this occurs frequently) and he is unable to control his multitude of limbs to any effect without a great deal of concentration.
the legion threeboot did this too with one of the main bad guys
It was innate first and then he learned how to control it so that people would notice him and then he'd wipe any trace of the incident ever occurring from their mind
Π-Man was blessed by the Gods with the ability to gain monumental mathematical skills and the ability to see life in a Geometrical way, allowing him to solve problems, eerily similar to a certain genius in the marvel universe.
The catch is that his power and skills are based on how many digits of Π he can recite in a row, and that he sees everything in the form of Geometrical Objects. So say he gets the first 20 digits, his vision is normal but somewhat blurred with mathematical reality. As he gets higher on the scale, the mathematical world slowly takes over, basically gimping him, because he sees everything as cubes, spheres, Ellipses and so on.
Poll coming shortly.
banned forever
wooooooooooooooops