Rakai'Thwei's Micro-Heroes

This is a character whom I have been dying to make for months but was extremely intimidated to try out. I have had something of a hard time with this particular character because there weren't any S.H.I.E.L.D. outfit templates readily available meaning that I had to color coordinate the black pixels according to the flesh toned pixels to give the outfit that tight spandex look to it. So coloring it pixel by pixel while keeping the colors right was no real easy thing to do. And I would say that probably was the hardest part of creating this microhero of Maria Hill.

The gloves and the boots were actually a brighter shade of white but then looking at it in comparison to the rest of the outfit, I had to recolor the pixels too to a darker shade by using greys, so that the boots and the gloves wouldn't be too white. Also, the shoulder straps were not readily available, so I had to find the necessary parts and work them for this microhero. Also, the belt was found in a template set which I thought worked nicely too along and I referenced the zipper effect by looking at another Maria Hill microhero.

I have only seen a few Maria Hill microheroes, three to be exact and while they are decent enough, I felt as if they really didn't consider on giving Maria Hill her good looks and end up giving her extremely short hair-- however some of the comics do show her with some stylish hair and sometimes even a loose shag. And those I referenced, as Maria Hill is a tough as nails S.H.I.E.L.D. Director but she is also supposed to be an attractive woman too. So I wanted to keep that attractiveness about her while also keeping her no nonsense attitude which she is known for. I think I balanced it out quite well here.

-Rakai'Thwei

Maria Hill

Maria Hill this very good , is a beautiful micro . Congratulations

Do any of you remember this character? If none of you have ever seen the movie Falling Down starring Michael Douglas, then this will be your first time being acquainted with this character. Meet Bill "D-Fens" Foster, a disgruntled white collar everyman who was just fired from his job working at a defense agency and happens to be estranged from his wife and child, because of his rather extremely short temper. Caught in a severe traffic jam in Los Angeles, and with an unbearable heatwave afflicting the city, Bill Foster has had enough of the world and sets out to make things right.. one way or another.

I haven't seen any Microheroes depicting Michael Douglas' rather temperamental character from the movie Falling Down. I suppose it's because either it's due to the fact that the character isn't a superhero from the Marvel or DC universes or it's because that no other Microhero artist hasn't deemed the character significant enough to want to make a micro of him. Well, I figure that's about to change as this might be the very first Micro of Bill "D-Fens" Foster. He wasn't that very hard to make to be honest, since most of the parts were readily available but some needed to be modified.

While the shirt was readily available, there were no short sleeve variants of what could be described as an office shirt. So I had to cannibalize the shirt and make a short sleeve variant. That meant removing the long sleeves and use short sleeves from another shirt. I also had to erase one of the pockets and keep the one on the left, and I added the pens in the shirt pocket since the character had the pens. Also the tie didn't have the white stripes on it, so I had to add them.

The hair was very appropriate since the character had a short hair style, but the color was a bit difficult to get down since the hair appeared to be a graying light brown or dirty blond. So this was the best which I could get the hair. Originally, it was blonde but I had to recolor it to fit the character better. I think it works.

The and shoes were readily available though.

If I had to say.. this definitely was the easiest Micro I have ever made.

-Rakai'Thwei

Bill "D-Fens" Foster

Another Microhero which I have been meaning to do for a while, this time featuring a character who is not necessarily Aliens vs Predator related but someone who is more in line with Street Fighter and Dead or Alive. As a matter of fact, I might even go on a limb and say that this character could even fit in both series as she was inspired by both the Street Fighter series and the DOA series. She's a relatively new character who is a descendent of a warrior bloodline and utilizes electricity in her martial arts. I've been developing her for four years through roleplay but never really so much as brought her to light until now as I felt like I needed to give her a suitable appearance.

Skye took some effort into creating because while I did have the parts to create her-- some of clothes were not at all in the color which I wanted and therefore they had to be recolored pixel by pixel according to the proper shading. Originally the jeans were a denim blue but I had recolored them to a dark black. And the shoes were originally all white and they didn't have the blue patches which are seen on the sides of the sneakers. So I had to add the patches in. The shirt was also meant to be more of a sports bra since I wanted her to have more of an athletic look. I had a shirt with a similar color scheme but it revealed too much cleavage than I wanted, so I took a white shirt and colored the primary part blue but the shoulder straps I had recolored black to give that sports shirt like appearance. The gloves are actually made by me, though they originally were for the Hitomi microhero which I had created sometime ago but recolored with a blue color scheme.

I have another Microhero for Skye's Ascended form but trying to get aura effects on Microheroes is damn hard and I am learning how to do lightning effects on GIMP. So far, we'll see where that Microhero goes if I ever do it. I may need help with the lightning effects and DBZ style aura.

-Rakai'Thwei

Skye Ryuuken Neris

Bill "D-Fens" Foster looks very close to the original character

This is Skye's Ascended form. Inspired by Dragonball Z's Super Saiyan idea, though no where near as over-powered as the Super Saiyans, I thought that this would be a neat ability for a woman of her bloodline to have. A fortified, highly charged state which grants Skye enhanced physical strength, speed and even electrical output. While the form does grant Skye these superhuman perks, it's not without it's weaknesses. If exposed to EMPs (Electromagnetic Pulse), Skye's Ascended form loses all it's power and she'll require a recharge to assume the form. If submersed in water while in this form, electricity courses out from her body involuntarily, draining her reserves-- while also conducting power through out the water, making this extremely dangerous for anyone in or near water.

