Machosketch

[Machofish]

 

Another set.

 

It doesn't happen as much now that we're in 2020, but back in 2016, every time a vamp got detected the crew would just all sense of decency and go full valid mode.

 

 

Referencing a round from a long time ago where the admins decided to spawn a xeno queen right at the start. It was hard-fought, but the crew got overrun eventually. I was still learning how to pilot mechs at the time, so my attempt to go on a rampage in a durand was fairly short-lived.

 

>HE THINKS HE'S ENTITLED TO A LAWYER.

My somewhat clumsy attempt at a meme that's more-or-less dead now.

Obscure art history reference, go!

I'll do a detailed request sketch for the first person who posts the painting that this image is based on.

...After all this time I still need more practice on drawing depth on the limbs and drawing legs/feet. Ah well, I'll figure it out eventually.

 

I had to do a few drafts before I finally got a Durand drawing that I thought looked good enough. I know that missile racks are currently bugged, but whatever - rule of cool.

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by Machofish

[ExGame]

 

Have always been following your art thread and love the content.

There's something about the details/shading I really like on your style, makes it look filled and realistic instead of it being plain.

But for the depth of legs/arms I'd recommend to have a bigger contrast on what's supposed to be at the back and at the front.

 

And for the quiz I'm inclined to say this, because the pose looks very similar just from a different angle.

 

[Machofish]

 

Similar, but not quite. Here, I'll give you a hint - you're looking for a French painting from 1896.

 

While the server was down, I was asking for stuff to doodle and Counterfeitguise said I could sketch her character, Rissa.

 

This was one of the first times I've seriously tried to draw a 'furry' character without ripping off someone else's art style.

 

Krav Maga is fair and easy to fight against.

 

It came up in the discord that Counter didn't like anime, so I thought this would be a fun thing to draw.

Call "BIKINI KATANA BABES IV" a dumb title if you want, but nothing can top the monumental stupidity of Konami's "Castlevania: Erotic Violence Pachinko Machine".

 

[ExGame]

 

Well, can only be this one then.

Hehe, I understood the "On behalf of justice" reference.

 

[Infant Punter]

 

your thread is still the only reason i come back to this forum

 

adore the style, keep it up

 

[Machofish]

 

More? More.

It's certainly been a while. I'm not as sure about these ones - either I'm out of practice, or I'm expecting more of myself than I used to.

 

Interpretation of Sly Bashline participating in what I can only assume to be some sort of ancient and venerable east European meditative crouch.

Unfortunately I ran out of paper as I got to the legs and feet, so there's a bit of a body proportion issue - I'll pretend it's 'stylized' instead, though.

 

Since ExGame went through all the hard work of finding that painting, I did this as a request - this was from a round sometime in 2015 (I think?) where Katiki got arrested with Sleeping Carp, broke out in processing, and proceeded to beat the crap out of most of the security department before Warden Pablo showed up with the krav maga gloves.

As far as the sketch, I found this pretty challenging: I had a bit of trouble sketching a convincing martial arts pose, let alone figuring out how a vox would look doing it.

 

I wasn't really satisfied with how the previous image turned out - the linework was pretty rough, plus I think I made a mistake trying to throw Cecilia in as a foreground element (reference to Saving Private Ryan, by the way), THEN I tried adding Pablo on the right - hauling a dead officer out of the way (cropped out because I didn't finish that part), which ended up making it look like I was working with 3 different perspective vanishing points at once.

Overall, I wasn't particularly impressed with my own work, so I did another sketch of Katiki to make up for it.

 

Sketch done on request for Mystery of Darkness (If I'm remembering the username right), of their character Draacthorn Shaantiid (I probably spelled that wrong, too). I had a lot of trouble trying to draw Unathi from the front, and I think this turned out alright. I think I wasn't supposed to draw him in security officer gear, so that's probably my fault too - it's a good thing I'm not getting paid for this, or I'd be in trouble.

