Snowlily

Here's the avatar manips LiquidX nothign spectacular. just some cutting and pasting. cleaned up your avatars edges too.
Pope Hat
Mask
Goatee

I am the least happy with the goatee, probably better off getting someone who can actually draw to do it >_>

you didn't say if you wanted any lettering or what not to go with them, so I didn't mess with that.

Enjoy.

Edit: Btw, I have lots of bandwidth and space left on my website, so no rush, but as a warning when I do my monthly cleaning on September 30th, these will be gone. so don't link directly

Photoshop CS2. Which I was lucky enough to score for 'quasi free' as it was part of the tutition for a class I took last year. (ok, so it wasn't really free, but it was greatly discounted for us starving students)

What kind of changes to what kind of image? (Real photo, game screenshot, copyrighted image you intend to sell for personal nefarious gain?)

Actually you can take the demo all by yourself.

/demorecord <name>

give it about 7-8 seconds of lead in to what you wanna do. (I try and count to ten before starting any action) do your thing, then

/demostop

The demo itself is just a small little text file that you can send me, and it'll tell my client where you are, what you look like and what you are doing.

That way I can do a demo dump, and get all the screenshots I need in whatever resolution I want.

only need about 10 seconds of demo for a non action shot, just do a 360 of your character slowly wiht the camera.

for an action shot, try and get a couple demos from 2 different angles.

the demos will be in your /City of Heroes/client_demos/ directory. with the file name of <name>.cohdemo

just send me that text file

and an idea of what you are looking for.

Actualy that was intended. Wanted jack to be an 'echo' of her.

but hmm. if its not obvious I'll see what I can do, thanks

Update on snowlily

With Jack now. still no backgrounds or effects. Jack still needs some detailing, but the image is shaping up nicely.

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I so wish the scarfs were like your design in game

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me too!

thats why I started doing these, poses and costume effects I couldnt get in game.

took a couple nice demos of jack beating stuff up this morning, so going to start sorting through those and putting together jack, will post him when I get done.

Until I get a fancy idea, or sumthin. here's my current project.

this is still a work in progress. no background or effects yet.

Will probably have Jack in the pic eventually

original screenshot cut out on the left, my edit of it on the right. She needs more work too, obviously, the scarf ends need to be frayed, etc. and she needs some detail work done.

But should be cool when finished.
Snowlily

I want a swirly scarf like Dragonberry's! *sniff*

Sure, I'll give it a shot

need lots of screenies to work with though. Best thing to do if you want a pose that you can't get in game (the best reason to do a manip) is take demo's of the poses to be blended, so I can do a tga dump. That way if there is bad lighting or something, I can edit the demo or whatever.

Ninjas to the zoo..

*pictures black pj'd chibi ninjas jumping up and down* "I wanna see the panthers!" "I want popcorn!" "I have to go to the little ninja's room!"

I'll echo what others have said, you are really awesome at shading

nice stuff!

Final Mastermind

Updated the mastermind, more detail work, some shading, and changed the background.

I had a couple question on the background from my friends I showed it too while I was working on it. the reason for black and white is I wanted it to look like a 1951 Sci-Fi movie screen.

for obvious reasons with the quote, heh.

anyhow. enjoy, thanks for the kind words.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Picture
Original screenshot of the alley
the shot of the character came from this pic I did a while ago, and still had the cutout of Foxlily leaning. just reused that.

[/ QUOTE ]
nice work

...and not all "art" centers around the venerable pencil and paper. picture manipulation is definately an art form to itself. as such, not sure about the rest of the gang but I would mind seeing more ~

[/ QUOTE ]

How about This one of my mastermind

Original Screenshots I used if you are curious

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As a fellow photoshop fanatic, nice job. I think the only thing that I would change is her pony tail, because that the moment it looks like she has a bit too much hairspray in it. With her head angled down, the hair should be dropping on the back of her neck.

But just a personal thing. :: nice job

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You are completely right, heh. I was so caught up in trying to get the color and lighting right, never paid attention to, er, gravity. Ah well. I'll try to remember next time, thanks

Thanks guys :-)

update with text, more shading, and a few more misc details. decided against the comic title and just went with a quote suitable to be a desktop image (which it is now!)

updated pic


Here's another screen manip I did for the same character. Wish we could get that sitting pose in game /sigh

Fox banner

Thought I'd take the plunge and share the type of stuff I do.

