I'm not going to lie, I honestly thought I'd be finished with the latest Iron Man: My Hero Academia chapter by now, considering it's my main focus due to me, essentially, having caught up to the manga... my brain has been stuck on MHA. However, since it's not the case, I did want to share some visual work I did for the series... now I have posted these in my Instagram, but since I hardly have any followers there, I figured I should show you all directly!
Poster 1: Two sides of the same coin
Some of you have seen this already, but this was the first "poster" I edited after I finished adapting the Sports Festival arc to this series! I am very excited to get into the Stain arc, and... inevitably... deal with Takumi/Iron Man's ultimate clash with Stain. However... the first line... two sides of the same coin had me thinking....
Poster 2: The head that wears the crown
What happens when Takumi meets a villain who, like him, can see the flaws of the current hero society? What happens when Takumi and the person he must defeat both have a fundamental belief that current hero society has started to forget what a real hero is, amidst them being treated as movie star level celebrities? What happens when Takumi realizes the weight of the mantle he decided to bring into his world? What happens when Takumi realizes... that the role of Iron Man is a heavy burden and not just the instrument of bringing about positive change to the world? How will he ever know if he's doing the right thing? Luckily he has Class 1-A and Spirit Tony to help him find his way.
Poster 3; SPIDER-MAN!!
Considering the fact that he's the face of my account, it's clear that Spider-Man is my favorite super hero of all time! I honestly tried to keep him out of this story since I tend to want to make Spider-Man the main character of every story he is in, but it felt... wrong to be writing a Marvel story with no trace of the webslinger. So, Spider-Man is going to have an integral role going forward. So much so that he just HAD to be hyped up!! What is his next challenge? And what happens when Takumi and Spirit Tony find themselves face to face with an older, alternate (when compared to the one Tony knew) Peter Parker? Welcome to the Iron Man: My Hero Academia prominent cast members, Spider-Man!!!
Poster 4: A student and his mentor
With the backdrop of the poster being Musutafu City, the very city that Iron Man protects and the home city of UA High... and with the rising prominence of Takumi's newly completed back up armor, the Silver Centurion, in Season 2... I feel this, rather simple poster, is the simplest depiction of Season 2 as a whole. Takumi continues to grow and design his own takes of the Iron Man armor (hence them being more comic book like than the ones Tony had previously used in his world, the MCU), and through it all... Spirit Tony watched over him... united in the intention to make this world better. It took me a while to get the repulsors to center the way I wanted it to though... but I wanted it to appear in two different ways, at the same time... on one hand... Takumi and Tony's repulsors are united, since both are bonded through the mantle of Iron Man, but also Tony's smaller repulsor is inside Takumi's larger one... Tony's time has past... but his heart and good qualities are being passed down to his mentor, who needs to grow and become his own Iron Man... like how Peter B. Parker said in the Into the Spider Verse trailer "Don't do it like me, do it like you."
Poster 5: Before and After
Before I post these pictures... I just want to say this edit took FOREVER!! It was like pulling apart pieces of a puzzle and then reassembling them to get a different picture. Like with prior "poster" images, I used fan art of Naruto Uzumaki as a visual reference to Takumi, who resembles Naruto... except Takumi lacks Naruto's whisker marks and has gold/yellow eyes to match his blonde hair... and I also had to change a few of the character renders to make them all fit in the space my photo editor allowed me... so... first I will show you the original pure MHA version of the poster I essentially, painstakingly remade for this series...
I always liked this poster. It is one of the only ones that has Class 1-A wear formal wear that isn't their UA uniforms. And, as you all know, near the end of Season 2 I will be adapting the 'Two Heroes' movie into this season and Melissa will become a regular character in this version of events thanks to Takumi, although I will not spoil how that works and how it comes to pass... and so after I found the most perfect Naruto fan art for this kind of edit, I got right to work on a Takumi and Melissa edit... only for me to further challenge myself... resulting in...
My photo editor gave me less space than the original poster, not to mention putting Takumi in front as the lead character also meant that I had to rearrange everyone's placements anyway. When it comes to Takumi and Melissa (since the suit Takumi/Naruto wears in this is what Takumi will wear during the party) I wanted to make it obvious that the two will connect to each other, and orange and blue are two complimenting colors in a color wheel... so Takumi wearing an orange tie as Melissa wears a blue dress... perfect!! Also, Takumi's jacket being black has a good contrast to Melissa's skirt part of the dress being white... basically, I really wanted to focus on Takumi and Melissa looking good together, however since there was so much empty space, I decided to try and recreate the poster 'Before', and found that due to Takumi's sudden addition and my photo editor not allowing me lots of space to place characters, I had to rearrange the positions of the characters (and in the case of Kirishima and Kaminari, their renders) in order to get the new version of the poster to work. Also I excluded Mineta because, no matter where I put him, he never seemed to fit into spaces without cutting into other characters... how the shortest character in the whole original poster became the most problematic, I have no idea... however, after I got the group to look as good together as I possibly could, there was still some large patches of empty space... so I filled those up with a more see through Iron Man, since he is Takumi's alter ego after all, and I also put the Iron Man: My Hero Academia logo (which is just the MCU Iron Man logo and the MHA anime logo stacked on each other) in the bottom right hand corner of the poster and then bam... it was done. It took HOURS to get the character rearrangements to look good. Also one thing I love about the way I changed Kirishima's render in the poster is how I feel it complimented Todoroki... Todoroki is slightly above Midoriya, looking to the left, Kirishima is slightly below Midoriya with his eyes closed but with a smile with his face facing the right... the two extremes... Todoroki's serious face looming left and Kirishima's goofier face 'looking' right was a detail I really loved and I hope you guys enjoy that little change. I feel like the more I make these poster images, the more I'm improving... Of course, I ultimately make these in order to show my passion for the works I write, and since I lack the ability to draw, I still wanted to find some way to help visualize the ideas I had in my head. Sure, it's no Steve Ditko Spider-Man pin up quality art or anything... but it just makes me happy to get as close as I can to seeing my vision visually come to life.
Also I can't wait for these two to meet and for you all to see them interact... I have been putting A LOT of thought in how I want Takumi and Melissa's dynamic to be... ever since she first cameoed in Season 1 with Takumi accidentally liking Melissa's Instagram post of her in an Iron Man shirt! This next picture is not a poster, just a screenshot of the two characters I have been hinting at their inevitable meet up in the last poster...I simply cannot wait for you all to finally see these two, finally with each other, when the I-Island arc finally launches.
Anyway... this has been your bonus content to hold you all over for the actual next chapter of...