 

Contrary to common belief, it is possible to take down a fully-powered vampire - even if it's an enormous pain in the ass.

For context: back in 2017, vampires were a bit simpler and had a different skill set. They had a midgame ability "Chiropteran screech" would stun everyone inside of an area-of-effect and shatter all glass nearby (lights, windows).

Shouting or screaming expressions in particular always gave me trouble, so I figured I'd practice. Just to make things even more complex, I tried doing something wonky with the perspective again causing the characters to look a bit strange when compared to each other size-wise, but I can pretend I did that intentionally.

 

Edited May 7, 2024 by Machofish

[Shadeykins]

 

I like how "rough" the drawings are.

 

I'm literally talking about the way you draw lines for reference, I prefer rough lines over smooth, contiguous, clean-cut ones. It lends a certain quality to your art, especially in stylistic terms.

 

[Mystery of Darkness]

Thanks for the draw, it is very good, also, i like you art style, it is ages better than mine!

[thebeoni]

 

  Machofish said:

A shot at drawing an Unathi Sec, with a human for height comparison.

 

 

 

I have good reason to believe that is Jas'Tijrs only true liznerd to ever play on para

 

[Machofish]

It ain't over 'till it's over!

 

An assorted collage of Cecilias. Not the most interesting thing in the world, but I feel that it represents solid progress compared to my less defined style in the very first post.

 

"So, do you plan on doing your job sometime this shift? Y'know, the one your department's been shouting at you to do for the past twenty minutes?"

 

"D-uh, why's a civilian got a nitro tank?"

 

I promised Mystery of Darkness that I'd take another crack at drawing his character. I think this might warrant a 'Round Three', since there's still a few details I'd probably do differently if I went at this again.

 

I always wonder what goes through the minds of people who willingly dogpile Nuclear Operatives: Do they not know about the explosive implants, or are they aware of it, but persisting anyway to 'throw themselves on the grenade' so to speak?

 

Dogfighting the nukies in the Security Pod may seem like a good idea at first.

At first.

Annoyingly, the sketchbook paper was larger than my flatbed scanner, so it's cropped a bit awkwardly on the left and right sides.

 

From a round that happened a month or so ago. Not to hog the limelight (absolutely to hog the limelight), Cecilia managed to be the last survivor on-station of a terrorspiders infestation - discounting those who may have skipped to the outposts or out the gateway. It started well, the crew was armed to the keel with guns and ammo, but a stationwide power outtage event occured - lasting for about fifteen minutes, stuck in the starboard primary hallway, while the silence was punctuated by the occasional sounds of sporadic gunfire, screaming, and crunching as the terrorspiders honed in on stragglers and picked off isolated crew. By the time the lights came back on, the sec comms were completely silent. Then the rest of the round essentially became the 'House Escape' scene from "28 Weeks Later" - except with gigantic spiders instead of zombies and a security spacepod instead of a motorboat. The Prince of Terror even took a couple bites out of the pod as it was taking off, which was enough to light it on fire and force a bail the second it left the hangar. By the end the only crew left on the public radio were Cecilia and the AI, who regrettably got left behind as the Deathsquad had armed the nuke and booked it.

While I wouldn't exactly call "People saved from terrorspiders: 0" to be the description of a 'successful' HoS round, it was still very memorable.

 

Everyone always complains about how weak IPCs are to EMPs, yet here I am, still amazed at how IPCs can avoid death every time an antag incorrectly assumes that snapping off an IPC's limbs means they're actually down-and-out.

 

Extreme People-Fishing: Cyberiad Edition

 

Flight attendant IPC. Originally based on Peppy-bot's description. I always imagined her having a ridiculously bubbly personality and one of those annoying voices that squeaks the last syllable of every sentence and manages to make every sentence sound like a question.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

Yays!!! 
Happy to see you're posting drawings/sketches again!!

[sasanek12]

Damn, these are great! I love the one about dogpiling Nuke Ops, mainly because it's so true.

