UltimateLomeli

I got into art at an early age, and I've never looked back. I love creating. I love writing, I love drawing, I love meticulously planning my work out to the minutiae. But I don't love it like I used to. I worked hard for six years to attain my current skill level, but it brought about something I had never encountered before - the rampant thievery in the micro hero community.

I go off half-cocked, even if I'm fighting the good fight - that an artist has a right to their own work - it's the way I go about it that I'm going to do my damnedest to change. It's me going on a warpath; it's me being a dick, basically. I try to do the right thing, but go about it the completely wrong way.

A friend told me it didn't matter to him if parts I made for him were appropriated by others. I was wondering why it upsets me so much. I guess it's that a lot of the artists who use my work are much more popular than I am. They've got thousands of followers, with favorites and comments out the wazoo. They receive more recognition using parts from my work than I do for my work. Even if I like them, even if they're my friends, it hurts.

But I honestly don't feel like anyone uses my art out of malice or ill will. I really need to keep that in mind. Do they take my work without my permission? Yeah. Do they do it specifically to spite me and be an asshole? No. Can I handle the situation better? Oh, yeah, I handle it very poorly, more often than not.

I still love this art form. I love sharing my art with all of you. I plan to keep going for a long time. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm still learning, and if I've ever gone after you, I hope you can forgive me for going about it the wrong way, because that's not cool of me, whether the anger is "justified" or not. And I am sorry, and I apologize to those of you I've taken shots at. I'll do my best to make amends to each of you.

So many of you are fantastic artists, and I love coming on here when I can and seeing how you guys evolve and inspire me to get better at our art form just to keep up with all of you. I'm going to learn not to let it upset me so much. 

If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that we can all resolve to be better to each other. I know I can. Thanks for reading, folks. I'm going to be better about all this. I should have some stuff to share with you all tomorrow that I hope you'll all enjoy.
    - Lomeli

Golden Frieza was a culmination of years of training in this art and almost two hours of work, and in just one day, he's become one of my most popular uploads. 20 favorites and 7 comments in 24 hours. That's obviously not a HUGE amount compared to some of the super artists on here who blow minds again and again with their work, but that's a lot to me, dammit. And I'm beyond thankful for everyone.
A lot of my Original Character work doesn't fare as well for reasons I completely understand. No one, aside from me, knows the characters, so it's a challenge to find an audience for, say, Dark Avenger. That said, I love making my characters. They are all near and dear to my heart, so I will continue to make them for the foreseeable future.
However, I'd also like to reach a wider audience, and a friend of mine suggested making more established characters in order to reach said coveted audience, and that's where this journal comes in. Now, I don't intend to make every single suggestion everyone makes, but if a lot of you suggest the same thing or if one suggestion strikes me in particular as fun or a challenge, I will make it.
Knowing me, and how quickly I get burnt out on things, I probably will get burned out on this as well, just warning you all. That said, hopefully it'll be a fun thing to do for a while. I'm leaning towards anime/ cartoon and video game characters at the moment. So, what are some fun suggestions you'd all care to see?

