What If: Thunderbolts - Week 3 Teaser

Coming soon to SHSO What-Ifs... a spiky anti-hero!

-- SHSOFan.

Morbius Released!

The living vampire is apparently now available! You'll have to save up, though, because he's 900 gold. :(

Personally, I'm all for them changing the wheel back, the tickets back, and stop pricing everything so high. It's christmas! It should be a sale, not the opposite! :(

Oh well, it's not like I can get him, seeing as I only have 568 gold. Once again I'll be passing on the review. :(

Good news though! In a few days I'll have 600 gold, which means I can finally review one of the newer heroes! Chances are I'll probably get Avenging Rouge, but should i get Havok instead? There's a lot for me to choose from ,so if you have any recommendations please leave them in the comments section below! :D

-- SHSOFan.

What If: Thunderbolts - Week 2 Behind the Scenes

Yay! It's the second What-If behind the scenes post!

Also, watch my YouTube channel for an upcoming Thunderbolts video, which will only be available to people who read this blog! :D

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Alright, so the time has come. There is a slight lull because this week didn't show anything new that you hadn't really seen before. So you know what that means? Yeah! It's time to get REALLY DETAILED! Today, I'll be talking through all the steps I take to deliver one of the images in this week's What-If: Thunderbolts post!

Which image?

This one.

Okay, so, where to begin? First of all, you have to have a model of the character. I make my own models, but some people can't do that. What do you do if you aren't a 3D modeler? Well, my advice would be to manually paint over a character, which takes less time, but is probably not as fun. So, anyway, what if you actually model a character? Well, what I do is I take a photo of a hero in the game. Like this.

This image is a good one, because you'll notice Elektra is on a nice, neutral background. It's mostly one shade, so blending her into it shouldn't bee too hard. I've also turned off the Hero Name and Squad Name, which you can do in the settings, because if they were on that would, frankly, be a nightmare.

The next step: render out your character! The program I use, Cheetah3D, (shameless plug), lets you lower the anti-aliasing a bit, so that it looks like a game, (anti aliasing makes an image have jagged edges). What I normally do is put the normal picture in the background, and render my character on top at first.

That gets the position of your character right. Now I open up my background image, and select and copy and paste parts of the image, smoothing it out with the eraser tool, erasing Elektra from the image. Usually this is easy, because I select easy backgrounds on purpose, but sometimes it isn't, and that's where you want to be careful. I wouldn't try TOO hard, after all, it's going to get covered up by your hero, but keep in mind that bits of it will still show under your hero.

Now, I bring it all into Photoshop, and paste in my rendered out hero, (this time with a transparent background).

Photoshop cleanly pastes in my image, I position it correctly, and then I usually have to edit the hero's name. For this, I currently use the font Webletterer BB,  but the actual one is, I suspect Tekton Pro, which is not a free font, and that's why I don't usually use it for these What-ifs.

Then it's time to make the hero icon. I use the CBR forum's template, (discussed in an earlier post), and I delete the name of the hero from the template, which doesn't appear in the game.

I should probably make my own icon background for it, seeing as the game doesn't have the same ridges around the outside. So... expect that next What-If! Now I have to render out an image of the character in "Hero pose".

Then I import it to the Photoshop template, scale it down, and cut it so that it looks like she's inside, and I have this!

Once this icon's done, I save it as a .png, reimport it as one layer, and then put it over the real hero's icon, and there you go, it's... almost done.

There's one last thing that I do, which is scale it down to 600 pixels wide, and add Contrast, and then I apply a lighting effect, like I do with all my pictures on this blog. :)

And there you go! That's how I do it. :)

Any questions? Comments?

Leave them in the comment section.

And for now, I'll leave with a small, small spoiler for next week:

Something spiky this way comes.

-- SHSOFan.

Holiday Song Contest!

What a good idea for a contest! The only downside is that you have to choose one out of six pre-chosen heroes. Too bad, I would've chosen Avenging Rouge. :(

Basically you have to come up with a Christmas song parody featuring a Marvel Hero, and two winners are chosen each day! I might enter, but I'm still trying to figure out which one to get. probably Human Torch, but then again Classic Wolverine is there and right now there's no other way to get him... but then again Storm...!

-- SHSOFan.

What If: Thunderbolts - Week 2

The following post is fictional. None of the new characters or events described actually happened.

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So today Radioactive Man and Moonstone came out! So it's time to redo my predictions.

So I rescheduled the calendar a bit in light of this new information...

I think Scourge may be coming with the Crossbones mission, and Ghost and Penance are coming later. It's either that or Ghost and the Crossbones mission, with Scourge and Penance coming later, OR it's Penance with the Crossbones mission, and Scourge and Ghost last. But I'll have to wait to see if this prediction comes true. I know my last prediction didn't. :P

RADIOACTIVE MAN

So, yeah! Radioactive Man! I'm glad I was able to get him, with yet another gold card. *sigh*

Radioactive Man-- I'll just call him "RM" for now-- Is pretty fun to walk around as, seeing as he is the only non-Hulk character I've seen so far that has the Hulk jump! It's pretty cool, and it makes exploring the Daily Bugle zone more fun then usual. I also played through a mission with him, and he's a bit underpowered for my tastes, but he's definitely worth getting just for the cool hood and his exploration, which is really good.

OVERALL: I give RM a 7/10! :D

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MOONSTONE

Yes, I bought Moonstone, but I didn't have too much time to play as her, and only got through half a mission, so just a little warning that I might be slightly under informed. Moonstone has a boring standard locomotion system, so nothing too special there. But what I saw of her fighting is enough to make her worth the 600 gold. Also, she's essential to completing your Thunderbolts collection.

What really shines through in the missions, though, is her Hero Up, which is a short but powerful blast. You'd think you'd want a ranged attack, but with Moonstone, this Hero Up is actually better. The blast knocks over enemies and gets wider as it travels, so it's good for getting enemies ahead of you. :)

OVERALL: Moonstone shines in the missions, but her exploration is slightly lacking.

I give Moonstone a 8.5/10!

Now go add her to your squad!

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Well, that wraps up week two of the Thunderbolts releases! Do you think I am right in my prediction for next week, or do you think I'm out of my mind? Whatever you think, leave a comment below!

-- SHSOFan.

A Little Stat Report

So, as you can see, this blog recently reached a milestone! 10,055 views in a little over a year! :O

Thank you for helping reach this milestone, and expect even more great content in the future!

(Like when I can actually review some heroes for you).

-- SHSOFan.

What-If: Thunderbolts - Week 2 Teaser

Coming soon to SHSO What-Ifs... a radioactive anti-hero!

-- SHSOFan.