Keep 'em coming!

[KasparoVv]

The look on that Vox' face made me crack up hardcore. Hilarious and awesome work, super happy to see you still posting in here.

 

The abductor looks SICK.

Edited July 11, 2017 by KasparoVv

[Machofish]

A while back, there was a jokey discussion on the discord about what a Tajaran-Human hybrid baby would look like.

"Your mind begins to bubble and ooze as it tries to comprehend what it sees."

 

I feel a little guilty over only having one sketch to show after neglecting this thread for so long, so I'm throwing in a bunch of non-SS13-related sketches I did for a D&D campaign I've been DM'ing:

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One thing I really love about D&D is that there's a massive amount of pre-established lore to play around with as a DM--each of the above were enemies from "Thay", a nation of power-hungry necromancers from D&D's "Forgotten Realms" setting. Since Thay doesn't have any strong historical analogues, I drew from a bunch of different sources when coming up with their armour and clothing.

 

 

After the first few sessions, I moved the party away from Thay since fighting the undead gets stale after a while (at least as I was running out of creative undead encounters that were appropriate for their party level). I introduced them to the Narfelli--another Forgotten Realms' nation that doesn't have much 'canon' detail beyond the fact that they're a collection of 'dangerous' tribal societies with a tradition of demon-binding.

 

   

Two questgivers that the party is going to be meeting for my next planned session. Looking back, I'm starting to realize all the faces I draw tend to have the same stern, slightly disdainful expression no matter who I'm drawing, so I'm thinking I should work on that.

 

  

NPCs I plan to introduce later in my campaign: I will withhold further details for now in order to mess with my players.

I am aware that having gills along the waist is no excuse to have impractical midriff-baring armour.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

Would Cecilia adopt a Tajaran-Human hybrid baby?   In my new headcanon she does 
 

As a side note, D&D is always great for inspiration and playing with others!

[Machofish]

"Whatever's poking me back there had better be an unsecured stun baton or so help me..."

 

Coders experimented with using TG's "Peacekeeper Borgs" for a while. Unfortunately it was less "amusing hugbots" and more "lag-inducing avalanche of cookies" and "can't hear anything because of harm alarm spam."

Portrait of Cecilia for practice. I decided it looked way too serious for SS13 so I thought to myself, "what would lighten this up?"

Cult regalia.

We had a large cult update that came along with an number of unique and unusual bugs features: For instance, player-controlled mouse cultists.

Another amusing bug feature was that cult knives inflicted a 1-hit kill through instant bloodloss.

Well, amusing for the cultists I assume. Sec, not so much.

COME ON AND SLAM!!!

Edited August 3, 2019 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

Gasp! Exciting to see a new post. 

[Machofish]

I posted this batch at 4:00am so I'm probably going to have to edit the captions later.

Trying to figure out how to break Same Face Syndrome.

  On 8/15/2017 at 1:44 PM, FPK said:

Alissa is like morphine. She has a very neutralizing personality that I can't say no to, even when she wants to hang around the HoS's office, or when she breaks into security for a pair of jackboots. It's too easy to get distracted by her, which makes her my greatest bane to security.

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- Thread.

Not sure where Alissa Bennett went, but before my most recent hiatus she had a gimmick of devoting an unnerving amount of energy into expressing how much she liked Cecilia and how much work she put into trying to emulate her habits and appearance -- which was immediately unusual and a little unnerving considering that Alissa was a bit of a bubbly socialite whilst Cecilia was, simply put, not.

Supplementary.

 

Cecilia hasn't had a lot of great interactions with plasmamen.

 

There's been more than a few rounds where the Syndicate Comms agent decided to have a laugh at Cecilia's expense. I was also getting a bit bored of constantly drawing Cecilia's 'RBF' expression so I took a shot at drawing Cecilia in a more exaggerated style.

Just so I'm not setting a precedent, if you want me to draw your SS13 character, please just message me on the forums or on discord. If you dedicate yourself to pestering me IC in the hopes I'll draw about it, I cannot guarantee consistent results.

