Life Giver

One of these days, the artwork I actually imagine will be what I end up making. That's an exaggeration, but I feel like I keep ending up with a less impactful composition than what I intend. And I especially feel that with this one since I've had this character in my head for so long. Anyways: this is Life Giver. You'll notice her picture is similar to the After Avengers', but it doesn't share their logo. That's because she's not an After Avenger. She's their villain. When I originally conceived the After Avengers, I didn't know Marvel wasn't going to be doing any more massive 3-phase story lines in order to opt for smaller stories. And that makes good sense, but for the After Avengers I wanted to imagine a 3 phase story with an overarching villain and everything. Life Giver is that villain.

I wanted this new villain to be wildly different from Thanos. After all, if your new villain is going to be exactly like the old one, why even come up with a new villain in the first place? So I knew I wanted the villain to be a woman from Earth not space; preferably a kind of evil mom archetype to match Thanos' evil dad themes. And I wanted her evil motivation to be built off of the idea of the Avengers.

Her name is Zoey Jonadab. From a certain interpretation it means "Life Giver," hence where she found her supervillain name (she was fascinated with her name even from an early age). She never had to live in a world without Avengers. Instead, she grew up in a world of absolute automated comfort and peace. But instead of helping humanity to be better, all we became was lazier, more depressed, and more self destructive. Life Giver believes that our modern societies have become so adept at creating comfort and happiness that life has become meaningless. So in her mind, the solution is to reintroduce pain and unhappiness so heroes like the Avengers can exist again. This character believes that, since the Avengers defined an entire generation, a new villain must arise in order to define the next generation. That's where she comes in. 

Unlike Thanos, she's not a very physical or confrontational villain (as you can probably guess from the dress). Instead she allows her genetically created monsters to do the fighting for her. This would hopefully allow for a lot of interesting and diverse monster designs and power sets. I think it would be really cool to watch the After Avengers fighting with a t-rex/lion's mane jellyfish hybrid while she sat calmly in the center of it all. 
I wanted a vaguely Kirby-esque design to give her an interesting silhouette, so I played around with different crown and head designs until I got this. I like how nonthreatening her long ears make her look. I was kind of inspired by a doe, but I wanted them to be furled like a Blue Dragon from Dungeons and Dragons. And yes, those are her actual ears. They allow her to hear much farther distances and in ranges that allow her creatures to communicate with her.

Originally I imagined the top image was going to be from the side. I thought it would look very distinct from all the After Avengers' pictures. I drew the draft in the middle. Then I drew the real thing, and it just didn't look as good. Oh well. I shouldn't really complain. I think she looks great. The bottom picture is what she looks like without the head piece and with one of her ears both furled and unfurled.

I'm at school now, and it's going okay so far. Thanks God for letting me finally do this, for giving me all these great ideas, for getting me through every day here, and for yourself most of all. Love you. Amen.

That One House

This is my first draft of the Day house. In other words, it's the house where the model supervillain family lives. Recently I wanted to practice creating a setting that reflected not only the surface aspects of a character but also the darker internal parts in a way that didn't break the realism. I figured Harrison would be a good pick for that project. I didn't do much detailing or atmosphere. I just wanted to see the basic design of the house and area around it. I really like that the Day house looks like one that could actually be built in a moderately wealthy neighborhood. It's not over the top or obviously uninviting. It just has little details that give it an ominous look.

That said, I did take inspiration from Disney villain lairs. Gru's house from Despicable Me was also very helpful, particularly because I could see it in contrast with the other houses around it. That way I could tell which subtler details made it stand out: the steeper angles and thinner windows. But I'm especially proud of the second story window in the center. The blinds really help to sell the double sided paranoia. I originally imagined the house with no garage. I only realized I needed one when I was looking at other houses for reference, so I made it a separate building. It's better like that anyways.

But my favorite details are the ones I thought of before I started drawing. The ones I wanted to add for the symbolism. That single lamp is one of them. It symbolizes a lot of different things. It's not motion sensitive. It turns on automatically at night and stays on until morning. I'll be leaving home soon, but God will still be with me. Thank you God.

Biot

Finally. The final After Avenger is complete. I realize it's taken me a while. I really didn't have much of any idea what to do with this character. I knew I wanted one more After Avenger, and I knew I wanted a big character so that there'd be some obvious visual contrast with the rest of the group. But I just didn't see how to make an interesting big character or what modern movie genre I could get ideas from. I knew maybe he'd be a robot of some kind. But if so, what? Eventually I realized I don't really connect with "big" characters in comics, so I tried making one I could.

To that end, this is Biot. It's a portmanteau of "biological robot." I didn't make it up. He's a farmer from an alternate universe where robotic life developed on Earth. On his world he was something of a failed hero, but on ours he's become an Avenger. One day, a form of complex biotic life fell to his Earth attracted by his experiments. It bonded with him and gave him the ability to camouflage and manipulate biological systems (including healing them). I got a kick out of the idea of a born robot fusing with a biological alien, and I liked the idea of a stealth and healing big character. I based him off of some independent films and other independent projects that I know. Ironically, as the only main CGI character, he'd be the least likely to be made an independent film about. Though hopefully some of his parts could be done with a suit, like the ones they use at Disney's Pandora.

As you can see, I included another color palette. His main body is silver white. His lower legs, the inner part under his eye, the tips of his fingers, his hips, his headpiece, and part of his chin are yellow. His shoulder armor, the backs of his hands, knees, and eyes are purple. Some parts of his armor and head armor are black. His chest square and waist are blue, and the plants are green.

This pose isn't very exciting because originally this was just going to be more brainstorming art. But then I kept drawing and kept drawing and wound up with something I liked. It would still need to be passed through a concept artists room or something. Like his eyes, for example. They'd probably need pupils for the sake of the actor, but I left them like this. You can't see it very well from this angle, but his legs bend backwards instead of forwards. From the beginning I knew I wanted him to have backwards legs. It'd give him an interesting silhouette from any angle other than this one. You may notice this drawing doesn't have the same notebook paper lines that the others have. That's because it's the first drawing in the new sketch book I got for my birthday! It's got the name of this blog on the cover and everything. It's very cool.

This was him before I added the plants.

  

And these drawing are concept art I did when I was still trying to figure him out. Originally the three dots around the face were to make him more like automated turrets, but then I realized how well they worked as a symbol for him jumping between worlds. The dots on the face would be regular eyes, but the dots on the chest would be colored. The big one on the right would be purple, the left would be yellow, and the small one would be green. 

Honestly, I'm just glad I got this guy done. It took me a while. Thanks God. Please be with me the rest of tonight and always.