This is a piece done for the This Week Jam, the subject being HULK!

Originally, this was to be a direct homage to Joao’s piece, awhile back, of Captain America in the ‘thinker’ pose. As i doodled it up, I decided I wanted to reference that position of some big ole bad ass rising from a kneeling position, a meme from Terminator, i’d suspect. Anyway, this is a World War Hulk inspired piece, obviously, with a tough of the silly.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute: The Hulk vs. The Intruders
2. This Week Jam: The HULK
3. TRDL Tribute: Hawkgirl

This is Providence, the Canadian National Hero.

Art and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte
Inspired by: Bob Sparhawk

:::

Ground0 / Providence

Name: Drake McHale
Affiliation: National Hero: Canada

Attributes:

Melee: 20
Reflex: 20
Muscle: 40
Vigor: 55
Acumen: 20
Observation: 30
Will: 15

Life: 135
Influence: 65

Abilities:

Plasma generation/Detonation: Ground0 is constantly generating moderate amounts of plasma radiation from his muscle tissue, which is released into the atmosphere as visible light and substantial heat. If contained, the plasma build-up takes on greater destructive capability, causing an intense blinding flash and explosive charge upon release. When using his containment suit, this capability is substantially magnified, allowing him to detonate massive amounts of plasma energy upon impact. The destructive force from this detonation is further intensified when the containment suit is subjected to high speed.

Unrestricted, Ground0’s plasma radiation causes only discomfort to those immediately around him, but not physical damage. However, when allowed to accumulate through the use of his containment suit, the radiation can be released causing energy damage [up to 30 DP] in a 5m radius from his target. If applied at speed, through self-propelled or other means, the damage caused by his attack may increase by +1CS for every level of speed above 5. In practical terms, this means that at terminal velocity, or at full flight speed [20 IV], Ground0’s destructive capability becomes 50 points of damage. However, it is possible that Ground0 can attain greater speeds, either by being propelled by another force or through similar means, increasing his theoretical impact damage. After each plasma release, he must recharge for 1-10 rounds before using his ability again, regardless of what percentage of his full destructive capability is employed. It should be noted that while Ground0 can choose to release less than the full amount of his stored energy under static conditions, when at speed, he has no choice but to release all energy stored at the moment of impact. He does not automatically release energy when struck, unless suffering more than half of his Life in a single attack, which triggers an unintentional release of all stored energy.

Flight: Ground0 has developed the posthuman ability of crude flight, but due to his weight and physiology, has little natural control over it [5IV; 5 RV]. His containment suit includes directional vanes and a supplemental booster, which enable him to fly at speed and perform maneuvers with reasonable, if not highly agile, ability, effectively doubling his Range and Speed, but not offering any agility improvements.

Body Armor: Ground0 is naturally resistant to the effects of his own radiation, and most forms of energy attack, though his containment suit also offers some protection, along with substantial physical damage resistance, including an impact-gel base layer under his thinsuit™ which allows for the redirection of significant amounts of impact force into heat energy. His suit offers modest resistance to physical attacks [20 AP] which is resolved as if a natural resistance, and does not degrade as he takes damage; his resistance to energy based attacks, as a result of the posthuman process, is 50 AP. Further, impacts from Ground0 striking targets at speed cause no physical damage to his own body, as the kinetic impact is redistributed by his suit.

Origin:

Bolstered by the popularity and perceived political successes brought about by the debut of 21st Sentry, one of America’s earliest public posthuman heroes, an Executive Order was secretly given to proceed with the development of a program by which the 21st Sentry armor and concept would be replicated, creating a border perimeter security force of armored, posthuman defenders. However, despite 21st Sentry’s involvement with the Liberty Group, and the team’s unparalleled public relations successes of the period, team psychologists had already begun reporting psychological instability in Hector Valdez, the border patrol agent who wore the 21st Sentry armor. Concerns grew over incompatibilities between the armor’s interface systems and the nervous system of the pilot, and without extensive testing, it proved difficult to predict or prevent. Unwilling to submit Valdez to a focused examination, for fear of political repercussions if Administration opposition leaders in Congress were to learn of problems within the posthuman program, the decision was ultimately made to transition the Sentry program to follow the bio-engineering trends that made up the majority of posthuman development experimentation from those early days onward, 21st Sentry’s technology-based persona being fairly uncommon among the rising crop of genuine physiologically-enhanced individuals to take uniform on behalf of their countries.