 

I think I've drawn Cecilia enough times by now in her default 'RBF' expression that I can start branching out. Particularly, I've found I've had a lot of trouble drawing shouting/yelling: Usually with drawing a face it's easy enough to just throw down the outline and add the features after, but once the jaw opens the underlying outline of the face has to change without making the face seem like someone else entirely.

 

While security tends to have an uphill battle in most situations, they do have a handful of annoying tricks up their sleeve. Cecilia in particular has a fondness for overusing flashbang grenades since they're basically a "fuck you, I win" button (which tends to be the case for all area-of-effect stuns).

 

Personally, I find not all greytiders are bad.

Edited August 15, 2019 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

I love Cecilia,  But I may just have a thing for strong women so there's that.

 

[Machofish]

I've come to realize that my rate of producing sketches correlates to how much I'm procrastinating from doing important things, because what happens is that when I have something important on my plate I can't buckle in for a proper round of SS13 without feeling guilty about it, but with sketching I can stop whenever I want. Just this last batch and I'll go do the stuff I've been putting off, I swear.

I think I'm going to start putting technical rambling (ie. Discussing challenges involved with creating the sketch, new techniques, lessons learned, etc.) into spoiler sections. I realize not everyone's interested in that but I also really do like talking about my work.

It's with great regret that I admit I've never seen a Chaplain attempt this, let alone pull it off. Chaplains really should take a more direct role in fighting the cult, though.

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I consider music to be a really important part of my creative process. I wanted to draw a picture of a "badass chaplain fighting the cult", so I started by listening to Powerwolf's Sanctus Dominus. One thing led to another, I think I got distracted, and by the time I got back to drawing I was listening to Tom Jones & Mousse T's Sex Bomb and figured I'd just roll with it.

 

 

 

Trying to figure out how to draw animal snouts from a frontal profile, so I figured I'd draw @Furasian's sec main.
 

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I don't think I'm going to make a habit out of drawing Vulpkanin characters: I won't mince words, sketching the face here was a pain in my ass. If I made the eyes look too human, it looked uncanny, when I made them too close to realistic fox eyes, it looked uncanny, it looked uncanny if the mouth was too wide, it looked uncanny if the mouth was too thin, if the eyebrows were too heavily-defined it looked uncanny, with no eyebrows at all it looked even worse. On top of it all I couldn't decide where to put the HUDSunglasses on the face: I couldn't figure out if it looked less ridiculous to have the arms on the glasses looping up over the ears, or trying to loop around the sides of the head.

As can be clearly seen below, my second attempt a did not go so well.

 

I consider Fillmoore to be a fairly competent sec officer, though admittedly he and Cecilia rarely see eye-to-eye: Cecilia tends to push for more expedient, open-ended interpretations of Space Law, whereas Fillmoore tends to emphasize a no-nonsense, by-the-book approach. Upon occasion Cecilia has brought this up in a less-than-helpful manner.

 

Of course, this is not to say that Fillmoore doesn't have a sense of humor.

...To be honest I'm not actually sure if it was Fillmoore who had the 'lick the microphone' gimmick or some other Vulpkanin sec main.

 

Figuring out how to draw Unathi.

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I'm always trying to find challenges and areas where I need to improve, and I couldn't help but keep thinking back to my somewhat hit-and-miss Unathi sketches from earlier in the thread. It's a funny thing: When I was a kid, I couldn't draw human faces very easily so most of the characters I drew were faceless, or had reptilian features. Now that I can draw human faces more easily I've somehow lost my ability to draw reptilian heads.

Drawing snouts from a frontal profile seems to be a problem for a lot of seasoned artists I've looked at. It seems that nobody has a way to convey the depth of the snout without risking the uncanny valley.

 

 

 

Now that the more interesting stuff is out of the way.