Copied and pasted from a post on MIB/ MicroHeroes International Board. asked us how we came up with our original characters. Thought I'd share this with you all on here, if anyone wants to know. I'd love to hear how you guys came up with your OCs.
Dark Avenger has existed in some shape or form since I was about seven years old. At the time, he was Robot Man, Iron Man meets Batman - a multi-millionaire who built a suit of armor that allowed him to fight crime. He could fire energy beams from his hands, wore teal armor, had a long flowing red cape, and a rocket-powered car that took him from A to B, along with a sidekick who donned similar armor.
Years later, when I was about ten or eleven, the angst of becoming a preteen made me want to take Robot Man and revamp him. The few recurring elements were his extravagant wealth and the ability to fire energy from his palms. Now, he was Son Goku meets Hell Spawn. He was James Richards, the orphaned son of a millionaire family who bonded with a dying alien freedom fighter to become Darkness, a gritty over-powered anti-hero who wasn't above killing if it meant saving others. He took on aliens from other planets and other dimensions, along with eldritch abominations. His biggest failure? Failing to stop Destruction from killing the woman he loved. When I told this story to my sister, she absolutely hated it. She hated everything about it. Not because Darkness was an overpowered character with no weaknesses, but because of how gritty and sad the story was. I decided to take Darkness and reboot him once more to become something more marketable. At age thirteen, I started almost from the ground up. Jim Guerrero would be a fifteen year old teenager who bonds with not an alien, but a protoplasmic suit with a mind of its own that would guide him, and that, he originally thought, would force him to fight evil. Dark Avenger, a terrible name that took forever to come up with, had stripped down versions of Darkness' powers, having a sixth sense that allowed him to feel other living creatures and assess their threat level, being able to fire concussive plasma blasts from his hands, but now he had weaknesses. The suit's mind originally clashed with him on several things like keeping his powers secret, and the drain from abusing his "dark blasts" could potentially kill him. Over the years, I've refined the character. His design has evolved to drift away from Spider-Man, and some people have told me Dark Avenger resembles Guyver or Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle, but as I had no idea who the eff either of those characters were when I came up with Dark Avenger, I retain that he is my own creation. Also, Dark Avenger has elements of Spider-Man, constantly joking in battle to throw off suspicion about how terrified he is, and being a naturally intelligent, nerdy, geeky loner, but these traits mirror my own, as anyone who knows me really well will attest. (Unrelated, I have a huge love for science, and I never feel more like a huge nerd than when I rant about something simple science related to my friends and they shoot me the look that tells me I've lost them five miles back.) He's my favorite of my characters and the one I've spent the most time on. I'm actually revamping his story arcs for now and working on bringing his story more to life in the upcoming months complete with micros and story summaries.
Would Dark Avenger fit into either Marvel or DC?
I never really planned for him to be a comic book character in a company other than my own, but if I had to pick, I'd say he'd fit better in the Marvel Universe. I'd love to see him banter with Spider-Man. If Ultimate Marvel were still a thing, his strictly science based universe would be at home there. I'd still want to create my own company and have his stories be on there, so I could retain full creative control over him.

• The first 20 people that comment wanting to be on this journal will be featured below. I will choose three deviations that I like the most from their gallery.

• If I feature you, you must to do the same in your journal, putting the tagger (me) and three pieces of my art on your journal.

• The idea of this is not to get a free feature, but to spread art around for everyone!

1. 
First to be featured, the lovely Kat, who I've had the pleasure of knowing for a little over five years now, as we are both members on MIB. I was even there when she became a moderator of the site. She's like a kooky, lovable aunt, and she puts so much passion into all the art she does. Her gallery goes back several years, with tons of goodies to see.

I don't think I'll ever understand the obsession with My Little Pony, but if there's one thing I do know when I see it, it's good art, and this is Kat showing off her superb range with different styles of just one character.

Anyone who knows me well knows I got my start in digital art by altering sprites, and my own sprite set is getting a third installment this year. There's two things I love seeing, and it's sprites and original characters, so this combination of both of those things is fantastic. Definitely inspired to do something similar with my own characters someday.

I'm also a sucker for Disney, but, hey, who isn't? Disney sprites in various poses? Yeah, more of that, please. The vivid colors really make this one pop.
2.
Don't know Hernan on a personal level, but my journey into his gallery revealed a lot to love about this microhero artist, and I had trouble narrowing it down to just three deviations I liked, simply because there was so much to enjoy, so definitely go give him a watch.

I love team shots. Anytime you can show me how well all your characters look as a team, please do. The use of poses in this set is great. The designs are top-notch. What's not to love?

I haven't seen all that many Arkham Knight micros, which is one of the main reasons I made mine, so seeing Hernan's take on the Knight was definitely a treat. The lines and shading are fantastic.

