Costume challenge: Metal Slime

I know, I know. This sounds positively stupid, but hear me out. There's method to this madness.

To preface, let me explain. Anyone who's watched Ben 10: Alien Force should be familiar with one of Ben's more creative aliens called Goop. Unlike most of his other aliens, this one is basically a large puddle of green snot given form by an "anti-gravity generator" that looks like a miniature flying saucer. This, in RPG terms, would be a Green Slime. Earlier than that still, we have Gish, whose main protagonist by the same name is described as "a 12-pound ball of tar." Literally, this is what he is - a ball of tar with eyes and a mouth occasionally found somewhere along its surface. In RPG terms, this might represent a Black Slime.

And, of course, all of this leads us into the concept which is a trope unto itself: the Metal Slime. Game mechanics aside, there's something indescribably alluring about a a supposed small, soft, jelly-like slime made out of metal, a substance not known for its jelly-like softness. This alone is worth at the very least looking into, but for a concept that is wholly and entirely defined by its appearance, this needs the correct costume, and I couldn't even BEGIN to imagine how to make this into a reality.

I wish I could give a better example picture, as there are plenty from a genre that's known as "slime girls," but unfortunately I can't find a single picture representing it that wouldn't get me permabanned from the forums.

To put the challenge into more concrete terms, would anyone know how to make a "slime character," i.e. a character who looks like he is entirely made out of slime. I titled this "metal slime," but to be honest, I'll be happy with any material slime, be it jelly, water, snot or some kind of metallic metally metal. I have NO idea how to go about this, primarily for the simple reason that a slime character would need to be transparent (or else look like a playdough character, if that), and we simply don't have costume pieces that do that. Maybe I just suck at this, though. I hope you guys have better ideas than me, because this is actually interesting.

Failing that, the backup variant is the abovementioned Metal Slime. Unlike the more... Organic slimes, a metal one would not need to be transparent, so this might be doable with current costume pieces. Like other slimes, however, a Metal Slime needs to be completely smooth and completely uniform, so the Metallic chest isn't going to cut it. It's relatively smooth, but it still has those deep grooves cut into it. That, and I couldn't begin to imagine what I could use for a head. In the absence of a "blank" face, I honestly don't know what I could use, instead.

I would appreciate any ideas on the subject. I've been investigating this for several months now, and for the life of me I just can't imagine how it would even be possible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You forgot a [/url] after the the code there Sam.

Edit: After reading this, I'll see what I can do. TO THE COSTUME CREATOR!

I use the Stealth IO in hover.

Here's what I got:


I tried to work with the metal costume pieces since you wanted a metallic look. I dunno if the metallic sheen goes away with any sort of stealth power or not (I'd imagine it would). I tried to cover up the bold lines on the metallic pieces with the Cellular overlay.

I think if you're looking for a gooey look, the best you can work with is to mess with the sliders. I have the chest, shoulders, legs and waist all maxed and the physique slider is about a quarter of the way in.

Yeah, Metallic is really your best bet. I don't think there's any other pieces that are quite so uniformly shiny, outside of the VEAT Widow outfits.

Edit: Oh, missed the part in the middle about regular slimes. I've had good luck with just plain, non-shiny tights colored well. And Prestige Power Slide helps. Of course, my particular character is an ink girl, so there's no transparency to worry about.

Green Girl: Huh... That's surprisingly close to what I had in mind. I still don't want to use Inventions, but there are other ways to get stealth... Like Stealth. And I can always explain it away using the Gish analogy of having the ability to harden the slime into a denser material, and at the same time probably gaining some mass.

Not sure I'm a fan of the hair, though. Hand-drawn slime girls have the benefit of being drawn with a hair-shaped slimy head by the eager artists, but in-game hair models just really stand out. I DO like the black-eyed face, though. It's a nice fit. I guess if I wanted to go that route, I could try some kind of Full Mask variant, or possibly a hat of some sort. There's really nothing saying that I can't have accessories to the costume as an alternate design, come to think of it. I still need a "pure slime" look, though, so one without accessories is important.

Metal Guy: A good effort, but he honestly looks more like an iron golem than a Metal Slime. Of course, I've no idea what a Metal Slime should look like, given it's a conundrum of terminology, but I keep thinking something akin to the T1000. That is to say, reflective like you have it, and also not necessarily geometrically simple, but sporting a featureless, textureless finish, like that of flowing metal. Metal doesn't do this, as the etched grooves give the surface a look of solid metal, one that you can carve long lines into.