I usually don't upload studies (as they vastly outnumber the 'proper' drawings I create and would quickly overload the thread), but I saw @PhantasmicDream's studies in the forum art club and I found them quite helpful, so here goes:

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I find that I have trouble with proportions--especially when it comes to the size of the head versus the rest of the body. Also I had been noticing that some sketches of Cecilia made her look a bit rigid and wooden compared to others, and I'm pretty sure that's because she looks more natural while slouching as opposed to standing straight.

Yet, a 'natural' slouching posture needs so many things to be taken into consideration: A person's centre(s) of gravity play a huge part in what postures are comfortable--for instance, a swayback slouch feels and looks incredibly awkward and off-balance for a person with their arms at their sides, but I've personally noticed that the moment I fold my arms over my chest, that's enough to shift my centre of gravity and suddenly a swayback posture feels 'natural' since the chest tilts backward slightly to compensate while the neck and hips angle to maintain balance; basically a 'natural' posture to me is one where all 3 centres of gravity--the head, chest, and waist--are more or less aligned, and those centres of balance can shift to a certain degree based on what a person's arms, legs, stomach, back etc. are doing, how the weight of clothing or equipment they're wearing is distributed, and based on the subject's body type. To make a blunt comparison: I think someone with the physique of DC's Powergirl wouldn't feel comfortable holding a posture that would be comfortable for someone with Cecilia's physique, and vice versa. That said, how far can a slouch be taken before it starts looping around to looking unnatural again (as I've accidentally done in the bottom-right sample by shattering poor Cecilia's spine)?

And of course, we leave the best for last.

  On 8/5/2017 at 7:38 AM, Landerlow said:

I mean this in a friendly way. Do not insult players or anything. Just who is the one that (can sometimes) stir(s) up the most trouble for security? And why? And what is your in-game reaction? For me, it was Ares until he left...

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  On 8/7/2017 at 5:02 PM, Prowhiteboy64 said:

Recently... Kikicha... and in the Very Past... It Was Ares....

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  On 8/7/2017 at 8:28 PM, ZN23X said:

When I type fear into my phone it autocorrects to Ares.

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- Bane of Security Thread, again.

Given @imsxz's rather "colorful" track record, part of me wonders if giving Ares fan art is encouraging the right behavior, but he kicked my ass fair and square multiple times, and he'd stick around and use his robustness to help out when he wasn't an antag instead of just antag fishing science, so he has my respect for that much.

In regards to the sketch itself, it wasn't until I had finished scanning that I remembered that Ares had bright pink eyes but by that point the paper had already started warping from repeated eraser use and I didn't want to tear the page by trying to fix it.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Machofish

[PhantasmicDream]

I always find pages of studies charming.  (And really need to get back into doing them myself again)

 

And like always, I enjoy seeing your sketches and works!!

[Machofish]

I realize that inspiration comes and goes for me: I'll have months where I do nothing but crank out sketches in rapid succession, then dry spells where I can't even put a pencil to paper without being immediately bored. Not sure how long this particular wave of inspiration is going to last, but might as well make the most of it.

From a wizard round: The wizard had a belt of soulstones and was turning crew into Wights everywhere. Sadly, the chaplain--the one player role that's basically dedicated to taking down constructs--was amongst the first victims of the wizard's soul shards, so Cecilia ended up salvaging the chaplain's chainsword and holding back the wights with Sec until the crew could corner the wizard properly and kill him. While I'm glad that I managed to get a hold of the chaplain's holy weapon at such a convenient moment, I still feel sorry for the chaplain: By all rights, it should've been him in this image, not Cecilia. Also large kudos to Nina Kurilyochov the brigphys for managing to apply Styptic Powder patches in the middle of a crazy melee fight with perfect timing: Cecilia very likely would have been knocked into crit multiple times over otherwise.

 

For every badass moment I've had as Cecilia, there have been... not-so-badass moments. For instance, a traitor named "Abducty the Meth Clown" got a special objective to get a picture of Cecilia in a ridiculous costume and fax it to the Syndicate.