The Sentry program was largely downsized as it became clear that the programs developed at the Posthuman Development Initiative compound in Canso, Newfoundland wer eproducing superior results than in-house labs attempting similar courses of research within the United States. Most of the procedures being prepared for the early Sentry Corps candidates were transferred to PDI’s jurisdiction, and the program was subsequently streamlined as a result. A report issued to the Posthuman Planning Directorate, the government agency charged with the direction and management of the National hero programs in the US and it’s allies abroad, determined that the individualized nature of the posthuman process made the Sentry Corps scheme infeasible, and recommended ramping up individual programs on a per-candidate basis, as was the standard at the facility. With the revised direction of the Sentry program approved, PDI researchers began working on a unique physiological enhancement scheme for the first, most viable candidate to have been pre-screened while still a part of the American development efforts. Dr. Drake McHale was a military neurosurgeon, who had risen through the ranks of the US Marines before becoming a military physician, and who had even been on staff with the Liberty Group’s field support team in their early excursions in uniform. He had proven to be a highly viable posthuman candidate, a fact discovered accidentally while doing a full staff sweep for cellular anomalies during a temporary radiation scare in the PDI compound. McHale was fast-tracked for the Sentry program, and was, in turn, the first candidate delivered to the PDI as originally intended to follow in Valdez’ footsteps, but as a physiologically-enhanced posthuman wearing a more streamlined version of the 21st Sentry armor. However, as the PDI’s specific courses took effect, McHale’s physiological changes proved to be far more pronounced than were predicted in the virtual simulations, and it soon became clear that his abilities would be more than sufficient on their own, with the armor component becoming more superfluous, and as a result, the direction of McHale’s posthuman uniformed persona creation was changed, the marketing team refocusing his crafted identity as a more military, destructive force. Post treatment studies determined that McHale had not only developed an incredibly massive physique, gaining several feet in height and enormous strength and endurance, but he proved able to generate substantial amounts of plasma energy in his muscular tissue, which would gradually bleed out into his skin cells and be released into the environment in the form of a bright energy discharge. A thinsuit™ containment uniform was developed to help capture and amplify this radiation, and field tests determined that as McHale accelerated in flight, the potential for his administered radiation release took on a highly-explosive nature. The faster he traveled, the more powerful a detonation he could generate on impact. Stabilization vanes were incorporated into his flight suit to assist with his flight maneuverability, and he was trained extensively in the use of his own body as a living weapon, drawing on techniques the PDI team had developed for Airstrike, another posthuman graduate of their program, and would later be refined in the development of the posthuman living weapon, MOAB.

Unfortunately, one of the effects of the posthuman process that had not been anticipated was a startling reduction in McHale’s long-term memory facility, and attention span. The formerly stoic, highly-intelligent surgeon grew short-tempered and increasingly aggressive throughout his training period. It was determined by PDI psychologists that this change in his mental focus would be beneficial in the application of his abilities as a posthuman asset, and his violent tendencies were actually secretly aggravated through the administering of drug therapy. Late in his training, McHale broke into a rage, when criticized by Hector Valdez, visiting the PDI facility as part of a Liberty Group oversight protocol established to keep the PPD directly involved in the PDI’s programs. This altercation caused substantial tension between the Liberty Group, and 21st Sentry in particular, and McHale, now being listed as Ground0, his posthuman field name. Despite concerns about this social dynamic, Ground0 was prepared for a public launch as part of a military attaché linked to US Military operations overseas, envisioned as the first of many future posthumans who, unlike the Liberty Group and most National heroes already known to the public, would be directly under military command and used as a propaganda and deterrent in the field.

