All Things Art: Animation Edition

I need you to ignore everything else in this thread and devote your energies towards giving my character, The Lounge Crooner, the /fingerpistols emote he so obviously deserves.

Some silly hand movement, I'm sure.

I don't get why we need animations for the defensive toggles at all. Superman doesn't stand around flexing for two minutes before he takes a bus to the head. Does he? I hope not.

Huh. Some people like the flexing?

Since they think I'm not helping how about this: alternate animation that lets me remove the starting animation for defensive toggles. That suits my characters best, most of the time.

Read the rules at the top. If you can't contribute, GTFO.

Headbutt and a goring attack animation for several sets would be wonderful. And to the naysayers who ALWAYS come out of the woodwork on this one to talk about the current game engine and how it can't account for model scale, getting head to head contact etc... I'm not talking about a world cup hooligan style headbutt. I'm talking about using your noggin' to smack the living daylights out of a foe--regardless of where you hit.

Think of the headbutt as a head punch moving forward. The gore as a side to side tearing motion with the head. Why request these? Because umpteen characters use such an attack as signature moves in "real world comics" and because we have all these wonderful horns and helmets in game. Having one or two SS/MA/DM attacks have an alternate head based attack would simply rock.

Additionally, give all tech theme possible defender/controller/dominator/corruptor shield and hold powers modified versions of the tricorder animation AND the gauntlet keypad animation ([surveillance] currently uses this animation). I know, I know, lot of folks HATE the dreaded tricorder of the medicine pool. BUT if the green rays of the tricorder were colorable as part of power customization and it was strictly optional, I think it would be a great way for some characters to explain how they generate force fields/gravity fields/seismic waves/etc. Plus with the basics of the animation already in place, this seems like potentially low hanging fruit.

Any and all of these options would be acceptable booster pack inclusions IMO. In fact, a booster pack with simply 2 new power animations (in addition to a couple costume sets of course) that shows up across say 8 sets shared amongst only 4 archetypes would be totally cool. Don't knock yourselves out too much. But as I've said before, the booster pack route would be a great way to introduce less general, thematically specific power animations.

Auras? Yes. Moar plz. Been asking for aeons for an aura that uses the existing fallen leaf models and has them swirling about your character. Similarly for the kawaii amongst us, some hearts doing the same thing. If a "wet" or "drippy" or "slimy" look could ever be achieved, would be much appreciated.

Are auras with reflective surfaces possible using ultra mode? If so, I'd suggest trying to make a couple--not with any result in mind--just see what trippy cosmic effects come out of highly reflective particles or auras. Refine the aesthetic to a couple uber-cosmic auras. And reverse engineer an approximation of the aesthetic for non UM users.

Behaviors? Yes. We need both citizens and enemies doing more interesting things on maps and throughout the cities. Made some more specific suggestions in the Buildings Edition thread as I thought they were pertinent to bringing the architecture more to life. If they come back to me, I'll post them here again and maybe expand. But for now I should get back to work.

And lastly, +1 on the desire for beastly run. Heck, still crossing my fingers that some of those forthcoming "stance emotes" are actually emotes that override run animations (either at release or eventually) providing us some more thematic options alla Ninja Run.

The one thing that has bothered me all these years is the Electric Blast set. The blast animations just don't look "powerful". With Electric blast, all you do is raise your arm, cast a squiggly beam with a very mild zizt sound effect and cause an orgasmic shiver on your target. Compare that to Energy blasts, where you hunker down a bit to brace yourself, release a Boosh-Blam on your target who is knocked down or back. Even Ice blast which while it doesn't have a significant impact animation, does have a nice baseball windup and throw. I'd like to see the Electric animations perked up some.

One a similar note, the early Radiation blasts are also pretty anemic. Neutrino Bolt is like pushing cotton candy and X-Ray Beam doens't seem to have any noticible impact effect.

How about a "/em liedown" emote? We see some of the Lost doing it now, why not let us use it?

"/em facepalm" is a must, we've gone too long without this one.

"/em cough". It's not as good as facepalm, but I can still see some uses for it.

"/em sitbook". Basically, sit down on a chair and read a book.

"/em holoscreen". The character creates one or more holographic control pannels/screens, and starts to interact with it. The pannel could look somewhat like the display of the police radio heroes get. The motions could be more or less the "/em touchscreen" emote.

"/em holoscreensit". Same, but sitting down as if on a chair.

"/em rose". The character pulls out a rose and offers it to someone. Bonus points if you do "/em redrose", "/em whiterose", ect.

And finally... "/em kickpuppy". The character pulls out a small dog, gives it a small toss/drop, and kicks it away. Make it comical.

Talking of the skulking/crouching walk, that might make for a nice alternative aimation for Walk or Sprint for the more animal-like avatars.

Take the animations for Thunderous Blast and Energy Transfer out back and shoot them. Repeatedly.

Then replace them with another animation that fits the required time window.

I have no desire to rehash the debate as to why Energy Transfer has this animation now, but please please please can we get a long plodding animation for it that looks visually interesting and powerful instead of the kludge we currently have?

Secondly, the animations for Tough and Integration need to be shot if you have any ammunition left. Macho-Tarzan-Tough-Guy power activate simply does not work if you are five foot four and female.

Right off the top of my head, I'd like these. Probably in this order, too:

-More female sit emotes. The male model gets a good variety and the female model gets a long list of names for the same few emotes. That should be fixed. The female model doesn't need specifically "feminine" sit emotes either. Just copy over the male ones.

-Another look at some existing emotes. /e sit does odd things to the female spine. It also breaks the front of the male model's waist. Ninja Run deforms the female spine badly while jumping and the legs go up very sharply when running, making the hips/butt area go completely flat.

-Fix the different sit levels. The male model doing the same sit emote as the female model will generally sit on top of an object whereas the female model will sit down into that object.

-Power customization for power pools, including alternate animations for the Medicine pool.

Super Speed!!!!

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=215508

A way to save the costume-change emote per character. It's a bit annoying to have to set it each time you log.

Also, a way to select the flypose animation for fly, per costume. I think it'd be easy, just make fly customisable in Icon/Facemaker, like the other powers (I think this would be done when the rest of the travel power pools)