I'm no freehand artist. Put a pencil in my hand and I /might/ be able to give you a circle.

On the other hand, I know my way around photoshop pretty well for an average person.

layout is lopsided because at somepoint it'll probably a comic cover, leaving space for text title etc.

if only we had those shoes in game! >.>

Picture

Original screenshot of the alley

the shot of the character came from this pic I did a while ago, and still had the cutout of Foxlily leaning. just reused that.

I whole heartedly agree. I remember thinking about it, and then forgetting to mention it in more detail. Weaknesses make not only more believable characters to roleplay, then make more accessable characters to roleplay With. whats the point of friends and allies if you can do everything? Some of my favorite storylines in comics were cross overs when the main title character needed help with something.

Do not neglect this important aspect of roleplayable characaters just because I neglected it in my guide!

I'm glad it is so well recieved thanks guys.

Character Conceptualizing for City of Heroes/Villains 101

Having witnessed first hand, many people struggle with bringing a good idea (or even a mediocre one) into a living, breathing, roleplayable character, I decided to share some of my tricks and strategies for creating characters. I like to think most of my characters are at least decent, and more importantly, believable. And even More importantly, playable.

It is a somewhat different process to create a roleplaying character for a game, than it is to create a character for fiction. In fiction, you have the luxury of bending the rules of reality to suit the whim of you, the writer. In most games, however, your character must play by the same rules as everyone else’s character. That cuts out a lot of breathing space for original ideas. There are only so many ways to do an Elven_Assassin_01 (I should know, I’ve done many of them.)

One of the beauties of City of Villains/City of Heroes, is the developers have lain down only a loose set of ground rules for character design and concept. This leaves you, the gamer/writer/arrpeer with quite a bit of space for creativity. You can do anything from space aliens from another dimension, to evil demons and tragically Goth teenage vampires, to mad scientists mutating their DNA or Homegrown farm boys who found a weird crystal rock that lets them fly through the air.

There’s a lot of air to breath. Yup. Lotta air…

Holy Crap. Where do you start??

Well sit down, breath. Relax. Read the words on the cover. “Don’t Panic.” In nice big friendly font. Wait... that’s the wrong book, but there’s still no need to panic! Creating a good character for CoH/V is easy once you break it down into a few simple steps.

Step One: The Build.

I know quite a few people that would argue this being the first step, but to me, the RPer/Powergamer, I can have the best concept in the world, but if the character is gimpy, or plays awkwardly, I still won’t have fun.

Sit down with the character planner and mess around with it. Pick an Archetype that appeals to the play style you are going for, and then a power set that seems interesting. There are a ton of guides out there outlining the various archetypes. So I won’t go into that here.

Now, you should choose the archetype that best represents the play style/theme of your character. Try not to think of your character as a ‘Brute’ or ‘Mastermind’. These are simply categories to start narrowing down what your character is capable of. Think of it this way, if your character was telling someone what they did, they wouldn’t say “I’m a Brute” they’d say “I’m a fighter” or “I’m a warrior.” If they made gadgets and devices, they wouldn’t say “I’m a Corruptor with Assault Rifle and Traps” they’d say “I shoot people with my gun and toss my inventions in your face. Got a problem with that?”

See what I am getting at? The archetype is a method of categorizing your character skills and powers, not describing them as a person.

After selecting the archetype, look over not only the primary power sets, but the secondary ones. Hopefully you already have a bare bones idea for what you want your character to be able to do. Loot for a set combination that lets them do most of those things. Try not to worry about themes at this point. If you see your character as able to toss fire about, and using magical fires to suck the life out of people, or heal your allies, then don’t take fire/thermal radiation, just because they are both fire sets. Thermal radiation has no life draining attacks, or heals. But kinetics does.

Sometimes however, themes can work for you if you don’t have a good idea on all your heroes capabilities yet. Maybe you just have a couple in mind, which can be fit by a broad range of powers. Themeing your power sets together can help give your character cohesion and logical sense. The devs have already done the work of themeing broad powers together, and you can always choose not to take powers you don’t like, or don’t fit your concept. For example. Your fire character with the life draining attacks, you like Transfusion and siphon power from kinetics, but repel doesn’t seem to fit at all. No problem. Don’t take repel. You can choose all of the power set, or just a few.