Shortly before his public launch, a near-disastrous public relations blunder occurred: staff engineers applying the finishing touches to Ground0’s uniform painted a skull motif on his armored faceplate as a joke, reminiscent of similar illustration adorning explosive payload used in the field. Photographs of Ground0, in uniform, wearing the skullface, were leaked to the press prior to McHale’s public reveal, and while instantly sensationally popular with the military and many Americans, the imagery was tragically timed, released the same week that a school was bombed in an overseas operation, with hundreds of innocents killed in the strike. The political fallout internationally became of great concern to the Administration, who were already downplaying the Liberty group’s rumored involvement in state-directed operations on foreign soil independent of formal military action, despite the planned implementation of Ground0 as a member of the military, himself. This propaganda paradox had plagued the PPD since the inception of the Liberty Group experiment. The timing for Ground0’s reveal became a inevitable policy disaster.

The Canadian government, already collaborating with the Americans in the development of the American posthuman experiment, including allowing the PDI facility to be built on Canadian soil, and assisting with planning and transportation logistics involved with the dissemination of the National hero program in Europe, expressed interest in working out a convenient solution to the Ground0 problem. The Prime Minister, a hard conservative, had been focusing policy on increasing Canada’s military presence in the disputed Northern territory, and particularly liked the idea of posthuman military assets. As a result, the Canadian government accepted Ground0 as their first National Hero, re-branding him Providence, and positioning him as the symbolic leader of Canada’s territorial defenses. As such, McHale was never officially revealed as Ground0 to the American public, and began a long, controversial uniformed career as a member of the Canadian military instead. Photographs of him in the Ground0 uniform would continue to be popular collectibles online, and the true nature of the American and Canadian collaboration in posthuman development, which was not publicly known, would become the fodder of conspiracy theorists throughout the world.

:::

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Character Factory, No. 71: The Liberty Group
2. TRDL Character Factory, No. 64: Hammerfall
3. TRDL Character Factory, No. 04: 21st Sentry

This is kind of random, but having read it, i thought that some of you might find some inspiration in it. This artist, Guardian, draws some sort of manga-style comic, I don’t know,. Anyway, in the middle of a search on process tips for a certain photoshop effect, i came across this list. Guardian’s tips on avoiding apathy. At first I kind of blew past it, but then, looking a bit closer, I thought there was something to it. I don’t agree with all the points here, personally, but the overarching message is: drawing your own comic? you’re doing it for YOU, and for fun, so you’d better maximize the fun, and minimize the pain. It’s at cross-purposes, I think, with the intentions of some to make a commercially viable and technically superior product, but really, come on, if you do it for yourself, like I’m doing, and you’re spending a LOT of your limited free time on it, while it’s certainly important to try and improve your craft and do professional-level work where you are able, it’s important also to stay focused on the fun, what inspires you to draw, and not get too bogged down in the details and construction of things that bore you to tears. A nice lesson in recalling WHY we draw for personal amusement.

Anyway, here’s Guardian’s list.

I don’t subscribe to points 3, 4, and 7, but have to think about points 2 and 5 more often!

:::

Some commentary on avoiding apathy.

My biggest problem with drawing comics is probably pretty common out there: it’s how to not lose interest and give up just after the beginning. There are innumerable dead projects in my notebooks which fell apart after just a couple of pages. Pretty much the only certifiable successes I’ve had so far are my Improvisational Manga submissions — where, of course, you’re allowed to dispense with a lot of the elaborate preparations — and No Headroom, which is actually about halfway finished and shows no signs of stopping (it may not be that good, but it’s definitely gonna get done!)

So, here’s the lessons I’ve learned about how to save time, maintain interest and get the damn things out the door. These may apply only to me, of course, but still. Okay, here we go:

1. Don’t waste your time on setup.

The first and most important lesson. Drawing a manga page is an immense expenditure of psychic energy. Every page that you waste on boring setup brings the whole project one page closer to an irrevocable Apathetic Death Spiral. Ideally, the setup at the beginning of the comic is either so brief it fits on a few pages or (even better) in a few panels. You could also throw it out as a text-only prologue or even just flash back to it later. Either way, do the bare minimum of setup and get to the meat of the story as quickly as possible.

2. Don’t lose sight of the good stuff.

Ultimately you’re drawing this manga for you — no, no, don’t deny it… So don’t forget to put in lots of stuff you like drawing. Whether that’s fight scenes, intricate mecha, erudite dialogue, tense drama, attractive characters not wearing a lot of clothing, or (my personal favorite) mysterious, scary winged figures, bend the story so you can put it in as frequently as possible. Trust me on this one: it’s vital for keeping you, the artist, interested in your creation.

