Comicon...No, ComiCAN

 Ever since I learnt about the Comicon challenge in uni it has always excited me. Unfortunately it hasn't been running for the last few years so i was eager at its return. I'm a nerd and so love games and comics so it's a great way to express that love.

So Comicon always has a theme and this years is "Final Stand", the choices are "final" in which to pick a character and have them in the midst of battle weary and about to unleash their last effort to win, Or "stand" in which a hero has returned after a long time for the first time ready to face the battlefield and save the world.

At first these seemed hard for me to get my head around but the more I thought about it the more excited I got. The possibilities with the both of them are immense with huge potential, the only thing was I had to pick a character. Easier said than done, I love so many characters in comic books but i knew it was going to be part of the X-men universe as they are my favourite. So after a few hours researching I decided on Armor, as I researched more into her I got more excited at the possibilities she posed. She has the ability to create and exoskeleton of armor to fight and protect herself. I love this concept and think it would translate really well into an awesome model.

So what theme to choose, final or stand. Well they both provided me with interesting ideas and so i thought I would sketch and come up with what I was thinking.

It took me a while to get what I was thinking, i revised the character multiple times just trying out different things before coming to the above. So as you can see you have nude sketch then now outfit, outfit with my take on her armor activated then the themes, final and stand.

So for "Final" I wanted it to look like she had a tough time in this battle, she has multiple cuts, hair has been torn out and has even lost and arm. Losing the arm is something I definitely wanted, the idea that she can generate an exoskeleton in replace of the arm excited me. Now for her last attack (otherwise beauty shot) I would either have her in full armor mode but the armor takes on the form of an Nio, an ancient Japanese guardian. It has been expressed that armor has a link to her Japanese ancestors and that her power can almost remember what its went through. So either that or one last punch with her lost arm in armor mode.

For "Stand" I wanted to do some redesigning and more than this incorporate both the themes to make a story in which she had fought out this battle 10 years ago and lost the courage, the battle and her arm. She has been training in Japan to get stronger so this time she won't fail. This means that her arm would still be missing and I loved the idea of having her armor on all the time with a samurai sword. Usually She can only use it for about an hour or two and so this would show her progress already. Now the armor arm she has on can change i'm not sure how i want it to look but I thought a more slim line human version would be cool or the complete opposite, maybe like a hellboy arm type motif. As for her outfit I liked the idea of even though I've based it 10 years in the future she is staying quite tradition almost medieval armor (maybe samurai armor would make more sense but it's what looks good right?) I kept the traditional colours of the x-men declaring shes still with them. For this beauty shot I would have her on top of a rock as if entering the battlefield.

At the minute I am leaning more towards stand probably because I'm obsessed with metal armor at the minute and I feel it would be a stronger entry than "final". One other problem i can foresee is the competition rules state no other characters and so i might be breaching those rules because the exoskeleton could be seen as a full character model and even though attached to armor it's still another model that would need to be retopo'd, textured...etc.

Anywho I think I've rambled on enough I will try keep you all updated. By all i mean maybe the two people that actually read my bullshit :D