Samuel_Tow

Yeah, I should have looked more closely. I was a bit too smitten with the video itself to think straight Old or not, that video is great, and while I didn't have a name to put on him, I recognised the artist. While many artists just have this... Generic style about them, Fred Perry's style is one that I can spot from space, partly because it's unique, and partly because it's just so strong.

And again, not to criticise other artists, specifically as giftless git, myself, but I just tend to prefer artists with something more specific to their artwork. Especially when it comes to Manga, where 90% of the things may as well have been drawn by the same, like, two people. In fact, "interesting" artwork can sometimes trump "good" artwork for me. For instance, let's look at Wagner's work. I HATE his artwork, I really do. His taste just doesn't appeal to me at all, with those over-exaggerated forms, long pointy fingernails and sinister motifs. Yet at the same time, I LOVE his artwork, I really do. His skill, composition, after-effects, colouring... That artwork is beautiful. Confusing, but beautiful. I enjoy his skill in artwork, just not his taste in artwork.

Must I append smilies every time I joke?

I might be repeating myself, but I still believe that the uncanny valley has less to do with specific likeness to humans and more with our innate tendency to trust other people, or at most animals we're very familiar with, like our pet dog or cat. In this sense, it's not a question of human-likeness other than by coincidence, and more a question of characters that have human abilities and dangers, but not human conscience and ethics. So as a mole girl with cloven feet and paws and a rat face, yet with breasts and a fashionable waste is freaky, but a woman with a human face and generally human body but inhuman skin colour, four-finger hands, a tail, ears and possibly an exposed spine is much more acceptable. The latter is a slightly odd human, whereas the former is a very human-like monster.

Let me give you an easy example of why this is trust. Guns kill people, but seeing a uniform police officer carrying a gun on his belt hardly ever causes people to so much as raise an eyebrow. Yes, if he flipped out, a policeman could shoot a LOT of people and no-one could really do much to stop him, but we trust police officers to be responsible, reliable people. Because they are. Because they put their lives on the line for us every day. Because we depend on them. So a policeman carrying a gun is not scary. We trust the officer, so it's actually reassuring.

Now imagine a barefoot drunk hobo carrying a gun and coming towards you. Would YOU trust that this is perfectly safe and that he's probably just on his way to his cardboard box? Or will you get the hell out of there? I know I'd scream like a little girl and run like hell, myself. The thing is, and I don't mean to insult homeless people with this, that we do not trust hobos. Specific ones could be the most wonderful, erudite people, but the public impression of them is that of desperate, drunk and possibly psychotic unpredictable people that you give a wide enough birth to where they can't harm you. One carrying a gun, therefore, looks extremely dangerous, and because we can't trust a hobo with a gun to not be desperate, drunk and possibly psychotic and, by extension, perfectly willing to shoot us for no good reason, we are afraid of them.

Now marry this fear with forced coexistence. In the real world, we find comfort by sticking to the things we trust and avoiding the things we don't. We don't walk down dark alleys in the middle of the night and we stick to the comfort of our locked-up home. A movie, a comic book, a story or even a game has the uncanny tendency to take these experiences and put them right in the living room with us. It's the difference between seeing a brutish thug of a man in the street and having to be room-mates with said man every day. In the street, you can just walk the other way and you'll be fine. In every-day life, you're always within reach of being harmed, which turns a lack of trust into fear, and that fear in actual, physical torture. Having grown up in SORT OF an environment like this, I can assure you that this is not nice, and the mind does its best to hide from it, eventually developing hatred for the thing we don't trust.

Again, how this relates to anthropomorphic artwork is by extension. Stories work their way into our heads and make us care about their characters. If these are characters we'd be capable of trusting in real life and rooming with, then we can relate with them and the story is good. If these are characters that we couldn't trust and would make us uncomfortable to be with, then the story becomes dissonant, fiercely trying to make us care about things we find distrustful. Our subconscious refuses, eventually disliking the story itself, and so we hate. It's actually a very natural subconscious process.