3. Plan out the immediate future but let long range stuff take care of itself.

It’s a mistake to draw a manga page without writing the script in advance and storyboarding it as well. But don’t waste your time planning/writing scenes dozens of pages in the future. It just saps your energy from actually drawing the current pages, and by the time you get there your hard work will probably be obsolete anyway.

4. Keep it moving (or, Tell, Don’t Show.)

For example, if your characters are spending six months in an arduous ocean crossing to get to the continent where the plot takes place, but nothing important actually takes place during the voyage, a great way of bringing this across to the reader is like this: a caption “Six months later…” and a panel of the ships arriving in the New World, with a character commenting that boy, that was a tough journey but here we are at last. Basically, if you’re not interested in drawing some event, just have a character allude to it and keep going.

5. Murder your darlings.

This is a term from writers’ workshops, referring to beautifully written scenes, characters, or turns of phrase that writers are loathe to cut even though they don’t add to the story as such. Cutting these elements is even more important in comics than in prose. Sure, it may sound great now, but when it comes time to draw it, and draw it, and draw it… you’ll be tearing your hair out halfway through from boredom. And if it bores you, think of what it’ll do to your readers. Save these elements in notebooks and maybe you can make something else out of them later. In the meantime, cutting mercilessly lets you get to the “good stuff” earlier (see #2). As a corollary, if you find yourself writing basically the same dialogue twice — for example, a situation that has to be explained a couple of times to different characters — you’re doing something wrong. Reshuffle things so everybody gets briefed at once, or maybe just drop it entirely and assume the explanations happened offstage.

6. Don’t waste time explaining yourself.

It’s hard to describe it well, but a certain sign of this problem is when you find yourself adding scenes to logically justify things that have already happened. If they are minor, unremarkable events that do make sense when explained briefly, then don’t bother trying to justify them at all — readers can and will do that for themselves. If, on the other hand, these are major events and your explanations require a lot of intricate logical tapdancing, it means something’s seriously wrong with your plot. Take it back to the shop and fix it (which will probably involve #5, above.)

7. “Boy, these silhouettes sure save a mess o’ drawin’…”

(As Walt Kelly said.) Take “labor-saving measures” whenever you think you can get away with it: dialogue-only panels or pages, splash pages, a few very big panels as opposed to many small ones, silhouettes, duplicated panels, Photoshop trickery. Just remember, if it looks good, it’s not cheating.

http://project-apollo.net/howto/apathy.html

:::

What do YOU think? What do you do to keep yourself motivated?

Being on page 21 of a 170++ volume, these are relevant concerns for me, personally!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work
2. Tips on self-publishing, please
3. Photo and Costume References?

This week’s character celebrates Marvel’s World War Hulk event. Draw your version of the Hulk. It can be the gladiator ass-kicking kind we see in the books now, or an older version. Even Mr. Fix-It or whatever it was in the dark 90s… just make him Hulkeriffic!

Make us proud, allayall!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – World War Hulk
2. TRDL Tribute: The Hulk vs. The Intruders
3. This Week Jam: She-Hulk

This is Republique, the French National Heroine.

Created and illustrated by Joao Marques
Origin by: Joao Marques and Thom Chiaramonte

:::

Republique

Name: Marianne Hardy
Affiliation: National Hero: France

Attributes:

Melee: 25
Reflex: 30
Muscle: 20
Vigor: 20
Acumen: 40
Observation: 30
Will: 45

Life: 95
Influence: 115

Abilities:

Persuasion: Republique employs a nanocellular mutation of her vocal chords that allows her to modulate the frequency of her voice at specific levels, in order to cause an involuntary, undetectable parasympathetic reaction in others that receive this aural input. The changes are slight, and additive, so the longer she speaks to a target, the more susceptible they become to her will. Republique cannot command others to perform tasks or alter behavior, but she can influence their mood, manipulate their emotional reactions, and form suggestions in their sub-conscious that directly affect their decision making and ability to think freely. The most powerful, and successful, application of this ability is the manipulation of collective mood. She may, while speaking to others in number, increase the potency of her suggestive ability. As a result, she is most associated with rousing speeches that influence crowds, or terrifying declarations that cause the routing of rebellious mobs, and so on. One significant limitation, however, is that anyone who is able to subconsciously resist her suggestion becomes permanently immune to the auditory influence of her vocalization. If enough individuals with this adaptive immunity gather, they can begin to influence others around them, counteracting Republique’s otherwise overwhelming influence on crowds of listeners.

