Shego

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Finding out my gamertag is not impossible without me posting in the Gamertag Exchange. I know one CoH player who already found it and added me to his friends list.

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. o O (Perhaps... Positron? Naaah, too easy...)

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Only Critique is Meg's speech bubble is hard to read with the black on Dark Red.

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Yeah. Lighten-up on those bubble-hues.

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Recommended New Minimum System Specs for City of Villains:

** Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6200

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Uhhhh, no. A 6600 should be the video MINIMUM requirement for this game by now. If we are trying to be realistic in updating those Specs... let's buck it up and be realistically-realistic. What you have is almost just as bad as those who try to convince others that they are running a 6150 LE in their $399 Dell Laptop and the game plays smooth as silk in CoV. Sheeeyah, right. See ya up in Grandville, Tuff-Guy!

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So whats this thing going to be called I wonder. I think Cerebro is taken.

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The Uni-Mind.

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perhaps Cryptic knows their MUO game is so killer, they knew CoX would not be able to compete and figured it may be a better idea to sell the healthy cow than have it die in their hands.

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Bingo!!

Well, the Cat's finally out of the bag.

This of course makes perfect sense, business and marketing-wise. Cryptic wants to move on and get more deeply involved in their upcoming projects (including of course MU:O) and this frees their resources up to focus more upon the titles in their pot. It also allows those who do want to stay with the current title to move over... so to speak, to the company that is willing to continue its growth and development, unfettered by future constraints. That of course being NCSoft who can leverage the existing Co* title as a competitive force in the marketplace.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh....!" *wink-wink*

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No matter how much you brighten your monitor, the in-game depiction doesn't change unless you lighten/darken the game's base level with the Gamma adjustment.

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Sadly, and learned from LONG time in-game Screenie experience, the in-game Gamma level setting in the Graphics Menu option won't affect the actual screen-shot results outside of the game. The base-lumination levels will still be recorded in both the game's .TGA and .JPG export formats. No amount of in-game settings will lower the Gamma in the screen-file itself, only the signal sent to the on-screen monitor.

Only real chance for best, brightest results is to have good illumination settings in the game-world's environment (get outside during day-cycle, sonny!) or use as we do... the level-adjustments afforded in the graphic post-editing program such as Photoshop.

You CAN affect the day-cycle levels if you use the Demo-Editor and record the screenshot there, as you have numeric-control over the game's Real-day clock during the demo-file playback. Of course, working with the Demo-editor, you won't have the 2-D UI graphic overlay, but most times that is a GOOD thing.

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Happy anniversary!

It ... doesn't seem like yesterday to me, because so much has happened in my life. But I sure do remember playing in COV Beta and having an absolute blast.

Congratulations Villains, you did good.... er... wait...

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omg... I remember all the CoV Beta Screenies I took back then, and to my horror.. they all had the gauzy, dark halo around everyone because of that ... *wince* DoF. First thing I did was to send that putrid effect to a firey grave.

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the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake?

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Is that the one where I saw these old news-videos about highways that got flattened and the pancaked cars stuck inbetween bridges... and watched people getting pullled out of burning houses that lost one story... etc.?

And there was much rejoicing heard throughout the land.

Better yet, make the door spawns simply 'go away' once the Player who spawns them leaves the area.

Two cows grazing in a large field together.
One turns to the other, "Hey, terrible thing about that Mad-Cow disease, eh?"
The other responds back, "Yeah, thank goodness I'm a rooster."

Yep. All the right production values, clean stereo-sound (even on the ring-modulation) and proper attention paid to the various details.

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Which day was it that your meds ran out?

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Probably the same date and time they decided to 'film' their video-screen. Oh, wait... it's art nouveau!

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Insindiary - I think that's how I spelled it. I know I wanted it to be Encindiary, but I had to really screw up the spelling because all the other variations were taken already.

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Including 'Incendiary' which is the proper spelling of the word??

