Omniman

Just like the last big set of pics I uploaded, this is from the "things I started years ago and finally got to finishing" category. I originally pledged to draw the entire Evil Eight, and got through Spinman, Clawman, Warman, Cleaveman, Chimeraman, and even the updated Scissor Army Chimeraman pretty quickly in September, 2007 (all in the span of two days if the filedates are to be believed. How the hell could I ever work that fast two years ago when these days I can barely pull out one finished product a month? Oh right, I have a job now. Crap.)

I designed and drew Omniman at that time, but I wasn't crazy about what I came up with. The head never looked quite right. I showed a progress sheet to the rest of the team for opinions and I might as well add that to my scraps now while I'm at it.

As with the other members of the E8 that we were revamping, I was using notes from Lennon, the original creator of the E8 and their sprites. Like Spin and Cleave, Omni was envisioned as an android version of one of those boxy RC robots that fought on shows like Battlebots and Robot Wars. Omniman was Sir Killalot. That bot had a cool-looking head and I was tasked with making Omniman's new head similarly menacing. That's mainly why I had trouble commiting to a design because nothing I came up with was as good as Killalot itself.

After two years of stalling I wanted to finally get it over with and I ended up just picking the last design I settled on. So then I drew this. It came out pretty well, all things considered.

I knew my usual coloring method for metallic surfaces would look too smooth and clean for a robot that called for a rougher image. I ended up doing something I normally avoid, playing around with filters, and luckily found that stainless steel texture quickly in the form of "Smudge Stick" with high intensity and low stroke length and highlight area. The only problem was that the lines could only go diagonally from upper-left to lower-right. I offset that by spacing the effect out and creating a slightly similar effect with manual techniques and other textures on select smaller areas like the claw. I also employed the "Add Noise" feature for the copper-colored areas like I did with TM2 Hardman. Either way, it doesn't look like he's made of one uniform material, which is good.

The serial number was an afterthought I edited in after drawing out Golemman. I usually don't think of finer Ariga-esque details like that on my designs, but Golem had a lot of empty space on his big armor to fill. I drew in his E8 number in a nice logical spot and then realized Omni should have one to match. I used the Stencil font and carefully warped the letters so they matched the contours of his shoulder and then added a bit of shading for the embossed effect. It was a tricky maneuver and they're not so legible after the resize (E8-06 in case you can't tell), but I think it came out alright. Golem's should look nicer since the surface his numbers are printed on are pretty much flat towards the viewer.

The background was the biggest pain of the process, as it usually is when I draw the character first and don't even think about what interesting crap to put behind them until the very end. It wasn't just the background you see either, I slapped up and scrapped two other backgrounds before it! I usually don't give the bg that much consideration, it's something I just want to get out of the way as fast as possible, so even if it sucks I just keep with that theme until I've touched it up enough to look presentable. In this case though, the other random backdrops I came up with just looked too stupid. The first was a big hallway, possibly in Skull Castle, and the other was some kind of hill or mountain, probably to go along with Golem's who will definitely be standing on a mountain based on his appearance in that Peru Scenario in War (it's so much easier when I have the background in mind before I start). After a lot of thinking, I finally realized he needed a more steely tecnhopunk environment to go with his steely technopunk look. It could still be Skull Castle in some respect.

The lance is a mistake I'm willing to live with. You can see in the early sketches how it's supposed to look more balanced - half out the elbow and half out the hand. I tried to employ foreshortening in this pic but didn't do it very well. I think the perspective gets across (the shaft IS mostly parallel, it doesn't really get bigger towards the end) but it definitely looks like more of the thing is sticking out the front than the rear. It's fine I guess, since the lance IS supposed to be able to slide around in there and detach as necessary, but he might look a little more battle-ready if he was holding his weapon right.

Way too many words for this one. You know you didn't actually have to read it all. I feel sorry for you now.

Omniman was created by ~icyrosebishounen for use with the Mechanical Maniacs, based on Capcom's Megaman series. Drawing by me.