SuperOz

Wow, where do I start? I spent three years in university covering pretty much most aspects; editing, scriptwriting, filming, post-production...I did a little work for community tv but now I find that I can do more from home, barring a few areas where I can't get access (sound design is a horrendous pain, especially when you want quality sound effects..so expensive for licensed sounds, ala The Matrix, a great source of weapons and weapons sounds). I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my home use and I keep my hand in with short clips of CoH, and anything else I want to film. Every chance I get I experiment with different techniques, from 1940's newsreels (I did one for my Golden Age-themed SG), up to full-blown title sequences. As you know, you can stumble upon happy accidents and just doing it teaches you as you go. My aim is to get into independent production as writer and director. I find I visualise really well and if I could draw at all, I'd be an artist. But I can't, so I'll do it in moving pictures instead.

I agree with you on the Marvel costumes particularly...the costume for Superman Returns tried to play the S-shield pattern too much, but the Spiderman costume for me remains a benchmark of design and aesthetic and balance. The colors are contrasted enough to draw your eye to them, and the aesthetic makes it seem like a genuine updating rather than a redesign. The WWII Captain America costume I loved, as it was probably the most functional and iconically designed 'real' suit I've seen in a long, long time. I think the primary thing that stands out that there's no 'uniform' look ala the X-Men black leather (armor with flares, I might point out), but rather a strong idea of individual design.

Re: the setting, I had some nice chats with Troy Hickman (someone I saw you mention in another reply) and we both felt Statesman was best seen as the 1970's Superman, flawed but still iconically heroic. Going Rogue I thought was more the 1980's 'Dark Knight Returns' as a zone. The thing I keep bearing in mind is that a) in keeping with the feel I hope it blows out into a 'save the universe' story (very Silver Age) and b) Allows some moments for the players to really shine heroically, so it balances the stronger darker tones we've seen so far.

The art info has been copied and pasted for testing in Adobe Photoshop! Thanks very much for that, I love playing with Layers.


Re: updating art assets, I can see the reasoning behind that a lot, to be honest. It's a natural consequence of time that some assets will look dated (a simple comparison from say Doom to even the first Halo game bears that out) and they deserve to be replaced. The new cloth stuff sounds fabulous.

A two-part question on that, though; is it becoming harder to wrangle tricks and techniques with the character rig as is, with the eye of the needle narrowing as it were, and has there been talk of tweaking the legacy pieces to bring their resolution up to par, or is that just not an option due to player reaction or 'ruining' the piece?

I'm very grateful to hear that you want to stay up to date with costume pieces as well as offering 'base coat' textures, as I think just as audiences we're coming to expect that in our media. Subconciously I think CoH players particularly want to emulate that 'realistic/movie' look a lot more.

Is that becoming a problem though as well, because those costumes are becoming composed of more layers as time progresses? I think, coming full circle, back to the Marvel costumes, and Captain America in particular, has a lot going on detail-wise. I think 'base coats' will go a good way to emulating that, would you agree?


S.

My background is in film, and the first rule (as I suspect is the case with artists) is make what you show visually interesting. Some people have complained about the on-set photos of Captain America on The Avengers that the costume doesn't look very good, but they're neglecting what details the camera can pick out and enhance that a regular photo can't. I'm all for details, both subtle and visually striking, myself.

I agree with you that audiences are more sophisticated and there's an expectation that there should be a level of function to costumes, particularly. That's why in-game, I favor the IDF belt for characters with pouches over the Stealth or other belts. It looks more functional and grounds the character in reality. However, if the costume is done well and updated subtly (the Sam Raimi Spiderman springs to mind immediately) it can look functional and capture the nature of the character well. Batman Begins did so too, I thought. I see City of Heroes as a late Silver Age (1970's-80's) setting, with the darker morality of Praetoria encroaching on a more balanced, but still heroic, viewpoint of Paragon City.

The texture gradient sounds very interesting. I'd like to do that on some custom pictures of my characters or ask commissioned artists to do the same...can you elaborate a bit more?

And as for the in-game model of Statesman, I think that's a good idea, and I'm wondering with such things as the Steampunk pack faces, if there's an intent to gradiate player looks and costumes in that direction as well? A certain game by Cryptic I thought did a very good job in giving a sense of layered detail that isn't always possible here, even if the aesthetic wasn't to my personal liking.

I think the realistic look for this game would work tremendously well, myself...and by that I mean the aesthetics of say Aion or APB. I have a particular attraction to both the Unreal game engine and the Havok physics engine for cloth rendering, as I think they add a gradient of realism to looks. Would the decision for more realistic rendering of pieces extend as far as character models in your opinion? That isn't a 'please consider this' question, but one grounded in art. Some people would argue that the infamous 'mitten hands' should be more detailed for instance, whereas I don't think it detracts from the larger picture.

My personal interest is in having things such as the texture on Statesman's costume being a standard option, or a pattern, for instance. The IDF suit's pattern and the faint 'scalemail' effect on the Thorns suit I personally could see standing on their own as a valid aesthetic choice. A good example is something I'll include here, a custom piece I had done for the character featured. The idea of 'scales' on the costume I thought added a subtle but distinctive feature, and I immediately found myself frustrated I couldn't do it in game.

Apologies for the size; it wouldn't let me scale it down for some reason.




S.

This probably would've been filmed close to when Nicholas Courtney, the man who played the Brig, passed away. It's been a rough year for us older Who fans, losing him and 'our' Sarah Jane in the same year.


S.