How tall should I make her?


Amerikatt

 

Posted

OK, my head's about to flip around and vacate my body if I try to reason this out any more, so I figure I'm just going to ask you guys for a bit of advice. Keep in mind that this is an aesthetics question of personal opinion.

I have a girl I've been meaning to make for some time, and with Going Rogue on the horizon, I figured I might as well get her costume right before Launch day. The thing is, she's supposed to be a tall, strong, fierce warrior from another world where the environment is so hostile and the world so populated with invincible monsters that humans evolved to be a LOT stronger, tougher and overall bigger than humans on Primal Earth. This requires that I make my girl pretty tall, but still looking reasonably human. My question here is - how tall?

Let me put this another way - if you were designing a woman who is defined by being bigger than most men, how tall would that make her? Slightly taller than the big bruisers Trolls and Outcasts? As big as the various Freakshow? Max height? Suppose I picked a particular NPC to be "bigger than." How much bigger should I make her? Slightly taller? "A head" taller? "Breasts at eye level" taller (as someone else once put it)?

Just so that we know we're on the same page this is the woman I'm talking about. I'm honestly in a quandary here, because I'm not sure I want to make her max height, or indeed even skirt max height, but at the same time I want her to look and feel BIG. I also don't want to step on the toes of this titanic character who's already max height, but I'm wondering... Should I, actually?

I'm really hoping you guys can help set my mind on what I should do.


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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

If you were going for a more brutal stronger character I'd say go shorter than average. 5'10" ish is the average height of those who are stronger than normal people while the average is 6-6'2", but if you are going for the 'tall=strong' myth then you can always follow the Diana, wonder woman, model which is 6'6"-7'


 

Posted

6-8 inches below maximum.
You would always know that she was larger than most (by a significant amount), but that you hadn't simply jacked it to the max, which would be the easy way out.

Then play with the other sliders to get the beefy thickness that would imply strong and tough.

Absolute maximum is the easy way out, and I know enough about you to know that you're too picky (nit-picky at times) to do things the simple or easy way. You have an eye for detail and a mind that obsesses about the minute things that most take for granted.


 

Posted

You don't want to go max height unless you have a specific reason. I've gone max height exactly twice ever.

1) To team with a friend whose character was female and max height. (She had blue skin and was wearing a bikini and high heels, but that's not relevant. )

2) For contrast. I have a character who normally looks like a mousy librarian (conservative clothes, glasses) but changes to a max height catgirl (yay Science Booster).


If you want to be noticeably taller than most of the people around you, go about 6' 6" on the (almost useless) scale in the character creator.


Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork View Post
6-8 inches below maximum.
You would always know that she was larger than most (by a significant amount), but that you hadn't simply jacked it to the max, which would be the easy way out.
Hmm... I'll probably do that. I keep wanting to make her tall yet reasonable, but because some artist decided to be "realistic" and made women about 10% shorter than men and then proceeded to make NPC men about 50% taller than player men... Well, let's just say that there isn't much ground between "taller than most" and "max slider." I'll see what balance I can strike, but it'll likely be higher than what I have now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork View Post
Then play with the other sliders to get the beefy thickness that would imply strong and tough.
That's pretty much done, which is kind of why I attached the picture. Yeah, that pic IS cheating, as it's the hacked model I used in David's Art thread, but I'm still waiting for that kind of skin texture to finish it. In the meantime, she's about as "chunky" as the editor will allow without looking silly. Ask me about it if you want to know what I did

Quote:
Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork View Post
Absolute maximum is the easy way out, and I know enough about you to know that you're too picky (nit-picky at times) to do things the simple or easy way. You have an eye for detail and a mind that obsesses about the minute things that most take for granted.
Sadly, that used to be the case, but after going through the same pains with my one and only other giant woman in the other Pic, I broke down and just made her max slider. I was sick and tired of seeing my "giant" woman be positively tiny, so I went as much overboard as I could as a form of revenge Besides, she's supposed to be about the biggest character I'm going to make of that type, so it made sense for her to be the biggest I CAN make.

However, that puts me up against a problem - if I made another max-height woman, that will take far too much away from the original's uniqueness and coolness. So you're right there - I probably don't want to go max slider. However, at this point, I'm convinced I should get "close."