Now you should start to look at picking the powers. Play around, have fun, you loose nothing by tossing around ideas in the planner. It has a wealth of information about the effects of enhancements, how much endurance per tick you’ll be using, what exactly your defenses will be, and a rough idea of just about anything about your powers you could want to know.

Go on. Play. I’ll wait.

Happy yet? No? Ok. Well. A couple things to keep in mind as you play around. Pay attention to the levels you acquire things. If you only have 2 attacks for 26 levels, that will make those a Long 26 levels. If you are a defensive character and haven’t fully slotted your defenses by 20, you should reexamine where your slots are. Do you really need 4 jump enhancements in super leap? What do you mean you didn’t take a travel power? Didn’t fit your concept? Oh boy. Let’s have a talk about that.

Travel powers and You.

I know, better than anyone, how tempting it is to skip a travel power until late in the game (I had a build that took fly at 41 once) or just skip it all together. Sometimes there are so many cool powers, you just want them all, and that doesn’t leave any room for pool powers. Sometimes it’s hard to justify a travel power for your concept. There are lots of ways around that. Let me take each of those in turn.

“Not enough power slots”

If you haven’t taken a travel power by 20 look at how many attacks you have, this is the easiest area to free up a couple powers for your travel power and its prereq. With refresh timers and animations being what they are, you can probably only really not have a button to press with less than three attacks. With three attacks, by the time the first one refreshes, you can cycle through the second and third. Plus your endurance probably can’t handle too many more. (not until you start slotting SO end reducers, pick up Stamina, or both) Even with blasters and scrappers, 3, or at most 4 attacks will do you fine until the mid 20’s.

“Doesn’t fit my concept”

Well, ok, if you insist. But hope someone in your team picked up recall friend, or get used to running and jumping a lot. And your team mates taking longer and longer coffee breaks waiting for you to arrive at the missions. And everybody getting annoyed when you want a 20 minute break to go sell and train. Especially if you wanna sell all your enhancements at the proper stores.

Fitting a travel power into a concept is relatively easy. Even natural characters use gadgets, and that’s the easiest way to explain a travel power ”I have an anti-grav belt” “I hacked the hospital teleportation network for personal travel” (Don’t laugh, one of the storyline Heroes, Manticore, uses that one.) Any super strong character can justify super leap, any gravity / kinetic / play with laws of physics characters can justify teleport, or flight, (or supper speed and super leap for that matter).

The point is, pick a travel power and justify it however you want. Everyone will thank you for it, including yourself.


Now, got yourself an Archetype, got yourself a Build. You are halfway done!

Step Two: Which came first, the back story or the costume?

At this point, you may be eager to dive into the character generator whip up the first costume that looks decent, and start playing. However, I caution you to take at least a few moments and try to visualize your character and what makes them special. If you go tearing willy-nilly into the costume design, I’ll guarantee you latch onto the first ‘cool thing’ that catches your eye, and log into game, only to find that, shocker, you look like half a dozen other stalkers standing around the tutorial zone.

If you take a moment to think about a few details about who and what your character is, it’ll go a long way towards helping you visualize what your character looks like.

So who is this person anyway?

Hopefully, by now you’ve got a least a token idea about who your character is. A few quirks, what gave them their powers (don’t have that yet? That’s ok) maybe even a goal or two.

If you don’t, that’s ok, Here is where that changes.

Grab the little bio questionnaire from the bottom of this article and answer a question. I don’t care which question. Name is always a good place to start, but not the only place. Greatest Strength? Greatest fear? Religious? Parents? Lovers? Answer any of these questions and you’ve gotten over the biggest hurdle of a good character backstory. Starting.

Now that you’ve done the hard part, answer a few more. As you go, the vague blob of a person in your imagination will begin to take shape, maybe even show you a couple things that there aren’t questions for. Go ahead and write those down too. Keep going until you’ve answered all the questions you can answer without thinking more than 60 seconds. Still have unanswered questions? That ok. Those are next.

Go back and read the whole thing again. Look at the powers you’ve chosen. Have you explained those yet? Well, if you haven’t yet. Do so now. If you have, imagine how someone’s life who has those abilities would be affected. Was the acquisition a shock? Or gradual? Did they discover them or did someone else point them out?