He greentexted. Spectacularly.

I'd like to say Cecilia took it fairly well, everything considered. While this wasn't exactly her finest moment, I've come to see these moments as a sort of 'memento mori': Regular reminders that popularity does not equal robustness.

 

With that in mind, I felt it was a good idea to take a break from sec and get some experience in other departments. Empathy is a huge part of doing well in sec, and the best way to develop that empathy is of course to understand what it feels like to play outside of sec: Meet Kirsten. Playing as her taught me that while playing in security is stressful, playing outside of security can be honestly worse for different reasons.

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In regards to what I sketch, I try to focus on experiences I remember the most vividly--for better or worse--rather than the attitudes or behaviours specific players I encounter: I don't want anyone to feel like I'm 'calling them out,' or 'naming and shaming' them, so if you feel like I'm not giving you a fair shake in how I depict your character please just let me know and I can take an offending image down. I don't want anyone to feel targeted.

 

"I'm really sorry, but I'm gonna need you to give that back before you blow us all up."

First round as Kirsten went remarkably well: I was planning on trying out a few different character concepts and names before settling on a new staticname, but Kirsten's first round in science was a War Ops round. With 15 minutes of prep in Science's chemistry lab, 2 grenades, and 6 units of azide, Kirsten did more damage to the nukeops than Cecilia's ever managed during a single round as HoS. Goonchem is some terrifying shit. Anyway, enough flexing.

When throwing her first grenade, Kirsten took an LMG round in the leg and got a serious limp, so I thought she'd be better off giving her second grenade away to a security officer in the hopes he'd make good use of it.

Immediate regret. Still, everything turned out alright in the end.

Next couple of rounds, less so.

 

Kirsten being ignored by her coworkers in science.

I've often heard it remarked that the Sec department 'community' tends to show a little more integrity than the other departments. Science's community is definitely a mixed bag. If you play a 'staticname' character, I really do recommend trying a brand new character for a round or two if you haven't done it in a while, just to see how everyone's behavior changes the moment you're someone they don't recognize. You'll find a few good eggs who still talk to you if you're lucky, but overall it makes me appreciate all the remarks from new players about how this community is hard to warm up to.

 

Tried a bit of Gateway Exploration, and salvaged some Hybrid Turret Guns that I didn't want to leave lying around. Now, being the helpful law-abiding nonantag I was, I thought that Security might appreciate getting some new toys in the armory, and brought the salvaged Hybrid Turret Guns up to the brig.

What follows is a rant, so I've put it under a spoiler:

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Now, I guess I was utterly out of my mind for thinking that the HoS would react by saying something crazy like 'cool, thanks,' or show the faintest hint of gratitude or even just a neutral indifference or even just pick them up and wander off without a word. Instead I am astounded as to how the HoS made such a thoroughly, unnecessarily unpleasant experience out of something as straightforward as receiving free guns as a gift.

While playing as Cecilia, I simply accepted it for granted that most of the crew disliked interacting with security, without understanding the 'why' behind it: It was in this moment, that I finally learned why. The hilarious and ironic thing is that if he had acted nicer, I'd have probably run back and given him the rest of the Hybrid Turret Guns I left at the Gateway--as it was, I tried to give the remainders over to science instead because I really didn't feel like I owed the HoS anything for his hostile attitude.

Seriously, to all you who would play HoS: Saying the words 'please' and 'thank you' while playing HoS will not fucking kill you. Cecilia's done it plenty of times and not once has she ever died on the spot simply by failing to be an incorrigible asshole.

 

 

Steve. From CentComm.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Machofish

[Machofish]

Server croaked during a blob round. This is how I used the free time:

Traitor duo 'That Voice in Your Head' (Three-Point-Fourteen as an esword mime) and 'The Prankster' (Chad Wolf with Sleeping Carp+Chainsaw) square off against a gygax.

