Blue_Centurion

My condolences during this difficult time.

"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to ensure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."

PS. re-subscribe.

Yeah, I am going back into costume editor tonight it looks like. (Hey, I love it anyways lol) I am going to experiment with a few possible ideas I have for non hooded versions. In truth, I have some good ideas, but do not think any of them will make the cut. But I'll try them all. So, with the hood back on I will be making some serious changes to the body, trying to maintain the clean overall lines that say giant guy with a skull head, yet owning the concept as something way different than Skeletor. After all, what I really love about Skeletor is just how stupid he looks as a Skull on a Conan body. Everything else about that franchise (carton, quality, movie, tv series, other comic version, wow, could they actually have put out more drech with less talent? They are definitely up to taking that challenge it seems...) I freaking hate. It would be kind to call Skeletor a "D" lister. So, I will grab the part of it I like and disassociate fast.

Still, when I look at it, I know, you know, everyone knows, it's a skull on a giant body. Everybody thinks Skeletor at some point.

Syrus B, Liz. The flowing feel of that work was very nice. It is complete. 2nd pick, the boobs. Because, well, they're boobs.

That's brilliant. And the name...wow grats!. Also, i have a tendency to run characters that are orphans raised by space pirates. My wife (main and favorite storyteller) has a fascination with characters dependent NPCs. Very very useful, unfortunately.

Okay, this thread has been very constructive. I'm feeling safe. Let me lay it on the table, then you can pull the floor away and I'll see it was all a villainous trap!

Anyways, as I mentioned, I do some art. Most all of my art centers around my "issues" with mortality. So, I do a lot of undead, vampire, zombie, brain in jar stuff in the cities. Also, undead robots, Liches, you know, all the ways of "cheating" death.

Well, yesterday on the boards I saw someone post a picture of Skeletor. Now, I am old, but I was just a touch too old for the Masters of the Universe stuff. I have always looked down on it as "low rent." However, that picture of Skeletor had me just about rolling. It is cheese-zey. Did I mention I love cheese?

So, I looked around and figured Dark/Invul Scrapper, and made up a costume, and ran a couple DFBs. THen I got to thinking how much I liked the concept, deleted the character, and re-skinned a stalled 48 Dark/Invul Brute stalled for 2 years, bopped it back and forth across servers for a free rename, and there ya go. 50'd it on an ITF last night.

Now the characters name is Skulz (had the name saved on a level 10 Blaster for the last year. Couldn't get Skuls, but ya know. Important note, the name is a tribute to CoH history, and also connected to my death art.) and the power sets are ones I love, the costume is cheesy. You cannot get a "perfect" match on the costume, because you cannot get shinguards without boots. Also, as I have learned, Skeletor has had a few incarnations himself, muddying the waters. I was going to make him a Robotic/Lich, then found that Skeletor did a stint with Cybernetic Enhancements (He was getting old, and ...nvm) Anyways, thats where I am with him now. Any read on what side of the line I am on? ((Oh, his backstory is he was a Paladin that hunted undead and was cursed by a VERY powerful Necromancer to be an undead forever.)) But the costume is really derivative, did I mention I love skulls and cheese? (For instance, that last sentence has me wanting to paint a memento mori with skull, cheese, candle)

please wash.

Okay, after reading some of the great responses I was like. Cool, it's definitely derivative, but if I do X modification to backstory and costume (let's say robotic for conversation sake) then I will have taken this and owned it. And the name is different. So, boom. Here is why I chose SuperMan for the Platonic Conversation, guess what, there has been a "Robotic Superman". In cases like this is there no way to get far enough away from the source material, or am I looking at it wrong?

Nice replies so far. Very thoughtful and thought provoking. I like this type of dialogue and regularly engage in it before a project. It is like getting the benefit of a critique in the weeks before you do the work and actually have your art hanging on a wall and have to defend it lol. Thank you all.

Okay, sticky conversation warning. Please be kind.

To start, I am an artist. Yes, old school pencil, charcoal, ink wash, and oil paint. Not a "great artiste" but in theory I have been shown how to apply the pretty stuff to the flat areas. So my interest in the topic of imitation is very broad, and wide ranging conversation on re-use of ideas is welcomed. Kind of the "Am I inspired or did I just steal this?" conversation.

Say I want to make a character very similar to an iconic Super. Let's go with Superman. (Please note, I am not doing this. I wouldn't for various reasons. It has more to do with the character doing nothing for me than anything else. I got my share of SS/Invul characters, and NONE of them are tributes to that guy. No offense intended.) But Superman keeps the conversation easy, in that he is almost a Platonic ideal of a Super. At what point am I "stealing" artistically and (50% of the topic here) bringing any liability onto City of Heroes by playing my "tribute". And, conversely and more importantly, how far can I push the boundary and still be grooving on my "SuperManBearPig" and be okay. (Yes, I know that is a South Park rip-off, roll with it. I am not using it, pretend I made it up for this discussion.)