Making this particular micro was both extremely easy but also challenging at the same time. Infact, I don't even really think that I am satisfied with this particular micro hero based on the fact that I wanted the lightning bolts to be glowing a blue color as I felt that it'd make the character stand out more. I know that sometimes lightning can come in white, blue or even violet colors but I really wanted to aim for a blue glow and instead had to settle for white. Thankfully, I managed to find some lightning brushes which I felt worked really well since they have that luminous effect of lightning. While I am not really satisfied with how the lightning came out-- I may end up revisiting this micro to update it if I can find some helpful tips. So far I've tried two tutorials and they didn't come out right, hence why I stuck with this.

-Rakai'Thwei

Ascended Skye

Loved your new micro, the effect was very cool . Congratulations

Burningbird wrote:

Bill "D-Fens" Foster looks very close to the original character

Thank you, I did have some photo references of Michael Douglas' character from the movie Falling Down to work with. So I am very glad that the Micro does look very close to the original character as seen in the movie. That's what I was aiming for.

Mr. Fantasy wrote:

Loved your new micro, the effect was very cool . Congratulations

I think I could've done better with the lightning effects because I wanted it to have that very real and blue glow of electricity. I posted the issue which I had with that effect in the Help section but no one has seemed to answered, and I used some GIMP tutorials to create the micro which we see here and now for Skye's Ascended form. While the lightning effect looks great on the background of this board, on a white background or light grey.. you can barely see the lightning effects. But thank you for the comments.

-Rakai'Thwei

Giger Van Gogh



It's been a while since I have decided to do a new Microhero and I wanted to try my hand at creating a TMNT character in Microhero format. Aside from Aliens vs Predator, one of my favorite franchises of all time has always been Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ever since I was a child, TMNT has been a very big part of my child and I'm sure anyone who is an 80's or 90's Kid, has had the Turtles influence their lives in some way or another. I have never really made a TMNT fan character before though a couple of years ago a friend of mine and I had collaborated on creating some TMNT characters and this character was but one of four results of said collaboration and while the character was initially a Turtle-Tot, I decided to create what he would be as an adult.

Meet Giger Van Gogh. He is officially my first ever TMNT fan character, and perhaps another character I will further develop through roleplaying. Originally, Giger Van Gogh was supposed to be a mutant Red Ear Slider/Box Turtle hybrid due to his parents being a Red Ear Slider and a Box Turtle. However researching actual Turtle hybrids, it seems that Pond Slider and Box Turtles cannot produce offspring. So I revamped the character to be a mutant Red Ear Slider. If it isn't obvious enough, he does have the name of two artists-- he's named after Dark Sexual Fantasy artist, Hans Rudi Giger and of course impressionist painter, Vincent Van Gogh. I wanted to give him Giger's name because Giger happens to be one of my favorite artist, and I named him after Giger long before Giger's unfortunate death. I also went with the name Van Gogh to keep with the TMNT theme of having an artist name. There is a working back story for Giger Van Gogh but that is another discussion for a whole time. Anyway, I am babbling too much about this character, so let me explain how he was made.

Giger was created with a TMNT base that was provided by Carnage over at Microheroes International Board. To get his skin tone down, I have had to use four shades of green and worked with the shades in accordance to the base template's pixels in order to have the right shade tones in place. The plastron shell largely remain untouched but I wanted to add scars to give the micro some personality to it. The scars were done using brown and light yellow pixels to give it that scratched and scarred appearance. This was inspired by the scarred plastron shells on the live action TMNT references I've used from memory. The brown scarf was entirely created from scratch and it took three attempts to give it the look I waned, and they were done using a brown outlining, then filled in with different shades of brown to give it a cloth like appearance. The elbow and knee pads were from another TMNT base but they were originally brown, for this microhero, I had opted to color them a leathery black in appearance. The same can be said about the belt. The wrist wraps were extremely difficult to do but I've had to reference numerous microhero bases and examine the pixel work. It took some experimenting with colors but with light browns and tans, I got the desired cloth wrap which I was going for and I think I did it pretty well.

As for the red arm band, that was created partially from scratch as I had worked with different shades of red to give it a cloth like look, but the flaps were were originally a mask accessory on the default base but cut shorter to make it look arm band appropriate. Interestingly enough, the arm band is also meant to be a mask/bandana belonging to one of the original four TMNT, and it doesn't belong to Raphael as in the Mirage TMNT continuity, all Turtles wore red!

Cool micro! What's his weapon of choice?

Major Justice wrote:

Cool micro! What's his weapon of choice?

It's a toss up between a single ninjaken, a kusarigama or twin kama. But I am glad that you like my TMNT microhero character, he was a bit of a challenge to work with and he took me two days to create.

Very cool! And the lightning effect? That's just rad!!!

croc5 wrote:

Very cool! And the lightning effect? That's just rad!!!

Thank you, I am glad to know that you like the lightning effect! I tried to get a real lightning effect going on with a blue glow as an aura effect happening but the tutorials which I had just weren't working, so I had to settle with GIMP lightning effect brushes. Originally, they were supposed to be a light blue but they were too blow with no white core. So instead I had to settle for white lightning, and while it works on some backgrounds, it doesn't work too well on light colored ones. Still, glad to know you like!