Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Young Legion 2009

I was skimming through some Silver Age Legion stories and had an overwhelming urge to do some classic character renders.

I've decided to do a retro Legion in a more youth-oriented cartoon style (more like the animated Teen Titans than the animated Legion, both of which I enjoyed). I've cobbled the first batch together using mostly models and pieces I already had, trying to do the absolute minimum amount of modeling or texturing. As a result, most of the costumes are at least a little "off" from the originals, with one exception: Karate Kid (he's waaay off, as I preferred his more recent look over the old orange gi).

As it stands, I've done 17 of the first 25 or so Legionnaires I intend to do. Once they're all complete, I'll go back and either finish the characters more accurately or "update" them all to make them easier to animate (the coolest thing about them being 3D models is that they are easy to animate).

Here's a sampling of the first 100-or-so renders I've done so far, mainly character shots and scenes from the first story, "Mystery of the Robot Raiders", wherein a very, very old Legion Villain and a very, very new Villain are revealed to be one and the same.

Comments and criticisms welcome.

Click the thumbnails for larger picts:

Click thumbnails for larger views:



Some early Colossal Boy picts (before I finished his outfit):

A quick Sun Boy test (picture is pure render, no postwork). I have to figure out a quick and easy "melting robot" effect. As always, click the thumbnail for a larger view.

Click thumbnails for bigger pict:

The nifty thing about setting up a 3D scene, of course, is shifting the camera to render another angle (many picts for the price of one). Click to enlarge.

Jeckie and Nura (from the big group picture) look like they were born for this style. Cham looks pretty cool, too. I like that dark costume.

A whole story rendered up like this? Oh, so ambitious, and so cool!

Thanks; Cham's costume is one of those I still have to finish, the present one has two primitives on each shoulder and the texture is a sci-fi space navy texture (it should be pretty easy to model the shoulders, a proper collar and texture in the uniform scales and such).
Once the characters, background and props are built, rendering out a story is a lot like playing with action figures; it's getting a decent story and thumbnailing it that actually becomes the harder part, at least for me. Well, that and not getting sidetracked.

Wow! So cute!

What software are you using? I've recently taken an interest in 3D art (made my first serious renders today), but I know next to nothing about it.

D'awwwww!

For modeling I'm still using Lightwave 8.5, but for these quick set-ups and rendering I'm basically playing with Poser and DAZ Studio.

Agreed! Jeckie and Nura flourish in this style, especially Jecks! You make the ADVENTURE-era outfits look, dare I say.... hip!

Can't wait to read the story!

I don't know much about Lightwave. I've got DAZ Studio 3, but I haven't really learned how to use it. The stuff I've done so far is with Bryce 5.5 (the freeware version).

ETA: I've been looking into Blender, but a lot of it's going over my head.

Vi and Trips: Moé.

I gather the Bionicle characters are stand-ins, and I wonder what sort of robots you'll be going for - some sort of 60s style, or more modern?

I'm definitely waiting for the final product.

Nice stuff Space Cadet.

Thanks for the kind words, it's appreciated.

Re: the robots, I'm not sure yet what style to go with; I'm torn between retro and modern, toony and more realistic. I'm having the same problem with which way to go with space ships, whether to go with the original Legion-styled ships (old, the newer Cockrum Trek-styled, or the later ones) or something original?

Opinions are appreciated.

I think the character style is a fun one for younger readers/viewers, and they're certainly fun to play with (they're fairly low-resolution, and tend to render very quickly, making life easier all-around). While working with them, my focus shifted for a while to a single Legionnaire who I thought would make a great standalone series, which I'll be posting about tomorrow or Sunday.

Thanks again for the positive feedback, and any thoughts or ideas are more than welcome.

One vote for Toony robots, with big forearms, thin upper arms, big chests, tiny stomachs, thin upper legs and big clunky lower legs sound cool. The big lower legs could have rocket boots and the big forearms could have blaster weapons built in (perhaps when they are flying, both the boots and gloves are pointed downwards, providing thrust). The head could have some cylon-like visor, with a vent for a mouth and sit like a bucket on the barrel-chest (able to rotate but with no neck).

I vote for actual Legion villains. I love this!

They very wonderful!
But where's Shady?

Thanks.
Hadn't done her yet, but since you asked...


Haven't decided how to do her shadows, a few quick tries (some of these have some minor postwork, a 20-second PhotoShop action/filter):

The fourth Shady blast is the best, IMO, although three is decent, too, if it's easier to render.

You, my daughter and I agree; basically, the fourth one is the third, post-worked in Photoshop; the post-work is simply a single, combined series of actions/filters that takes about 20 seconds to apply.

Wow!!!


I agree with the rest of you!
Amazing.

Thanks, it's appreciated.

I've been concentrating on the heroes, but I have been working on one or two actual Legion villains, one of them for the spin-off, "Young Ultra Boy: The Rimbor Adventures"...

As always, clicking on the thumbnail will bring up a larger pict.