I remember a movie in the vein of the Tales from the Crypt, in fact, that was kind of like this. Disgusting, slimy, smelly aliens crashed on Earth and have been hypnotising people into seeing them as beautiful women, marrying them and living together. However, after a year, their husbands grow immune to the mind control and start seeing them for what they really are, so they kill them, move on and marry again. One of the aliens really does fall in love with "her" husband, but as he starts realising what she is, he grows more and more neurotic, until her final attempt to explain is her yelling "LOVE ME!" and rushing over to hug him while the man spazzes out. And, frankly, if someone you loved suddenly turned into a hideous monster and rushed over to hug you, most people's minds WILL panic in just that way. That was a rather serious concern of mine with Mass Effect 2's Tali, in fact, though things turned out all right there.

Basically, I wouldn't criticise people who dislike this stuff as long as they're willing to rationalise it, and I would take care to make my own inhuman characters just human enough to be relatable, yet inhuman enough to be perceived as different.

Holy... Frikkin... HELL!!! I... I know I'm supposed to comment on the sexy here, but HOLY HELL! That animation is GORGEOUS! Whoever did this buster their *** lip-syncing and smoothing out fluent animations and just... Wow... I'm a sucker for good animation, I really am. I've been known to watch stupid things (like A.T.O.M.) just because they're well-animated, and this is just beautiful AND well-drawn. In fact, it reminds me of whoever artist it was that drew that Gilligan's Isle comic. Those who know what I'm talking about will know what I mean.

This is just superb artwork. All the way. Animation that switches angles like this is just pure gold, and it doesn't go the frikkin' cheap Hanna-Barbera route of having a static sprite with an anime-animated mouth flapping, these guys have full-body animation in every frame. And it's not just a lot of work, it's actually done with style and skill in a way that just ties together beautifully. It's the kind of artwork that puts major animation studios to shame. If anything, it reminds of the Stickman vs. Door flick that used to be so popular, because it demonstrates that you don't need fancy graphics, Photoshop filters, huge colouring or really anything than charcoal black and paper white to make a good animation. Well, that and ARTISTIC ABILITY!

And, yeah... Sexy, completely forgot about that. Look, I'm sorry about geeking out about animation techniques and completely neglecting the actual sexy for two fat paragraphs, and yes, I know this probably speaks very badly for me as a person, but... Yeah, sexy... I really love how this is done. It has no nudity in it, but that's the charm of it - it doesn't need it. Through a combination of sexy back, suggestive faces and the three idiots' reactions, the message gets carried through well enough without overstepping any real boundaries. Of course, anyone familiar with the genre will recognise this as one of the cornerstone approaches to this sort of thing, but it works well in this video. And yet...

Yes, that confounded me, as well. I mean, sure, it's kind of suggestive, but I specifically looked up the original video for Stacy's Mom. Not only is it DULL by comparison, but its sexappeal is just... Crude. It's your run-of-the-mill cheesecake strutting about like in, I don't know... EVERY MUSIC VIDEO EVER MADE? Seriously, how do music videos escape the censors, but a no-worse-by-comparison cartoon gets flagged for mature content? I had to dig out my old account for this, and I am GLAD I did, because artwork and directing of this magnitude are just priceless finds.

That's a one in a million, Merlin. Thank you

*edit*
Never mind, answered my own question. I've had that name saved on a variety of computers, but I was never able to remember it. Cool, that puts a name on the artist so I know what to look for. And he is a DAMN GOOD artist, at that. I've seen a LOT of comics stuff, believe me when I say this. Both anthro and more regular, and Fred Perry is one of the BEST artists around. He has a very distinct style in both physique and personality that just works. And not just based on pure technical artwork. It works because it has an impact above and beyond theory. I'll definitely have to look up a few more of his works, possibly finish Gold Digger, too. I just knew that artwork looked familiar

One only hopes. The animal bits we have right now are old and intentionally ugly (monstrous, one might say). And as much as I like the Xtreme Overbite head or the Serious Claws feet, some more... Appealing pieces might be in order. The Dragon head is a good example, as despite being way monstrous, it does the monster thing with style, panache and a seriously toothy grin. A few less aggressive and more animalistic heads would be in order, as well as paw feet at the very least. We have cloven scaly feet, but we don't have any feet that match the family of animals that cats, dogs, rabbits and such belong to. We do have bovine hooves, but being able to put patterns on them would be nice, too. And being able to put patterns with skin on upper legs with hoofed feet, too.

