Universe M Galleries

[Old Glory]

Heyo. I wanted to post a link to the Universe M galleries, a project site of mine. I have comic art, animation art, and screenshots galore. Enjoy!

www.universe-m.com/gallery/albums.php

[Old Glory]

More art work has been added to Universe-M, mostly int he screenshots gallery for my SG, the Concrete Gurus.

I also launched the fulltime edition of my www.portfolio-m.universe-m.com site. Its a portfolio of al the work by my brother and I, published and private. If you like fantasy art, we have around 300 pictures in there just for that genre.

[Clone Man]

Very nice stuff! And so many images too, you guys really must be drawing all the time... How did the Concrete Gurus come into being and what are they all about?

[Old Glory]

Thanks much, Clone. My brother and I really are always drawing something. CoH has been a great source of inspiration for me.

The Gurus came about from a few sources. One was a successful experiment called the Ann Arbor Avengers where I polled some friends to make up a fictional internet fighting force. Hmmm, I actually have my site still, but it is down for a day or 2, its still fun ( www.heroclix.org/annarboravengers ). That went so well that when I saw a press release announcing City of Heroes I immediately started up a call for members, even though the game was about 2 years away. It was also sort of funny, I had "accidentally" already been a CoH forum member for 6 months, but that press release really galvanized me.

To form the team, I had just made some guidelines like "Using information at www.universe-m.com please create a hero that is related in some way to a Universe M character, so that we can have representation in CoH." I had over 100 respondants and around 30 signed on with the team before launch. Once it started we retained about 10-15 of those members and still play with about 8 of them today, plus all the other fine people who have signed on since.

The Gurus are really a street pounding team and there to have fun, although the missions have gotten so big, I would say we have become a premiere level team. We have a few people at max level now, but we all have done most of the stories and not powerleveled too much. I have an insane number of hours in and most of the badges. We really try to play together as much as possible, and my proudest moments are when I can get more than 5 of us in a screenshot.

Gosh, that sounds like a lot now. Sorry. Just love my team. ;-)

[Fantasmo]

Hey US!

I love this team, glad to be apart of it!

Old Glory did this for me. (we call him US) These are the characters I have in the Concrete Gurus on Guardian.

http://www.universe-m.com/gallery/albums/album01/CoalCapBrain_72RGB.jpg
My main in the middle is Captain Jupiter. Left is Coal Dust, right is Brain Trust.

[Old Glory]

Thats what I'm talking about right there. Feel the love Cappy. ;-)

For all the team members there is the perk that I'm going to draw their characters and they're going to be featured on the website. ;-)

[Clone Man]

Heh, thats cool that you started at Underworld. I used to hang out there way back in the day when they were still actually underground. I live up in Lansing now but get down to Ann Arbor every once in awhile. Anyway, keep us updated when you put new stuff on the website...

[Xanatos]

I've always been a fan of the Guru's = Unknown Soldier in particular had a very cool costume.

Glad to see you guys are still around :)

[Overbite]

I'm also a fan of Unknown's concept. Great stuff.

[Old Glory]

Thanks Gents.

Clone, cool to see you know the Ann Arbor stuff. ;-)

Thanks Xan, coming form a vet like you that means a lot. Grats on making last issue too. We had a team pin-up in issue 3, but it was before we knew what the game engine could do.

And thanks Veik. You might recognize me as Unknown Soldier on the global chat channel. ;-)

[The Widowed]

This picture got my attention.

http://img40.echo.cx/img40/8112/memorial8rz.jpg
Did Cryptic really lower the City Hall flag to half-staff for Christopher Reeve's death? I never noticed. :confused:

[suburbanhell]

Nope that's clearly an edit. The pole gets smaller as it goes up, I believe the one on the roof is the same size the whole way

[Dynamo-Man]

Still, a very cool idea and picture. ;)

[Old Glory]

Thanks for people who noticed that tribute. It meant a lot to me. It started as just a tribute by the available Concrete Gurus and then a few others came up to the dome with us. I did submit this to CoH and suggest something similar to them, but they did not respond. I heard there were other tributes later on, but I missed those. I did think it was neat that gamespy gave the CoH community big props for in-game mourning of a heroic icon.

And Suburbanhell is correct that this is an edit, but I really only lowered the flag. Perspective tapered the flagpole. Not me. ;-) I tried to leave it as undoctored as possible.

[Yin]

RiotGrrl and the guy with the sun-patterns were two of my favorites. :) You guys are definitely CoH's Avengers. Keep up the good work.

[Old Glory]

;-)

Thanks Threshold. That sounds really cool. "CoH's Avenger's"

I may not have been super active on the boards (I know heros and I know art...for game advice there are far better palyers than me), but I have been active and doing pretty well in a lot of the CoH contests. I was a finalist in the Surviving 8 contest they held, got the pin-up into issue 3, and was looking good for the desktop contest (good piece, but I think it was a bad desktop). I don't know how close I was for the anniversary postcard contest. A lot of that gumption I owe to my team who has been supportive and eager to see what I'll come up with next. CoH is an amazing catalyst for me. Daily incentive to do more.

[Old Glory]

I just added a new pic to this gallery, its actually been submitted to the Comic for publication. I'm waiting to see if it makes it in. I had a preliminary version that was printed in issue 3.

They are the first and last images in this gallery: http://www.universe-m.com/gallery/album04?page=1

I thought it was a big improvement in terms of overall effort, and except for Bitwise in the bottom left corner, it portrayed much more accurate costumes (I still love my concepts, but people stopped me in game before and said "Which one are you?"). ;-)

[Old Glory]

Just letting everyone know there have been a number of new pictures added since this entry, most of them Screen Shots (we added a gallery for the hot new Sentries team on Guardian). I have added some nice drawings too though. I posted a preliminary of a "tribute" style Concrete Gurus Prologue I am working on, and an anime style picture of 4 of the Concrete Gurus.

Everything is in the www.universe-m.com/gallery

Rock on.