It's well shiny enough, but it has far too much detail. I keep wondering if we shouldn't insist on a reflective tights texture in general. It'd certainly help with this, but I'm sure it'd have other uses, as well. I guess I could try the Shiny Tights texture, and I know that has versions for all body parts (I checked), but I'm not sure it'd look quite shiny enough to be a Metal Slime.

In general: Would anyone have any idea how to mesh the head with the rest of the body? Face textures are orange-tinted, whereas tights textures are grey-scale, so even if I put masks on the face, they still won't match. I could go with a textured face, kind of like the fabric-covered one, but I'm not sure that would match, either, especially if I go for Shiny Tights.

I'm also not sure if I should go with a male or a female. Technically, a slime shouldn't have gender, on account of it not having a body shape or any actual biology other than, you know, slime, and after playing around with this concept with a character who's essentially a pile of scar tissue hooked up to a helmet, I have no problem varying between models, but here's the thing: I generally tend to default to the Male model of gender is irrelevant, not because men are the default, but more because women without defining features just look awkward to me. I'll see if I can get a decent-looking female model on this, but if I can't... Well, we'll see.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Samuel, why not try asking over in The Costume (Re-) Design Thread? Some pretty talented costumers there...

[ ProTip: The banner is a link to art refs!! | The Khellection | The HBAS Repository | Brute Guides (4/16/10) | How To Post An Image - A Quick Guide ]
Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:

Man, you got me stumped. If anyone can manage this I'll be amazed. Also, what Kheldarn said, check out the costume redesign thread.

When you say "Metal Slime", what comes to my mind is the T-1000 from Terminator 2 (in "special effect" mode, not human disguise), or the aqua-alien from The Abyss; is that the sort of effect you're thinking of?

Just brainstorming out of the creator here:

With what we currently have, sounds like the metallic costume parts (despite the cuts) mixed with colorized ice armor and dark melee and stealth will all do the trick. (or maybe flipped with ice melee and dark armor, both colorized fittingly. Can DA be colored brightly? If so that might do it.)

The sparkly prestige sprint might also help.

A drippy, slimy, gelatinous aura would be best. But it doesn't exist. Feet tendrils maybe?

Also it sounds like what you need are super reflective tights that don't exist yet. But I hope they are added someday in the near future.

Cross linked for posterity:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...postcount=1015

This is actually the basis of my stalker, Silverbuilt. Grey skin, all grey tights (sleek, so they're shiny,) grey hair, that supernatural face with the 'glowing' eyes--the eyes are colored grey so that they just blend in with the skin. And then metallic spines (three guesses what color.) I like to think it works out pretty well. I'll throw a picture up tonight if nobody's beat me to it.

You know, following the suggestions I got from this thread and the other one, I came up with something I actually rather like. Have a look:



This is my as of yet unnamed Slime Girl, currently going under the name, err... Slime Girl Test on Virtue, and only because "Slime Girl" was already taken.

I had to kind of cheat to get this look, however. As you know, we can't have skin textures that match our Tights textures, but as you can see, mine does. I achieved this by using one of the full masks, one called Horleus. Because I picked A skin colour that's between Green and Cyan (I believe it's called Spring Green) for the skin colour and a shade for the mask that was close to that, the resulting face looked like a solid colour. It's not, but the blend is too hard to spot unless you have the kind of super telescopic x-ray hyper vision as bestowed by the NPC gods.

The rest of the costume is all in three colours, all shades of Spring Green, which is the eighth colour row from the top down, by the way. The Hair is Rapturous, coloured (8,5) and (8,6), the mask is (8,5). The face is Supernatural Face 8.

For the top, I went with Shiny Tights chest and the smooth gloves and all other elements off. The chest is a Diamond Blend of (8,5) and (8,7) and the gloves are a Blend of (8,5) and (8,2). The bottom is identical - shiny tights for pants and flat boots. Pants are Diamond Blend of (8,5) and (8,7) and the boots are regular Blend of (8,5) and (8,2). No tail, no wings, no cape.

I actually went one row down from green because the Ice Armour and Ice Melee powers looked more vivid in Spring Green than they did in Lime Green. All the Ice powers (that can even take custom colours) are using (7,5) on the Ice colour selection grid.

To be honest, I think I like my Spring Green slime better than the concept of a Metal Slime

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.