Persuasion: The nanocellular adaptation in her vocal chords allows Republique to performe Persuasion Actions with an Intensity of 40. Her targets, when individually in range of her voice when the ability is being employed, must make a Will Save against her Ability Intensity or become suggestible; this effect lasts until the individual is out of range of Republique’s voice for 2-20 hours, or receives psychological conditioning to counteract the influence on their glandular system. When this ability is used on small numbers of people, ie. ten or less, they each must make the same Will Save, with the results of their save number being reduced by two points per individual being affected (example: 10 rioters are being encouraged to cease their violent activity, by Republique’s soothing voice: each member of the group must roll their Will vs. her Ability Intensity. A typical rioter, with a Will of 10, must make a Red Save against their own Will. However, they are also hampered by the affects of being surrounded by 9 other rioters, causing a reduction of 18 points to their roll. Only a roll of 100 would allow them to resist the affects of her ability; in contrast, a rioter with Will equal to Republique’s Ability Intensity [40 IV] would only require a roll of 61 or higher to ignore the effects of her suggestion. This in turn is modified by the same 18 point reduction, due to the 9 other rioters present. So, in actuality, they would require a roll of 79 or higher to be successful.) When in groups of 11 or greater, a single Will Save is made, based on the average Will of the group as a whole, as determined by the GM. As a result, the larger the group, the greater likelihood of a low Will average, and the greater susceptibility to Republique’s suggestion, unless that group is highly trained in resisting influence or mental manipulation, such as special operations military personnel or similar. One important caveat: The ability of her voice to manipulate others is entirely dependent on the live, unassisted carriage of her voice to the target’s ears. No electronic or mechanical amplification of her voice will carry her suggestive ability farther than within her own vocal range.

Origin:

Marianne Hardy was an extremely intelligent and resourceful Parisian graduate student at MIT, specializing in the use of progressive scientific applications of nanotechnology to help repair damage to the brain resulting from epileptic seizure. She spent most of her education studying both in the United States and in a field research center on the outskirts of Paris, attached to a clinic that specialized in the treatment of the homeless and transient members of French society who, for one reason or another, found formal health care inaccessible.

Hardy was influenced heavily by her time in the United States, particularly in the form of her fascination with the American National posthuman team, the Liberty Group. She was present during the unveiling of 21st Sentry, and again at one of the earlier press conferences held in Manhattan to announce the formation and expansion of the team. Specifically, she became drawn to Bette Bellwether, whose unique abilities were of particular inspiration to Hardy in her own thesis work. Much of her thesis, involving regenerating damaged brain tissue in epileptic patients, through the use of targeted nanotechnological neural pathway manipulation was based on two white papers published within the first year of the Liberty Group’s public activity, each proposing similar theories about Bellwether’s unique posthuman ability. Unfortunately, her program lead at MIT found little in her research to suggest progress on the scale of her hypotheses, and she was refused further access to the University’s limited supply of highly unstable and expensive nanocellular imprint material.

Taking matters into her own hands, fervently believing in her theories, Hardy found the means to route poorly managed administrative funding through the school’s complicated foreign campus grant programs, and funneled millions of dollars from the University’s accounts into a black market bioware company in Paris, Les Changements Lumineux, a fringe laboratory specializing in experimental biomutation designed to aid the blind to see, or perceive sight through the mutation of their other sensory organs. They manufactured for her a device that stimulated the metabolism and cellular growth of certain speech areas of the brain, giving the user a much greater control of their vocal range. Somewhere along the way, her research and it’s application to epileptic patients slipped into a general obsession with Bellwether’s abilities.

