#tai gem

[mousart]

League of Heroes in DCAU-ish style, 2025-04

I think this kind of thing is normally called a style study?

I don’t know, I’ve been watching Justice League again and since part of my love of superheroes comes from the DCAU, I wanted to give doing my characters in the style a try.

Its reinforced this thought I had that I had a problem with shoulders and the triangle between the neck and shoulders. Trying to do the DCAU style really helped me see certain limitations I have or gaps in my anatomy.

It also shows more limitations of standard DCAU hero design and my adaptability. I have certain body types in mind with certain characters, so trying to do that within the conventional style has been interesting to say the least.

But you can see from the first picture how much erasing was involved with my trying to add additional characters with different builds. Also I think maybe it was getting too small for me to draw well.

Either way at least I like how Fistman, Gumboy, and YinYang Ninja came out.

Crimson Lightning, Lucky, and The Lioness are more indicative of what trying to incorporate alternate builds into the conventional style looks like in my attempts. I’m sure if I searched harder I could’ve found something better but I was working from some basic style guides and turnarounds of specific characters.

Also can you tell my hand was getting tired by the time I got to Hearts? I can.

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed 21

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And what better way to end than with bad jokes and silly faces, eh?

Within my stupid little mind, Dr. Hair-Tonic was never meant to last as a real supervillain in the League of Heroes Universe. They have a horrible temper and every reason to be mad at the world, but ultimately they're not a jackass and they're not evil, and I feel like the owner of a villain bar where they just want to see colleagues relax and get themselves together is a nice way to end their story and a strange way of going legit.

And the bar will be neutral ground, anyone can go there and it's designated as a place without fighting and without superheroes and villains capturing each other and settling scores.

Thank you for coming on this journey with me where I've self-actualized and proven to myself what I'm capable of accomplishing, a full 21 pages of story, characterization, action, and fun.

Or at least I hope I got all that.

Feedback would be nice. And please, go to the beginning and tell me what the experience was like as a whole coherent story.  I imagine it’s easy to forget parts of the plot when the comic started 5 months ago.

And Also talk about what the characters were like and what sort of impressions you got from the characters. The character stuff is important to me.

Thank you all again for your support, hope you all enjoyed it, and be sure to come along and maybe even help with the next one.

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed 20

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The penultimate page. 

This is it. I've finally reached a conclusion. Page 21 will be up soon.

And look, Black Widower is actually doing and saying things!

Of course I couldn't end without Dr. Hair-Tonic having another outburst.

I wonder if anyone's noticed the direct contrast in hairstyles I do with Hair-Tonic. They have very specific looks where the hair at the side of their head is meant to be neutral every day Hair-Tonic while having the bangs out is their "war face" as it were. I tried to make sure I was showing their hair change as the situation escalated and de-escalated so we can see it slowly peer out as we see them get agitated and in the last page we see it go back under the headband.

And here it's still under the headband when they're angry but the lack of bangs being indicative that this is not an instigation that requires the "war face".

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed 19

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So, unless I feel like I need to spread the end of the story over a few pages then this is the penultimate page.

I can't believe I made it this far. This is great. It means I can make and finish a comic and it means I can do it again. I can't wait to do more, can't wait to figure out what my next project is gonna be.

Not sure there's anything that needs to be said about this other than I feel like I got a lot more jokes in this than I was expecting. Like it was only last page I noticed that I seemed to have had some sort of joke in nearly every page which isn't exactly something I planned for. I'm not even sure if they were even funny.

Speaking of which, now that I'm pretty much complete, be sure to start from the very very beginning and see how it looks and feels overall as a full story, and tell me about it. I'd appreciate that. 

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed 18

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Sorry for the lack of content, school is kicking my rear. I have some sketches for other stuff I'm working on I'll post later to beef up this place.

Anyhow, here it is. It's the penultimate to the penultimate.

I have lightly sketched out the next page and I still need to figure out the finale.

I made this comic mostly on the fly but obviously some planning went into some of it, but I didn't think this would be the sort of ending it would have. Because when I started I didn't think about the ending at all. And then as the story progressed I started to see what was unfolding in the plot an dialogue and this is sort of the only way it could've ended, in my opinion.

No vengeance, no knock down drag out fight, no Shadow having to pull out the billy club and tonfa, but ending on compassion. Because Dr. Hair-Tonic was always meant to be a sympathetic villain. Not even a real villain, just some person that just wanted to get more out of life and no one would give them a chance, and when they suddenly got all this power they had a chance to fight back against the world that shunned them for their gender identity, inability to be as personable, and general stature and sensitive demeanor.

They were tired of being ignored, tired of not having their research being taken seriously, and tired of being a nobody.

Dr. Herman Tinsel wanted to be a somebody.

Dr. Hair-Tonic is that somebody, for better or worse.

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed Page 17

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Ha ha ha, here it its, the next page, finished. After having sat on the sketched plan and being all indecisive about it for nearly two weeks.

This is the big culmination, the final speech that defines this story. And it comes from the dude who has been seen doing possibly the least.

I hope I’ve been able to convey the sort of guy Shadow is.

Actually I hope everyone’s come across okay. If people want to tell me their general idea of the individual characters I would love to hear to see how your perception lines up with mine.

As I reach the finish line, I worry about what the next story should be. I know most of you don’t know the rest of the LoH cast or the gallery of villains, but spitballing general ideas can easily make me be inspired based on who I’ve got and what I can do with them.

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed Page 14

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I had this ready for ages and completely forgot to put it up. I was supposed to have it up a week ago (Two weeks ago for patrons) but I got busy, worked on other bits of art, and it completely slipped my mind.

You can tell I come up with these comics on the fly because when I first started this comic back in late August, I hadn't learned the octopus thing until maybe a month ago.

It's a bit of serendipitous trivia followed by inspiration. I already knew how Dr. Hair-Tonic was going to get screwed over in this fight, but the Octopus thing helped add flavor to the proceedings.

It also demonstrates that despite Tai's "Biochem Nerd" comment earlier, he's no common jock-dummy. He, like most of his family (Who you'll get to know later), is a supergenius, but he isn't interested in fully embracing that aspect of himself but sometimes it comes out.

Also, at the behest of one of my good friends, I've been experimenting with line thickness to improve emphasis and differentiating distances better.

[mousart]

League of Heroes: Hairassed 13

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Tai’s jabs are much kinder in comparison to Drake’s, and he has jokes.

Also here’s a tidbit some may not have noticed, all my images of Gumboy throughout this comic have him wearing shinguards. He’s a soccer player and he put those in as part of his costume. While he prefers to stick to the back and throw gum at his enemies, if close quarters are necessary, he’s gonna kick ya.