Basically, if the tails are as good as people expect they will be, we'll see a lot of renewed interest in animal parts and characters.

If I have to pick one and only one reason I don't play Champions Online, I'd have to go with style. That game is UGLY. Sure, it has good graphics, but its style is just insulting. Character models look like they were ripped from The Incredibles (and that's not what I look for in a serious game), locations and villains were corny and costume details looked like they were designed for little children to gawk at, with nary a nod to style and dignity. The whole game is one giant caricature.

While I have nothing against people who like that sort of style, even though they should be ashamed of themselves, I just can't play it. I can't take the game seriously, it can't take itself seriously and all the glaring colours and lack of textures just hurt my senses.

It's not one episode. Minerva is a recurring character that shows up all over the place, and her role is basically an extended Hello Nurse. She's also not part of the loony tunes, but rather a supporting character from the Animaniacs.

Point was to establish precedent. She really isn't the only one, she's just the most easily recognisable. Minerva is basically the Jessica Rabbit of the Animaniacs.

Which actually brings another controversial subject - cartoons and sexappeal. Since cartoons are (wrongly) assumed to be for kinds, cartoon sexiness is assumed to be something weird, and people who enjoy that sort of thing are assumed to be weird, too. After all, how can you swoon over a cartoon instead of harassing real women, right? Stupid conventional wisdom...

See, I'm completely the opposite. I HATED the build system in Champions Online. When given too much choice, I end up building the same tank-mage over and over again. By contrast, I'm not really bothered by package classes (outside of a few specific instances), so the increased complexity and danger of gimp doesn't really come with an upside that I can appreciate.

I actually don't mind the size of their tails. What I mind is the animations. It's like they took the "fixit nao!" mentality and gave the tails animations. Period. Just animations. Never a question of WHAT animations they should give them, what would look good, how would a tail on a biped behave... Just animations.

As with all artwork, it's not a question of drawing "just something," it's a question of drawing something good. Granted, I haven't seen our tails, and they may make me wish to punch people (though I doubt it), but even then, BABs has been known to pay a LOT of attention to what looks good, rather than just throwing something in to tick a box. With this in mind, I'm not worried.

More just impatient, at this point

Yeah... That's easier said than done. Counting off memory, we have Good vs. Evil, Wedding, Valkyrie, Cyborg, Super Science, Ninja and Magic, for a total of $70 all together. As well, your credit card gets flagged for only a single purchase from the PlayNC store per day as an anti-fraud countermeasure, which means you need to spend a week and SEVENTY DOLLARS to buy them all. A promotional pack that's, say, $30 like a regular expansion pack and has it all in ONE pack would be a much easier way to get new players on track.

That said, I'd rather have costume items locked up in Booster Packs than locked behind TFs. MUCH RATHER!

On the contrary. I just disagree that he isn't sexy.

Oh, but let's go for a much easier target: Warner Bros' Minerva Mink. So what were we saying about WB cartoons?

Yeah, I remember spending most of my time trying to fix mistakes caused by colours applying to the wrong thing, accidentally swapping the wrong item type and trying to tab through unintuitive menus to look for the one piece I was sure was there. Names didn't take me a long time, but I'm the wrong guy to talk to about this, since names rarely take me long even here.

I CAN say one thing, though - getting a name in Champions Online was far less satisfying than it was in City of Heroes. Here, when I get a name that's not in use, I can be sure that it's either so clever no-one thought of it, so obscure no-one knows about it, or so silly no-one would want it. In Champions Online... It's just kind of there, I guess. Getting it just isn't as exciting.

Like I said - pull 'em. This game managed to crush my "But what about other players?" sentiment ever since it introduced veteran rewards and bundles of booster packs. At this point, new players are boned in so many ways I don't really want to sacrifice my comfort to save them of just one.