Hardy, finally convinced of the success of her project, paid the lab to implant her prototype cellular biomass into her own brain, which proved more functional than she originally anticipated: the implant allowed her to, through subtle changes of vocal frequencies, influence others in range of her voice, in subtle but powerful ways. Her dream became clear: to follow in Bellwether’s footsteps and become a posthuman heroine herself.

Rumors had grown, for months prior to Hardy’s extreme self-experimentation, about the existence of a French National hero project, developed with the assistance of the American government. Over the course of several weeks, using her ability judiciously, Hardy worked her way through scores of French bureaucrats and law enforcement personnel, through professional, educational and social channels, until she found a contact in the Crest and Shield organization, the European conglomerate spearheading the development of posthuman programs that not only included the Northern European Achievement Initiative, but individual programs in each of it’s own representative countries. Again relying on her abilities, she convinces members of the program to consider her as a posthuman candidate, not realizing that her ability had been detected and was being studied. Convinced of her enthusiasm, initiative and ambition, and also her physical ability to accept biomutation without apparent rejection, the program accepted Hardy and a treatment was devised to significantly enhance the abilities her own glandular trigger implant had already proven viable. In addition, she received the general physiological posthuman enhancements to make her physically conditioned for posthuman training. Within a year of the launch of the French program, Hardy had become the most proven and capable posthuman candidate of the six individuals under experimentation, and was given the uniform and persona of Republique, the Spirit of France.

Though her popularity was immense and her performance as France’s own National Hero was exemplary, Republique was never asked to join Rampart, the Crest and Shield multinational defense team, which she perceived as a slight to her credibility and importance to her native country. In reality, the issues were two-fold: thorough study of the nature of her posthuman abilities led Crest and Field researchers to fear that a small team unit, such as Rampart’s posthuman field team, would never be able to be adequately protected from the effects of Republique’s power, and as such, be susceptible to her subconscious, let alone deliberate, manipulation. Additionally, her popularity made her too important to France to be shared. Regardless, her relationship with her Crest and Shield benefactors became strained, and some of her speeches to the French people began to take on alarmingly subversive, even seditious, undertones. The French government soon realized that controlling a woman able to influence the masses would be increasingly difficult.

Later, despite tensions easing between Republique and her own government, Hardy would begin to behave erratically in the field, and react unpredictably to her handlers. Something was wrong with her implant, which had, as a result of the Crest and Field enhancements, grown and adapted itself to her nervous and glandular systems itself, causing tumorous growths in her spinal chord. A difficult decision would be explored: allow the Spirit of France to fall apart in the public eye, or become an unwilling martyr and hero forever?

:::

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Character Factory, No. 71: The Liberty Group
2. TRDL Character Factory No. 12: Pristine
3. TRDL Character Factory, No. 99: Blowback/ E’Tranger

This Week’s character: Y the Last Man’s Agent 355!

“Agent 355 is Yorick’s intelligent, tough-as-nails bodyguard that works for a mysterious US government agency. Her real name has never been revealed.”

The request was actually ‘Y’s 357′ so if it was Go or someone else active who requested the character and I’ve made the wrong assumption, let a robot know.

[in the background]

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Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute- U.S. Agent
2. TRDL Tribute: Molotov Cocktease
3. TRDL Blog is Live

This is a piece done for the This Week Jam, the subject being the Tekken game character, Ling Xiaoyu.

Finally, after having to code this illustration into the site about 9 times, I was able to memorize the spelling on that name. We’ve been playing Tekken 5 on the PS3 lately quite a bit, and Ling is a funny character, typical of many of the Asian characters in these fighting games: she can be either awesome, freakish, or just plain lame, depending on the style of the costume. The lame versions often incorporate lots of goofy schoolgirl fetish stuff, but not in a good way. In the current iteration of the game, however, the worst to me is one where she’s in a giant panda suit. Or something. Anyway, one costume included some robot head fetishes on the belt, and I was pretty delighted, for obvious reasons, and that’s the one I chose to show in this pic. Contrary to public consensus, the ‘L’ on her shoe isn’t actually a reference to R3 Moderator Ironlung, but rather me screwing around, intending that the ‘R’ or ‘L’ of the shoe’s intended foot assignment be molded into the sole, like you might see on a salt shaker. Just for kicks… on the kicks… so to speak. Anyway, happy to never draw fuzzy pom-pom type accouterments again, thank you.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Related posts:

1. Ling Xiaoyu (Tekken)
2. TRDL Tribute: Yellowjacket [Skrullery Edition]
3. TRDL Tribute: Nariko

El Condor is the Chilean National Hero.