I was going to word-bubble Cecilia dropping some sort of snappy one-liner from inside the gygax, but I think that'd be too arrogant: All in all Chad and Pi chose to sally out for a fight rather than endlessly evading and raiding sec for the rest of the shift, so ultimately they're the heroes in this picture.

 

I'm not sure if it's just that Robotics is more competent these days or major crisis situations just happen more frequently, but I find that I've resorted to using mechs in more rounds during the past few months than I have in the past few years.

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This image was very heavily based on the poster of "Luftrausers". I really liked how the poster's artist managed to handle depth perception, shading and generally managing to put so much detail in without making the image feel cramped or like details were being blocked off, so I wanted to see if I could improve my own talents by doing something like that.

There's a few things I'd probably change if I could do this image over: For one thing, both the stick shift and the joystick both have launch switch covers which seems a bit redundant, and some of the switches and levers look like they'd be incredibly awkward to reach from the pilot's seat.

 

Torque.

 

 

 

As part of an abnormally competent and well-organized team, Security managed to take down a cult, a xeno hive, a slaughterdemon, then a second xeno hive in a single shift. Supposedly we were so impressive that CentComm announced that "The CEO of Nanotrasen" wanted to personally meet with the security team after the shift:
 

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Unfortunately, the scientists set off their celebratory end-of-round maxcap bombs the moment the shuttle docked, so nobody in sec got an opportunity to really interact with the CEO after the round ended. That's not going to stop me from acting like it happened, though.

 

For the image itself, I couldn't quite get the CEO's head drawn the way I wanted it. I tried to fix it one more time after this, but the paper began warping from repeated eraser use so I figured it was better to cut my losses.

 

 

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Robert Pond.

 

So, since the server was down for basically the whole day, I'm throwing in a bunch of sketches I made for a Shadowrun tabletop campaign I DM'd for a couple of sessions:

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The party's characters, in no specific order:

As a few general notes:

Yes, Moody is basically Ana Larive from Killing Floor 2.

Cricket was a pre-existing character, where the player had commissioned a character sheet from another artist that I then used as a reference. Amusingly enough that artist also had trouble drawing Cricket's head from a frontal profile, further supporting my theory that all artists have trouble drawing animal snouts from the front.

Drawing Omen was quite a lot of fun. Most of the women I draw tend to conform to a very similar body type, so Omen was an opportunity for me to try breaking out of that--hence why she has 3 sketches while the rest of the party got 1 each.

Various NPCs, again in no specific order:

 

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Machofish

[Regular Joe]

I remember the round of The Voice In Your Head case, was a sec back then. Great deciption of the outcome. And Robert Pond, well, is Robert Pond. Didn’t need to see the hidden comment to notice that’s him, it’s just as if I saw him in the station.

Sketches are my personal favourite. You do them great and I once had a habit to play arond with them, but that was years ago and I’ve lost the ability, yet not the favor on them. Thanks and keep up the good work!

Edited September 3, 2019 by Regular Joe

[Machofish]

I'm experimenting with seeing how useful my work can be as an educational resource for new sec players. I'm not sure how many new sec players look at this thread, but I keep seeing the same mistakes repeated over and over again in regards to dealing with certain threats. If this gets positive reception I might release more visual PSAs for new security.

So, my first topic here is going to be a few basic pointers on xenomorph combat:

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Xenomorph hunters have a 'leap' ability that lets them cross a massive distance incredibly quickly, and inflict a guaranteed stun if it hits a crewmember. The hardcounter to this is to use a riot shield. Against most dangers, the riot shield only has a 50% chance to block. However, in regards to the hunter's leap attack, this is upped to a 100% chance.

Second piece of advice: Head protection.
 

