Superior Spider-Man 3D

Here’s a look at a 3D piece I cooked up of Marvel’s Superior Spider-Man.

New, Improved and/or SUPERIOR

For those of you who aren’t up on the latest comics news, last year Peter Parker ended up finally losing to longtime foe Dr. Octopus (Otto Octavius). Essentially, Otto discovered who Spider-Man really was, and through the same circumstance managed to actually switch bodies with Peter Parker.

This in itself was bad enough, except Otto’s body was dying, he was literally hours way from death when he made the switch with Peter. The left virtually no time for the real Spider-Man to figure out a way to switch himself back.

Unfortunately, he failed to do so. Realizing that he was going to lose, Peter figured the only thing he could do was try to infuse Octavius with his own sense of responsibility and heroism.

It (sort of) worked.

So even though Peter lost, and was gone, he had managed to make something of a hero out of Otto. Sure, he was a very dark, violent sort of hero with a warped and remorseless sense of justice, but he still came down on the side of being a hero and protecting the people in the city.

Basically, Otto decided that instead of being the Amazing Spider-Man, he would be the Superior Spider-Man, and he would best Peter Parker in every way, by being a better Peter Parker.

BACKLASH

As you can imagine, killing Peter Parker was not a fan-favorite decision.

People were up in arms, the message boards were boiling over, and the writer even received death threats over it.

Damn, come on people. Some folks take these things too seriously.

Still, it’s easy for me to say because I wasn’t really buying any of the 4 or 5 Spider-Man titles out each month anyway. I suspect there were many people like me who weren’t that interested any more, which is why Marvel felt the need for such a drastic action.

From speaking to my inside source (ok, he’s just the guy at my local comic shop), the sales haven’t been great on Superior. A lot of loyal fans dropped the title on principle.

I pick up the title now and again just to see what’s going on. It’s a bit comical how no one can figure out this isn’t the same guy anymore. It seems like the person who knew Peter the least is the only one who’s figured it out.

So apparently Peter Parker should be back sometime in 2014. Again, I’m told that the timetable has been moved up since Superior Spider-Man is not selling as well as Marvel had hoped.

3D ACTION

I’d been working on a Spider-Man 3D piece in Daz Studio for awhile, but never finished it. when I finally got some time recently to get back to it, I decided that I’d scrap it and start over with the Superior version.

So as usual I had to make some Photoshop adjustments to some of the textures I was using for my original Spider-Man piece to get them looking like the new guy.

Plus, I had to 3D model the arm bracers from scratch in Blender. It wasn’t exactly hard, but I spent more time on them that I expected to in order to get them to look right.

A lot of the Spider-Man costume was already created by a talented 3D artist named Joe Quick, so I can’t take all the credit.

INFERIOR Spider-Renders

Here’s a look at some of the working renders I did in this project. I had a tough time with the city background, but eventually it came together in a way I was (mostly) satisfied with.

SPIDER-WRAP UP

Here’s another version of the same piece from the top.

If you look closely you can see that the costume is more blue than the top one. I originally posted this on my Facebook page, and someone let me know that the Superior costume of Dr. Octopus is a lot more black than blue.

At first I played it off, but then it started to get to me, so I changed it in Photoshop to the black color at the top. The final render was done from Blender, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back into the whole Blender project and re-render it.

So that’s my first piece of 2014 done and done. Here’s to many more this year.

See you guys next time!