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Originally Posted by Durakken View Post
If you were going for a more brutal stronger character I'd say go shorter than average. 5'10" ish is the average height of those who are stronger than normal people while the average is 6-6'2", but if you are going for the 'tall=strong' myth then you can always follow the Diana, wonder woman, model which is 6'6"-7'
It's not just a case of "tall=strong." It's more about "big=strong." There are a few particular features of the "Height" slider in City of Heroes that are well worth exploring. One is that it's not height at all, it's scale, or in other words size. It doesn't make people just taller, it makes them proportionately bigger. In real life, a 7-feet-tall woman would look stretched, with her body consisting of, what? 8-9 heads or some such? In City of Heroes that's not an issue, because the head scales up with the body, as does bodymass. An 8-foot-tall woman (which is what my green one is) has thicker arms, wider shoulders, bigger hands and longer legs than a 5'5'' woman. You can't tell in the editor, but it's REALLY telling in the actual in-game world.

Furthermore, weapons scale with the model, so while a weapon is always to-scale with the character who wields it, a big character's weapon tends to be MASSIVE compared to enemies. And because I went with the Legacy Battle Axe on this one, which is MASSIVELY oversized on women to begin with, that effect is staggering. As an idle point of fact, the Legacy Battle Axe is as wide across as the spiked targe shield Considering I'm using a pretty high scale value already, this makes the axe wider across than most of my enemies are at the shoulders. This pleases me greatly

Finally, as character scale increases, base animation speeds decrease. Running becomes slower, jumping height feels lower and large weapons feel like they're swinging in wider arcs. The whole character's movement and attitude feels much heavier and much more sturdy because it's significantly slower as compared to even a medium-sized one. That's a large part of why I want this woman to be a large model. I have her pretty large right now. In fact, let me check... I have her set to scale value 26 out of 36 and... What the hell? OK, that's lower than the slider made it look. There's definitely room for upscaling here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironblade View Post
If you want to be noticeably taller than most of the people around you, go about 6' 6" on the (almost useless) scale in the character creator.
I used to think that, but the truth is that the in-game reality is nothing of the sort. I currently have her just shy over 7 feet and she's barely taller than many civilians and shorter than many combat NPCs. I thought bringing her this tall would solve this, but I struggle to tower over even just the tailor who made me the costume at that height 6'6'' is actually the standard middle slider value for men, or at least is thereabout, which would put me on even keel with most civilians and more conservative villains, but easily shorter than most "tough" villains like Trolls and especially the Freakshow. I'm not looking for Council big or Greater Devoured big (though that would be so cool ), but bigger than most is the least I want to do. I might have to take BBQ Pork's solution and then... Basically run with it.

Will see about it tomorrow when it's not half past 2 AM

---

Just want to say: Thank you, guys, for taking the time to help me with this. I know I can be difficult to work with most of the time, but I really appreciate this. Still looking, by the way.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

Sam, considering that you KNOW about the crazily off height scale in this game, purposely setting out to make a character taller and bigger than most seems rather self-defeating. You'll pretty much have to stay right under the 8' mark, and I'm not sure she'll ever look quite right to you, especially if you start comparing.

My Muscular Buxom Warrior Woman from Another World is approximately 6'8", and she looks hulky and menacing enough to me. Then again I wasn't going for "tall" as much as "strong", and at that look I believe I've succeeded.


 

Posted

I would recommend no taller than 7' tall. Male characters can go to 8' tall, but I'd stop with 7' tall for a female character.

In contrast, I believe that Wonder Woman is about 5'10" or 5'11". No more than 6' tall.



AMERIKATT: Star of Stage, Screen, and Saturday morning cartoons! (Art by Psygon and ChristopherRobin)
"(Katt-Girl) obviously reads a lot of encyclopedias" -- Kiken
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I Support Nerd Flirting and Even More Nerd Flirting!

 

Posted

Hi Samuel!

Well... first thing I would considerate is: She is stronger... but why people on that planet evolved to be stronger?

If they are that way because of too many extremes of the planet Biome, I would try making her as strong (and big) as I could get, maxing every slide.

But one concept that I would also consider is "density"... I think (with no science basis whatsoever, just pseudo-considerations) I would make her a little (some 30%) SMALLER than an average person, but at the same time maxing all the other sliders (except legs, as it would actually make her bigger, and that isnt the idea) to the max. I would think on a very tough woman, shaped by her world to be really hard. She would be brutish, but not hulking brutish...

