Action Hero--Soft Assassin

[JEQ]

Soft Assassin

Submitted by Jason Quinlan

Backstory:

A failed chapter in genetic engineering, hybrid spore X-79 was developed as a food source that could thrive in harsh climates and in low-gravity outer space greenhouses. It demonstrated great adaptibility under a wide range of conditions, but was eventually revealed to generate highly toxic byproducts in the course of it's growth cycle. When the project was canceled, lead researcher Linda Hayes smuggled a sample of the spores out of the lab and resolved to continue it's development on her own.

The sample X-79 developed a rudimentary intellect and mobility and escaped containment. The home lab was contaminated with the spores and the toxicity killed the woman when she came into contact with them. The spores then colonized her body, modeling their continued physiological development on her anatomical structure. Somehow portions of Hayes' memories and emotional makeup were assimilated by the developing spore creature.

A week after Hayes stopped showing up at the research facility, a coworker discovered her poisoned remains in her apartment. There was no sign of any contamination in the building. The following week, the manager of the research facility found a cookie tin on his desk. When he opened it, lethal poison sprayed out killing him instantly. The fluid coalesced into a green skinned woman who went on a murderous rampage through the administrative wing, killing executives and security forces with poison barbs launched from her body. The woman critically injured several armored swat team members in hand to hand combat before diving out of a third story window and running off into the nearby woods where she successfully evaded pursuit.

Since then the creature has done contract work for various criminal organizations who have dubbed her the "Soft Assassin." She has also occassionally assisted superheroes and law enforcements agencies in times of crisis. Her motives remain a mystery.

Abilities/Characteristics:

--Decentralized nervous system. Although Soft resembles a human female, her body is composed of interconnected spores. She has no internal organs and can easily survive wounds (eg. taking a bullet to the head or heart area) that would be fatal in an actual human. Although she has a face and eyes, the creature can actually see from any clear suface of her body, so in reality she has no front or back. She typically moves as an athletic woman, but could just as easily walk on her hands, all fours, or some variation thereof for as long as desired.

--Density control. Soft's normal consistency approximates human flesh. She can increase the hardness of her surface area to thick leather with little effort. With concentration she harden small areas, like her fists, to the consistency of rock. Conversely, she can reduce cohesion until her mass flows on the ground like syrup.

--Superhuman strength and reflexes. Soft's reaction time is much greater than that of even a trained human being. She is able to dodge automatic weapon's fire and perform extreme feats of agility (walking across a tightrope on two fingers). She is able to lift a couple hundred pounds with ease, and can press roughly half a ton over her head for a short duration. She has an acrobatic fighting style that is difficult to anticipate based on the essentially inhuman ways she can move her form.

--Stamina. Soft can perform strong exertion for about 12 hours before beginning to fatigue. She doesn't require sleep or air, although she replicates breathing in order to simulate human speech. She heals quickly, recovering almost instantly from knife wounds and small arms fire. Blunt force doesn't generally cause her much damage although she can be stunned if the spores are dispersed strongly enough.

--Toxins. Soft can generate poisonous spikes from almost any part of her physique and fire them with great force. She can also generate corrosive toxins on any surface to burn through restraints or augment hand-to-hand strikes against armored opponents.Altough she generally will fire a volley of spikes at a single target or small group at one time, she is capable of firing a burst of toxic needles in a 360 degree radius around herself all at once. Soft wears a vinyl uniform with permeable sections that help her control the discharge of the spikes and make the attacks more accurate.

[SolidSnakexxx]

Very interesting back story for the Soft Assassin. I think with the story so strong like this makes me believe and scare of her powers and want to know more about why she sometimes work for the criminals and other times for the good side.

[C-Mad]

Very well thought out backstory!

Excellent considerations for her powers, as well as transportation mode, defenses, etc.

It had me thinking in the back of my mind of all the known spore killers I could think of...Lysol was about my best defense against this thing...I hoped a spray bottle would protect me, but it looks like I would need to have it disperse from a fire sprinkler, overhead...lol!

Great character concept. Look forward to the action pose for this one!

~OM

[Lucky_1]

Nice sketch Jason,
keep it up !

[Harmonic]

Hey JEQ, I really like your concept, a mas of couscous spores making up kind of a collective entity, that's brilliant. In my mind I picture your final image as her going in for the kill, with as her body shifts for a mass of spores to a deadly human form. Has a lot of dramatic potential.

[JUPITER]

good sketches,nice back story

[JEQ]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Here's my ZSphere base mesh. I'm not that savvy about using zspheres, had maybe 4 failed attempts before this version. One thing that was a hassle was the groin area where the legs connect with the pelves. In this version I just didn't connect them, figuring I was going to retopologize everything anyway. The process was irritating because after a while the adaptive skin started dropping out my changes; have no idea what I was doing wrong if anything. Finally I threw in the towel and stopped here.

[maxinkuk]

You're using far too many spheres, to make a limb you only need to attach a new one to another and then move it away, to add a joint you just click in the middle of the chain of ZSpheres with 'draw' selected and then you can also move that one to bend a knee for example.
Also, hold down the shift key to add a new sphere of the same dimension of the one you're attaching it to.
I'd recommend you spend half an hour reading the manual about them, there isn't much to know to use them in a basic way.
Good concept by the way.

[C-Mad]

Check out CannedMushroom's video on zspheres. He shows a pretty quick and easy way to make a charater mesh with them.

~OM

[JEQ]

Thanks for the replies. I've read the manual and watched the videos for how to create Zspheres. My intention is to skin these and then retopologize the whole thing. If that's the case does it really matter how many spheres I use? I used the amount I did just to establish the basic contours of the figure for visual reference. That craptacular mesh isn't staying regardless.

[maxinkuk]

True, it doesn't matter how many you use but if you keep it simple you have less of a chance of getting into trouble. For what I can see in your mesh you have serious issues both at the hips and on the toes, there the parts of the mesh produced by different spheres are penetrating each other, you won't disentangle those for sure, if you keep it simple you avoid all those problems.
To change the contour of a basic shape you just go through it with the inflate brush and in a minute you're done, it's much simplier than doing it with Zspheres.

[JUPITER]

Or drop it down to res 1 and move the mesh around that works good also.
keep it up man!

[JEQ]

Hi guys. I retopologized the mesh, hopefully I didn't make and major mistakes. The biggest hassle was the hands. I ended up making new ones, and retopping them to connect them with the initial mesh.

[JUPITER]

That was fast,did you take a snap shot of the topo in progress?
just wanted to see for ref..

[SolidSnakexxx]

Looking great so far for the base mesh starting from the ZSphere construct. My humble advice is that if you are going through the process of retopologizing, why don't you make the areas like the breast shape more naturally. Or perhaps add geo in certain areas that might need more polygons like the eyes and stuff? Other than that you have a great start!