Sunfire Archives - RSC Arts

Atomic Blast – Character Design for The REPLICANTS Project

The idea of Atomic Blast came from a challenge to create a superhero team based on an existing superhero team. The REPLICANTS Project was created by Dean Rivet. Atomic Blast was inspired by Sunfire of the X-Men.

Susan Rosen’s grandfather Jason Rosen worked on Trinity, the first atomic bomb nuclear weapons test in New Mexico. While working on the test site, Jason was exposed to high radiation levels. Due to a genetic anomaly, he was able to absorb the deadly energies. He found he could control this energy in the form of a green flame. He became a crime fighter known as the Green Flame.

As a child, Susan began to manifest the same power as her grandfather. She keeps it a secret not knowing she inherited the power from him. Susan’s parents died in a car accident when she was 17, leaving Jason as her only living relative. With no one else to take care of Susan, she moved in with him. She discovered he had the same powers as she did. Jason trained Susan in the control of her powers. She decided to follow in his footsteps and become a crime fighter. With his help, she has taken the name Atomic Blast and uses her powers to fight evil.

Here are the different steps I took when creating this character design. First I did my pencil drawing, I use a .5 HB Mechanical pencil. I then scanned and turned the pencils into blue lines. I went ahead and printed the blue lines and inked them. I used a nib pen 102. I then colored it in photoshop. I had fun with this illustration. I tried a few different techniques in the inking and coloring. I am very pleased with the results!

This blog post was originally published on my other website Comic Book Graphic Design and has now been migrated here to RSC Arts, Ralph’s Art Blog.

I’ve been participating in a fun collaboration with some great comic artists in The REPLICANTS Project.

What we are doing is creating our own characters based on existing characters. Similar to how Marvel Comics Squadron Supreme was based on DC Comics Justice League, and how the Watchmen characters were based on the Charlton characters. We’ve mashed up half the 70s X-men and half the Justice League into a Heroes and Villains team.

The idea came from Dean Rivet who set up a blog on Posterous. The blog’s name is The REPLICANTS Project. We create the character inspired by that week’s chosen character. We design original costumes, character names, and back story. We then email the post to a Posterous email and PazoOoW it appears on the blog.

I’ll be posting the process I’m using to create my characters; from pencil drawing and inking to the final coloring in upcoming blog posts. Here’s a list of the characters that we are using as inspirations for The REPLICANTS Project.