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When dealing with xenomorphs, anyone intending to fight the xenos absolutely needs a helmet that covers the mouth. This includes riot helmets, biohazard-3 suit hoods, hardsuit helmets, and welding helmets (so long as the welding helmet is flipped down to cover the face). If a character isn't wearing a helmet that protects the mouth, being adjacent to a facehugger will cause the facehugger to immediately rip off whatever is being worn in the 'mask' slot, latch onto the character's head, and knock them unconscious for a prolonged duration, during which point they'll be impregnated with a xenomorph larva long before they can wake up. Xenomorphs can also pick up and throw facehuggers to do this as well, without needing to knock their victims down or even get into close range.

I'll just repeat that again for emphasis: It doesn't matter if the xenomorph is on the other side of a long hallway or a long distance away, if your character isn't wearing a helmet that protects the mouth, the xenomorph can throw a facehugger across the distance, and it'll instantly latch onto the face without any ability to dodge.

Riot helms might look a little unattractive, but getting your character's guts all over everything by a chestbursting xeno larva is even less attractive. Trust me.

As for specifics: IPCs are of course immune to getting larvae implanted, but being grappled by a facehugger will still cause the prolonged unconsciousness, which is more than enough time for a xenomorph to slash it to death conventionally.

Summary:

What works: Riot helms, level-3 biohazard hoods, hardsuit helmets, flipped-down welding helmets, the EOD bombsuit hood, the radiation hood, collectible blob hats, being a golem, being a shadowling, cardborg helmets from cardboard sheets, carved pumpkin helmets from botany.

What doesn't work: Gasmasks, Security Compli-O-nator Gasmasks, Standard security helmets, bulletproof helmets, the vast majority of headwear not listed above.

 

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This is more general advice, rather than just for xenos: The Ion Rifle is a very specially-designed weapon that causes EMP blasts on impact. An EMP (electromagnetic pulse) does literally zero damage to flesh-and-blood targets. That's not basically none, or almost none, it literally inflicts zero points of damage.

The ion rifle is useful against: Swarmers, Mechs, Cyborgs, IPCs.

The ion rifle is NOT useful against: Terrorspiders, Blobs, Xenomorphs, Nuclear Ops*, Criminals, Crew.

It feels like every time the armory gets opened up and I'm in sec, I have to slowly and carefully explain this to at least one player who picks it up and tries to use it as a primary armament. Hopefully I'm saving myself a few future headaches by explaining this here.

*I believe the Ion rifle can tamper with certain implants, if the Nuke Ops in question is using any. Either way, you'll only need to hit them once before you have to follow up with a conventional lethal weapon.

 

Of @Fursamie's character, Domitia Aquila. First time I've managed to a request without it going terribly.

 

This was from a Nuke Op round that took place sometime last year, if I remember correctly. As a gimmick we decided that all of the team would hide, fully equipped, inside a single cardboard box, and get as close to the nuke disk as possible before jumping out. We only got as far as dorms before a nosy civilian opened our box, but it was a hilarious, glorious failure.

 

Having played in sec for long enough, I find that long-term regular players tend to fall under similar 'personality types'. Bolton Grey and Chad Wolf are good examples of this: They're both ridiculously robust, know their stuff, and can be trusted to hold their own in a chaotic situation... if you can convince them to stop goofing around for fifteen seconds, that is.

 

I think most sec regulars who play in the afternoons are familiar with Cardiox and his vampire shenanigans at this point. He's quite a challenge to deal with when there's a competent sec team. When there isn't, well...

 

From either a cultist round or a changeling round, can't remember which. In any case, sec had already 100% redtexted the antags, so an admin (pretty sure it was Spark, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt just in case) decided to spawn 2 perfect copies of Cecilia and gave control of them to players from Dchat.

This was around the same time as the Heathers collab with Phantasmicdream, so needless to say, dropping references to the musical was one of the first things I thought of.

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Space Lube: 'Because fuck you, that's why'.

 

"That HoS was bad. Why did they keep ignoring me?"

I'd elaborate but this image sucks out my will to live the longer I look at it, so I'll sum it up like this:

This is what happens during Highpop when there's no warden or magistrate. If it seems like Cecilia's ignoring you, believe me when I say she doesn't do it on purpose.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Machofish