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I can make no guarantees when it will be available on YouTube

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How about... NEVER? YouTub (sp!) would make a mockery of this presentation. Knowing well its awful re-compression, non-WS presentation and MONO... yes MONO-compressed audio... this video, with all the love and care that went into its creation... would be sacrificed upon the alter.

Eeep! That's scary. Now I am going to have nightmares for a week!

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Thought y'all might like a peek at the progress so far.

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Great. Now you've made me create a new www.Voki.com character. Darn those ad-banners.

One of my earliest CoH toons, Zloth. You can see where the reflective-metallic shine was blown-out with my old Geo 5950 card back in '04.

You might remember seeing her when I used her In this motivational ad-campaign poster thread.

Heh. Mirrors are tricky to use for model-poses and we are taught in class to avoid them in the early stages. Why? By their very nature they can be misleading to the modeler for a simple reason: they REVERSE the view of the real-world.

IE: Your RL body-posture and weight leans to the left and in the mirror you are presented with a right-sided effect. While this can be transposed by the brain, it does have an impact when trying to carry that 'image' over to our Illustrator-type programs. They DON'T mimic the 180 degree out-of-phase image a mirror presents to our eye. Right, to the software... MEANS right, not left. And that is where the trap is. So we are taught to avoid that 'mirror-trap' and train our minds to do the 'shifting' from a RL torso to the composition-screen on our own.

I am not saying you couldn't use a full-length mirror in your work, but I am pointing out why doing so (for 3D body-posing... not lighting or physical-effects work) is frowned upon by the instructors I dealt with (and subsequently proved to myself later in the studio).

When attempting full-shot body 'poses' always remember the rule: "Posture... Posture... Posture." **waits for the echo to fade-out.

Now what I mean is this: get up from your chair (make sure you are a home, first ). Now get on the carpet/floor and mimic *exactly* the pose you are trying to achieve in the work. I mean... to the letter. Right leg bent at knee... left leg and foot crosslegged underneath and flat against the surface. Right elbow upon right knee with arm extended down in loose pose... the body's upper-torso sitting straight up------*OUCH!*

Stop. Hold right there. See the problem? Your model's 'weight' should be coming down on the left arm with the hand and fingers spread to distribute that weight. But DOING that and sitting fully upright?? I don't care if you are a boy or a girl (or older)... you are not going to be comfortable in that pose for more than a few seconds.

And the same goes for your model. If your own RL body has any problems twisting like a pretzel while 'relaxing' then transfer that frustration over to your screen and you can see where the problem lies: it's an unnatural balance. Your RL upper-torso *wants* to lean more to the left (as opposed to relaxing while fully upright) and THAT.... THAT is the key to where those posture changes need to be made.

Again... you are your own best subject...when you don't *have* a subject to test out positioning and weight distribution. Practice mimicking... and let your own BODY in this case... continue to be your guide.

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The rough sketch for critiqueing fun

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1. Chest area is well-defined but under-proportioned in size to the rest of the torso. DO NOT inflate the swells any further, just enlarge area for better body-balance.

2. Consequently, the head is overly-sized to the torso-size, giving it a 'party-balloon' appearance. Reduce its overall mass a little...to better match the body.

3. Right foot is so 'twisted' in its stance, it is a wonder she isn't wincing in pain from a sprained ankle. Turn the foot outward for better balance and posture, instead of inward.

Onwards!

Princess of Paragon.

Wonder Worker.

Baby BOOMer.

Daddy's Girl.

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The Girls

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An interesting change in visual perspective. The horizon is more on par with the two subjects now (the horizon-line matching across the subjects' midrift-section) indicating a more level 'straight on' camera angle.

The visual 'shock' with this new change, is that the skewed background parallax-view is even more exaggerated than before... and it now makes the skyscrapers in the foreground appear as giant-dominos falling backwards and caught in the middle of knocking themselves over. Talk about the power of Telekinesis!

Yes, the challenge of the Graphic Arts is such fun when creating a modern-day masterpiece.