Look for personality traits in your fledgling bio. Are they mean? Compassionate? Greatest Strength is the ability to determine cheese purely by smell alone? (If that’s the case maybe they should rethink this hero/villain business) Why are they like that. Answer the questions that are unspoken. Mean because their greatest love was spurned? (Did you answer the Believe in love question? How did that event shape that answer)

Real People are not born in a vacuum. They are shaped by a variety of factors, genetic, environment, choices, life style, fate, luck, and random chance. Your trouble as a writer is you are Trying to create a Real Person from a vacuum. The more you can do to illuminate the events, people, environment, and random chance surrounding your character, the more you will indirectly shape who they are.

Can I create a costume yet?

Ok Ok FINE! Sheesh. Load up CoH and grab that empty character slot. Select your Archetype, Origin and starting powers that you selected from your rough build.

Gender next (You Have decided that right?)

And, the costume design.

The key to successful costume design, in my ever so humble opinion, is simplicity. Its terribly easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of options available to choose from. Add up something for every possible location. Complete with a blend of design and colors, and Wow.. did you hit the random button or..? ok.. ok.. Clear all. Lets start over.

First I’d like to point out a couple things. First, the little circle at the bottom that Links all colors. Uncheck that. Your character is allowed to have more than two colors. Second, you can still adjust the sliders for physique, chest, waist etc from this screen, it’s the tab under the colors section. Never be afraid to go back and tweak any portion to make it look better.

Simplicity.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use some of the more complex designs (some of them are really cool) that just means that your character’s look should have some simple design concept. Ethnic looks are a good place to start, traditional garb for warriors or priests if your character is cultural centric.

I like to pick one feature that I really like, and design outward from there (And get ready to toss that feature when the rest of the costume looks great and it doesn’t fit in anymore)


Step Three: The Name

Ok. So you’ve got your look, your build, your backstory, even a couple goals. Hit the next button and type in your name!

…

You say that name’s not available? Not having that name destroys your whole concept and look? Hey.. Hey stop crying.. get out of the corner.. shhhh it’ll be ok…

How many variations did you try? Get out your thesaurus, look up synonyms. Are they from a non-English speaking culture? Did you try your name in that language? How about one of the descriptor words? You don’t have any descriptor words? Try some, use colors. (Black Angel, Red Angel, Jade Angel, Blue Angel, Periwinkle Angel) use any adjective you can think of. Combine uncommonly combined words. (Lotus Infinite, Material Guidance) Still no? Ok, use your character’s first name with the surname of your cool name (Nova Mindburn, Alana Wren)

There are a hundred ways to get the name you want. Or something close to it, don’t give up just because the first couple were gone. On the other hand, if you go through a dozen variations with no luck, maybe you should try for a less common theme/name?


Final Words
Well. Hopefully I have helped you create a memorable character. One you will enjoy playing, both game rules wise, and roleplay wise. One who’s mere presence will delight other players due to not only useful powers, but delightful roleplay.

Well. Hopefully at least half of those anyway.

Happy building!


Appendix A: Bio questionnaire (stolen from my guild’s website)

1. What is your character's given name? What does he call himself now, as a hero or villain, and why?
2. How would you physically describe him? How old is he? Does he have recurring mannerisms, moods, or habits? How does he dress?
3. How did he come by his particular origin and archetype? What other talents does he display? In what hobbies does he engage, and why?
4. Where is he from? What does he think of his homeland? Why did he come to Paragon City or Rogue Isles?
5. How would his parents describe him? Does he have a family?
6. Is he in love? Is he married or betrothed? Does he believe in love at first sight?
7. Is he a member of a guild or secret society? How did he meet them, and why did he join it? Where do his loyalties truly lie?
8. How religious or superstitious is he?
9. What alignment best describes him? Does he hold to any moralities, ideologies, virtues or sins - chivalry or honor, self-preservation or pragmatism, or somewhere in between?
10. What is his primary motivation? His highest ambition? His greatest love?
11. What is his greatest strength? His greatest weakness?
12. What is his single greatest fear? His most embarrassing moment? His deepest regret?
13. For whom does he have the greatest respect? What, or whom, does he most despise?
14. Does he have any prejudices? Why?
15. If he could know the exact date of his death, would he want to know?
16. If you could, what advice would you give your character?

this is completely awesome. thanks!