Art and Origin: Thom Chiaramonte

:::

El Condor

Name: Frederico Serrano
Affiliation: Chilean National hero

Attributes:

Melee: 35
Reflex: 30
Muscle: 25
Vigor: 20
Acumen: 20
Observation: 25
Will: 15

Life: 110
Acumen: 60

Abilities:

Body Armor: El Condor uses a flexible myelin sheath body armor system, offering 20 AP resistance to physical and energy based attacks.

Black Matter Suspension: Condor has no unique posthuman abilities. In fact, his physiological enhancements, while being partially artificial, are only intended to help strengthen his body against the rigors of high-altitude flight and extreme acceleration. A skilled fighter and athlete, Condor’s abilities are attributed to the black matter suspension harness incorporated into his uniform. The uniform itself includes moderately effective body armor and his helm includes long-range telescopic image enhancement capability. The black matter harness, however, is entirely unique. Derived from the same technology used by the Japanese Covert Star team in the development of Emperor’s Arrow’s railgun weapon, Condor’s harness contains a heavily-shielded containment pod, which holds a microgram of black matter retrieved from field tests of Emperor’s Arrow’s equipment. This miniscule amount of black matter is held in place by a null field, derived from the same technology that allows Emperor’s Arrow’s armor to remain pressurized while in the Slip, the sub-primary dimension discovered through Emperor’s Arrow’s posthuman ability to access it. In Condor’s case, the same containment field is manipulated to form an avionic wing form, allowing Condor to hover, fly with speed and agility, and deflect physical and energy projectiles. Condor has trained extensively with the use of this equipment.

Flight: The harness offers 40 Intensity, Range and Speed. Condor may take the first action in each round that he remains in flight. He must make a Yellow Vigor Action when performing extreme maneuvers in flight, though suffers no physical effects from the acceleration if successful, otherwise losing control and falling, until a Will Save is successfully made in a subsequent round. If the black matter containment pod is heavily damaged (more than 60 points of damage in a targeted strike to the small of the back, or if Condor’s wings themselves take more than 100 points of damage in a single strike, or 300 points of damage in a simultaneous strike from multiple attacks, the containment field will rupture, causing a 1000 DP explosion of concussive force, at full 40 RV affecting all targets. This weakness is not known to Condor, and only speculated about by his field technical team. The harness itself is armored with 30 AP and 60 Core Strength, and the wings have no effective Armor, but can withstand the damages as described above before failing; they otherwise take no sustained damage into the next round.

Shock Staff: Condor carries a melee weapon containing a modular voltage taser, which can cause involuntary seizures in targets on physical contact with its electrified tip. Physical attacks cause 15 DP, ignoring Body Armor, and the victim must make an Orange Vigor Save or suffer involuntary seizures for 1-10 rounds. The staff may also be used as a standard melee weapon, causing 20 points of damage from its material strength (Body Armor not ignored for physical attack, only when used as a stun weapon.) The staff does not have an Armor value itself.

Origin:

Frederico Serrano was a member of a military police unit assigned to a Chilean science attaché, part of a small multinational team brought together by the United States to help the Japanese Covert Star Initiative researchers understand and adapt the newly discovered existence of black matter, accessed and brought forward from what would be termed the Slip dimension, by Covert Star posthuman candidate Aku Nimazaki. Dr Alejandro Santos, one of the world’s leading physicists in the area of null field research, was excited to have the opportunity to study this new form of intangible matter, and test his null field technology against it. It was the hope of the United States government that a means would be found to contain and utilize black matter in the primary dimension, as Nimazaki’s abilities only brought the material forward for milliseconds at a time before it would automatically disintegrate. The Japanese government was nervous about allowing an international team of scientists into the Covert Star Initiative’s laboratories, but felt pressure by the United States to accept this assistance, due to a loosely defined relationship of posthuman technology exchange between Japan and the United States’ growing alliance of friendly nations that shared US posthuman technology and guidance.