Maybe some day if they come up with an "Everything Booster" pack and sell it as an expansion, then I could start worrying about other people's experience of the game, but until then, pull the names. See if that helps. Not like they'll miss 'em.

You pay $30 without a free month and $40 with a free month. You pay an extra $10 but save $5. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it

Well, I generally don't like taking names away from customers, but sure, why not? Currently, I don't have a problem with purging names. I just don't think purges will bring about as many names as people believe.

But still, do them. They might help.

Right... Despite the fact that Bugs Bunny is naked and the anthro girl in the pic isn't?

I see things rather differently in this regard. The complaint does come up regularly, but far from often, and while the people making it tend to be diverse, the people arguing against it (outside of myself and a couple of others) are equally so. Furthermore, lack of names itself isn't the problem. Names are there, and this is easily provable. It's the lack of that specific name that the complainer specifically wants. I've seen the argument enough to recognise this as a pattern. And while you could extrapolate that many people wanting this or that name points to there not being enough names and people often running into one they can't use, I extrapolate a rather different conclusion - that the problem is the desire for a SPECIFIC name, rather than more names in general.

If the problem isn't the amount of acceptable names left available and is instead that all the GOOD names are taken, then the only solution to this is to release names to multiple users. No amount of names will ever be enough for people, because people don't want quantity, they want specific choices, which are taken by other people wanting the same specific choices. This is a problem that is not solvable in a way that I can agree with, but it's also a problem that I can't really agree NEEDS to be solved. I fully admit that just getting whatever you type in on the first try does have its own appeal, but I also fully believe that NOT getting it having to write around limitations is not actually inherently bad. As such, I refuse to acknowledge this as a factual problem so much as a perception problem. Since the players refuse to yield, then the game must therefore be made to yield to them.

Granted, I can't make an argument as to why choosing the name you want on the first try is BAD - I can sort of run one that it kind of stifles creativity, but that's not really relevant. I CAN however, bring up several positive sides to the situation and paint it as less of a direct problem and more of an inconvenience, which can be circumvented by not too difficult a mental stretch. As such, I don't find it a severe enough problem to merit an "at any cost" solution, especially one that costs ME.

In a roundabout way, I basically repeated what others keep saying. It's not a problem of insufficient names, it's a problem of specific names that is solely solvable via releasing names globally, which I don't feel can be done without irritating me to high heaven.

No, I was correcting myself in that I had the wrong impression the first time around. You spoke correctly, I just misread. My bad.

I do what I can. I try to engage anyone who will listen, but the friends I have are either not into video games at all, not into MMOs or too much into World of Warcraft for them to budge. That, and everyone seems to have set down roots in their own little enclosed world and will constantly put off trying something new. I'm THE most conservative person you're likely to meet, yet even I've tried most every game I've been offered. I've hated most of them, sure, but not because I "forgot" to get around to installing it.

As far as ideas go, I share what I have, but I try to avoid redundancy. No sense suggesting animated tails for the umpteenth bazillion times when BABs already knows, as evidenced by I17. Long as I have anything decent, I'll pass it along, and help as much as I can during Beta. I don't think anything I had to say about Dual Pistols really mattered in the end, but I know I tried.

And I'm not actually against multi-use names as a concept. I just don't see a good way to implement it that wouldn't bug me, and I don't see enough of a need for it to inconvenience myself over. Put it this way - I DO NOT WANT end game content and rather doubt I'll have any use for it, but I can't really argue against it as it's been made patently clear to me that that's what people want. I can see a need for this, so my opposition isn't going to be TOO vehement. But in general, I'm still not a fan.

You know... Avatar, aside from being a good movie, is something of a personal vindication of mine. After being singled out as weird for liking this exact kind of story for years, it's just a little satisfying to see that movie bring in so much revenue and become so popular. It's a mixture of finally getting people to see the concept itself is not evil and presenting a movie that haters will have a REALLY hard time assassinating without delving into easily-ignorable hype backlash arguments.

I have to say, this is probably the first movie of this kind that seems to have been at least accepted by everybody. Movies of that nature tend to be dismissed as being for kinds, being weird or being niche, but you CANNOT deny this one. So I'm happy