Here's another thing I love, and it's the evolution of a character. A lot of people do this with Batman, and Hernan is no different, so I almost used that one for this, but Iron Man is another personal favorite character and this evolution is so well-done and mirrors my own take on the character. You know what they say about great minds, right? The red and gold in use here are superb.
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Never done one of these, but the lovely tagged me, so in the spirit of good fun and as a much-needed distraction, here we go...

Rules:
You should say 13 things about yourself
You must answer the 13 questions asked by the individual who tagged you, just as you must ask 13 questions to whoever you tag.
Choose 13 people to tag.
Make sure they know have been tagged.
No "if you read this, you have been tagged."
You can tag whoever tagged you.
Make a journal! Don't be lazy.
If you do not complete this within a week of being tagged, you should obey a desire from whomever tagged you.

Things about me:

1. I have a dog I raised since she was a puppy. Her name is Cookie, and she's the most loving, loyal companion I could have asked for.
2. I used to only make traditional art. I got into microing after my best friend showed me ZeBallBreaker's old micro site and his Frankensteined edits and I knew I could do a better job. Digital art became my main medium after my hands became too jittery from all the medication I take to be able to remain steady long enough for art.
3. My middle name is known to very few. The only person to ever call me by it is the woman who suggested it/ my grandmother, who wanted me to have purely religious names due to her strong faith. My mother obliged, but it doesn't seem like she likes my middle name, either. My screen name on here is just the word Ultimate in front of my surname, which I like to go by, as I no longer feel my first name suits the person I've become. 
4. If I had to pick any super power, it would be the ability to fly. In my favorite dreams, I can fly. It's what inspired my original Dreamworld with my alternate universe counter-part having the ability to fly. If I could cheat and say telekinesis which would allow me to fly and do other things, I'd go with that, instead.
5. Dark Avenger, my main character, has existed in some shape or form since I was six or seven years old, where he was more like Iron Man and Batman before I rebooted him when I was eleven and made him more into Spawn with Goku's powers, before he underwent one more transformation to be more relatable and more down to earth. 
6. My favorite comic book characters are Spider-Man and Batman, whom I've developed traits similar to.
7. As a teenager, I was really depressed, angry, and bitter at the world. After a traumatic event that turned me into a reclusive shut-in for almost two years, I decided that wouldn't be me anymore. I openly embraced being deeply flawed, stopped being angry, stopped being bitter, got better at handling my mental illnesses, rid myself of my more arrogant traits, and decided to be more open to new ideas and less judging. I cut a lot of people out of my life and started going by last name, Lomeli.
8. If you'll notice from my art, I rarely do established designs. I feel they limit me. I tend to make redesigns of established characters or make my own original characters.
9. I was always a huge nerd and geek as a kid, and not much has changed as an adult. I still love science, to the point I get excited over new research and development, something my friends roll their eyes at, and even though English is my second language, I seem to have a better grasp on it than even people who only know English. My first grade teacher told me there was no point in learning something if you didn't apply it. I took that to heart. 
10. My ultimate goal is to be the creator, head writer, lead designer, and star of a number of animated series based on the original work I upload here.
11. I'm a very picky eater. I have always been a very picky eater.
12. I have more internet friends than real world ones. The internet has been good to me in that regard.
    
13. Even the best of my friends have trouble telling whether or not I'm joking/ being sarcastic or being completely serious. This, despite that, Kevin, my oldest friend, has known me since we were six years old. Were I to pontificate on the matter, I suppose it's because I'm just too committed to the act to break character. Sometimes I don't know if I'm serious or not. I don't think I'm ever completely one or the other. 