While Dr. Santos and the rest of the team were deep in study, giddy in their obsession with this new form of highly unstable matter, Serrano and two of his officers had a different objective. Tasked by the Chilean government’s secret Advanced Weapons program, Serrano was not only a military police officer, but an agent specially assigned to the attaché in order to attempt to acquire information and any technology resulting in the team’s research, that might be useful to the AW program’s efforts to get a posthuman program off the ground, having been rejected by the United States for inclusion in their South American expansion efforts, due to Chile’s limits on American imports and international shipping rights.

Dr. Santos was a key player in the discovery of how to adapt Nimazaki’s black matter remnants into a sustained, functional tool, by combining aspects of his null field technology on a microscopic scale, with micro-weaves of compound materials interlaced with the shielding. This allowed the Covert Star team to weave null field generator nanocells into the material of Nimazaki’s armor, and into the molecular coating of his railgun, in turn allowing him to survive in the relative vacuum of the Slip dimension, and retain, and utilize, small amounts of black matter in weaponized form. This aspect of the technological application was kept from Dr. Santos and the rest of the international team, who believed their work was to be applied to the means by which Nimazaki would be protected in his transitions back and forth from the Slip.

Serrano reported to his contacts at the Chilean Embassy what he had observed and delivered his electronic surveillance for relay to the AW program’s operations department, who, after reviewing the data, directed him to attempt to obtain any of Dr. Santos’ null field application data, for future use in military application at home, a collaboration the physicist had refused in his native country. However, when Serrano and his men accessed the research chamber where the experiments had occurred, they found a target much more valuable: stasis racks housing hundreds of miniscule amounts of black matter, each independently held in a null field, stored for ongoing research purposes. Serrano was able to extract one sample and escape the lab undiscovered, and returned to Chile with Dr. Santos as planned. His handlers at the AW program were stunned and amazed at his success, and research began immediately in the manipulation of Santos’ null field, in order to find a way to utilize this black matter fragment in a useful, weaponized manner.

The Chilean team found that applying a modular pulse of radiation to the field caused it to expand and spike in dramatic shapes that retained physical properties, though proved impossible to touch or contain. The enlarged field would bend light, slow projectiles and create wind resistance, and the black matter within seemed to expand with the field itself. The team was unable to determine whether the unique physical properties they observed were a result of the black matter, the field itself, or some combination of the two. The applications team was unable to find a useful offensive capability from the experiment, and it was in turn studied for application in force field or counter-surveillance technologies. Ultimately, one imaginative researcher pointed out how much the spiking field resembled the silhouette of a large bird in flight, such as an eagle or their native Andean Condor. Within days, the concept was hatched, and the field was attached to a pulse generator in a flight harness, and test pilots were soon able to prove proof of concept, gaining altitude and directional control using applied pulses to influence the shape and behavior of the inky black field.

Frederico Serrano, who had been well compensated for his efforts and enjoyed a rising position of respect and responsibility in the AW program, was given the honor and opportunity to train with the technology he himself acquired for the government, and take on the role of Chile’s first National Hero, named El Condor. A gifted athlete and skilled fighter, he rapidly excelled in his training, and was soon introduced to the public in a spectacular national celebration. The United States and the Japanese government grew immediately suspicious of Chile’s sudden posthuman presence, and while closed-door legal challenges were made against the Chileans and Dr. Santos himself, nothing could be done, given the high-profile political tensions between the Americans and the Chilean government. El Condor would become one of South America’s proudest posthuman heroes, another symbol of independence from America’s influence in the region.

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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OK, this is one of mine. Ling Xiaoyu, from the Tekken series of fighting games. Any version! With skillz!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ling_Xiaoyu

Over the course of the games, she’s had many looks, so choose any, or design your own!

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This is a piece done for the This Week Jam, the subject being the classic manga and anime heroines, Dirty pair!

Joao’s illustration for the jam is very cool on several levels. I love how they create a loose heart-shape in their body positioning, how there’s a very awesomely-drawn hand on someone’s rear, and the challenging aim-at-the-camera viewing angle. What a sweet piece, says this robot!

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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