So, let's get to the nuts and bolts. For the "tribute" character, can you copy 75% of the outfit. I think with our SuperManBearPig example you can actually get about 90% to 95% of the look, missing mostly just the emblem and belt buckle right? Although I have seen various Superman belts and a decent sub is available in game. I would go with the chest emblem and the distinctive boot edging are going to be problematic, other than that it would be an easy copy.

I do not encourage this, only for discussion purposes. But let us discuss. How far off of this image do you need to be for it to be creatively (important to me) and inoffensive to corporations (important to NCsoft.) Again, the conversation has two main thrusts, finding out what is cool artistically, and finding out what is cool with actually doing in game without agroing the powers that be and taking their time away from getting me my danged Bio armor. Thank you in advance for your kind replies.

*reads the post.
*reads the comments.
*reads Freitag's comment.
*reads more comments.

Data insufficient for a reasonable conclusion. Where's our danged Bio Armor at?

Okay. It's dumb to ask. But I am seriously starting to feel like Cartman here. Can someone just kill me, send me into the future where I can be revived, and Bio Armor exists? It's just that I am really really really tired of all the existing armors, and I want the new stuff for a few concepts I am desperately trying to make work. Okay, rant over.

PS., does anyone know when Bio Armor will come out?

I just want to move them to other characters. Because of the way I play I get 2 or 3 on one character, and never play them again. THey are even harder to engineer using and then transporting the catalyzed enhancement than regular respeccing. They are pretty, but extremely annoying.

Willpower has a weak taunt aura, and needs folks tobe close to benefit from rise to the challenge. The only way I see making hover work for a Willpower Tank is to take taunt, slot for range/recharge. Softcap your ranged and aoE defense, and hover about 60 feet above the combat spamming taunt. Should confuse the crap outta everything, including your teammates.

On a less sarcastic note. NO do not do this. I ran a Willpower Tank for about 3 months straight in the original Incarnate Trials. DO softcap S/L defense, and get Energy Defense high or softcapped as well. Combat Jumping is the power you want, not Hover. I tend to run Willpower and use Tough, Weave, Leadership Manuevers, and Combat Jumping. My current SS/Will Brute is softcapped to S/L/En/Neg and does real well. Seriously, you need the baddies in tight for ss/will. Hover disables Footstomp. That alone should let you know how bad it is. You will need to spam taunt on a Willpower tank, and be aggravating everything as much as you can. Take an epic with non KB AoE, and slot those for taunt where you can. The more you control the baddies, the better you can do your job. Willpower is a good armor to build a strong house on, but it does not hold agro well by itself, and you need to be doing that, both for SS/Will tactics, and especially as a tank. GL, and PS DO NOT HOVER.

PS, why does arcanaville get her name in the left margin twice now. She pulling a Warhol on us?

I actually would love to free up a few dozen names on a couple servers I think I deserve. What i really want is the power to steal the name off an "undeserving" player because I spend more time on the game. Just what I want, not saying it's fair. You can see why I gravitate to villains.

On the bright side I have actually had to stretch myself to come up with cool names and concepts that do work. This is good, as you can see by my old global "Blue Centurion". I cobbled that together after years of original Battlestar Galactica stuff. "Centurion report!" and was quaintly crushed when a friend I have who is a Sgt. with LAPD mentioned it was a term for a cop. So, stretching is good, at least for me. My new naming convention is not much better (my wife is threatening me now to make me start a different series) but at least it is different.

So, go, fly, be free of the shackles of the tyrrany of what you had thought wascool. Make up an entire different crapload of bad ideas (like I did.) But, you ain't getting the names to be freed up. Cheers.

As a player and artist I am constantly amazed at how we are progressing. Some years ago (maybe 8-10?) I went to the San Diego comicon. I really enjoyed the Artist's Alley area. There were people with oil works, and really fine stuff. This year I went to theSeattle Comiccon. They had an artists Alley, but the only "Old School" art (made by hand, 100% drawn/painted were pencil and charcoal sketches.) Anything more was done half or more on the comp, then printed and worked. No artist seemed willing to share their personal technique. I have drawn a long time, and do some oil painting as well. I have taken many college level art classes. I can only surmise everyone is using various programs to generate characters/models (like our beloved City of Heroes character generator) then getting an output and adding a few flourishes. There is nothing inherently wrong in this, it is just a new and evolving technique. I bring this up because of these 3-D printers. Soon we will be able to render full characters in glorious 3D. This will not detract from traditional sculptors work. It is just a different way to get an output. However, just cause you hit the print button on the first random generated character that CoH threw your way doesn't make you Michelangelo either lol.

Is this like stacking infantry on the outside of Tanks as "ablative armor"? If the extra health bags/poches/wtf are not affected by Defenses/armors/IOs then they are going to be gone in the first blaze of an Incarnate Mosh Pit on any trial.