Questions:

1. Applejack or Rainbow Dash? Ah, jeez, typical Kat... I barely know who these characters are, but based on what little I know, I'm going with Rainbow Dash, final answer.
2. Star Trek or Star Wars? I've barely seen any episodes of Star Trek, but I like the idea of a peaceful era where humans have transcended pettiness. The new movies don't do it for me, as they throw that right out the window. Star Wars, though. I love Star Wars. The original trilogy is a little dated, and we all know the prequel trilogy can be pretty terrible, but that universe and its characters are more endearing to me, so Star Wars takes this one for me.
3. What do you think of Twilight? Stephanie Meyer's Twilight? I've never read the books, and I couldn't stand watching the movies. I remember a girl from high school I held in high regards at the time told me she loved the books and knew the films would butcher something she loved. And I heard all these great things about the books, but from what little I'm aware of the series, it seems like a poorly thought out self-insert fiction. A flawless character who is not at all like a vampire falls for a plain, boring high school girl? I'll pass. I'm not going to bash the series if you do like it, but it just doesn't do it for me.
4. DC Comics or Marvel Comics? and Why? Marvel, definitely. Even from the get-go they had more relatable characters and more real-world situations. Stan Lee gave his characters flaws and made them just like us. Even now, when the playing field is more level in that regards, I think Marvel just does a better job of handling their characters.
5. If you could have ANYTHING in the world right now, just for you, what would it be? An apartment all my own. How sad is it that millennials are so flat-broke we're romanticizing decent housing? I love my family, but I get tired of the constant criticisms and orders. I just want an apartment I can furnish to my liking and set my rules to and that my dog and I can do whatever we want in.
6. Steam vs  Diesel? Ehhh, tricky one. Gun to my head? Steam. 
7. Of my MLP OCs, who is your fave (if no MLP, them my other OCs)? I don't know much about your/ Kat's MLP OCs. If I had to pick a favorite, I'd go with Lisabit. She's adorable, and I like black horses. One of my mother's nicknames for me is Azabache, the Spanish name for Black Beauty, the horse. I'm not even remotely dark-skinned. It's just a running gag that she was worried her kids would have their father's skin tone. Otherwise, I like Kat. She oozes confidence. 
8. What's your favorite dessert? Cookies and cream ice cream. I also like most chocolate ice creams. Ice cream in general is good. My cousin calls me Iceman 'cause I would always head to the fridge and check for ice cream when I got to his place. My ears perk up at the mention of it. He said it in another room once, and I immediately popped up, which made him burst out in laughter, as what he said was that I'd show up at that exact moment if he happened to mention ice cream. I can tell when it's the real deal or that artificial stuff, too.
9. If I were to make you a dreamcatcher, what colors would it be in (outside, webbing and extras)? I'd just be grateful I got a gift. Hmm, black and red with webbing resembling a spider's, maybe the Avenger A in the middle, and some blue feathers. I like feathers. I wanted to collect them as a kid, but my mom said they were covered in diseases. 
10. What are your plans for Valentines/Singles Awareness Day? My dog Cookie's birthday is on the 13th, so I'm probably going to keep the celebration going for her. I never have any plans. I've never been on a date, never been kissed, nothing, nor do I know any women in real life aside from one platonic friend who lives too far for me to visit as often as I'd like.
11. or or ? Lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh my! I think of the animals I relate to most of this set would be the bear. A hairy fat animal that spends a lot of time asleep? Yeah, that's me. Was cute as a kid but will rip you in half if you bother it? Yeah, that's me. That said, I've always loved lions. I admire their social structure and who didn't love The Lion King?
12. Favorite book or fanfiction genre? Harry Potter will always hold a special place in my heart. Comic books have Batman: Hush or the initial run of Ultimate Spider-Man, i.e Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley's 110 issue run.
13. Current favorite movie and/or TV Show? Don't watch a lot of TV. I'm loving everything Marvel is doing with their films, and Daredevil on Netflix was fantastic. Doctor Who, I've seen the first three seasons of that this year. Alas, it's no longer on Netflix. Thanks a lot, BBC. Bojack Horseman is great. Arrow, The Flash, also good. Favorite movie of all time would probably be The Dark Knight. The opening scene alone gave me chills. It's my favorite installment of my favorite trilogy.