Anyway, when you decide on the look, share with us! I want to see what you created!

Hugs...


** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************

Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by KayJMM View Post
Well... first thing I would considerate is: She is stronger... but why people on that planet evolved to be stronger?

If they are that way because of too many extremes of the planet Biome, I would try making her as strong (and big) as I could get, maxing every slide.
Something like that. She comes from the kind of hideous world that if you dropped a regular human in there, he would choke on poison air, die from extreme weather and probably sink in a sand pit within 30 seconds, and that's before realising godzilla waiting around every corner is the LEAST of his problems. There are giant carnivorous poisonous shooting plants, aggressive poisonous insects everywhere, giant monsters at every turn, and the only food is both toxic and far too hard to eat while most water is both poisonous and teeming with aggressive, resistant, necrotising bacteria. It's the kind of world that, by all accounts, humans should not be able to survive with, but the humans there that do survive are simply beasts so strong you basically couldn't kill them if they let you try. Guns, lasers, explosives - that's the kind of damage they face and actually suffer on a daily basis, and they live through it with little more than an hour's rest.

THAT is the kind of hideously, absurdly monstrous creature I'm looking to create.

Quote:
Originally Posted by KayJMM View Post
But one concept that I would also consider is "density"... I think (with no science basis whatsoever, just pseudo-considerations) I would make her a little (some 30%) SMALLER than an average person, but at the same time maxing all the other sliders (except legs, as it would actually make her bigger, and that isnt the idea) to the max. I would think on a very tough woman, shaped by her world to be really hard. She would be brutish, but not hulking brutish...
You know, I actually based this on something I saw in a documentary on the Discovery channel. An archaeologist had this thigh bone they'd dug up, which had been dated back to something like 10-20 thousand years ago... I honestly don't know, but before civilization, anyway. He puts the thigh bone to his own leg and says: "As you can see, this bone is about as big as my own, in fact it's a little bigger. Only from its structure, we can tell it belonged to a 15-year-old child. You can just imagine how large that person would have been when they grew up."

Now, I don't know if that's true or not, and it could be my rotten memory playing tricks on poor interpretation, but that's what originally inspired me to make this woman. The idea that, here on Primal Earth we've always had it easy, so we were allowed to grow soft and small. On their world, that was never an option, so they had to evolve to be strong, tough and above all BIG, to be able to manually wrestle the many big, BIG monsters who were trying to kill them basically around the clock. A smaller, "denser" woman would be appropriate if she were from our world, but for this one I want a character obviously big enough that whenever she walks down the street, people instinctively take a step back and go "Woah!" She comes from a world of monsters, and in large part, I want her to be a monster, herself.

I realise it may seem like I'm only ever working on eccentric concepts, like a slime girl or a panda girl or a communist elf, but that's just because these are the only concepts I need help with. The more mundane concepts are easy to make, so I rarely need to ask other people about them. This one is... A bit more eccentric than usual

Quote:
Originally Posted by Primal View Post
Sam, considering that you KNOW about the crazily off height scale in this game, purposely setting out to make a character taller and bigger than most seems rather self-defeating. You'll pretty much have to stay right under the 8' mark, and I'm not sure she'll ever look quite right to you, especially if you start comparing.
I used to feel that way, Primal, but my other max-height woman proved me wrong. Not only does she pretty much tower over everything that isn't supposed to be giant anyway (and even then she measures up), but she's SO BIG I actually dwarf most players and most regular-level NPCs. But, yeah, that requires some pretty extreme height to achieve. It also, however, makes her broadsword around six feet long, and that is awesome like you wouldn't believe It's like swinging at people with a sharpened support girder. Mmm... Reminds me of the Juggernaut. In a good way

As for this one, sadly you seem to be right. I'll have to stay just shy under maximum (by the way, "max slider" is about 7'10'' for women) and just put her in the same category of unreasonably gigantic as my other giant woman, only I'll put her a few inches behind.

You know... When I have a mental image of what she SHOULD like, I'm actually thinking something on the order of how Avatar's Na'vi compared to humans, only she'd be much less skinny and much more muscular. Probably not QUITE as profound a difference, but thereabout. And, yeah. That would require some serious slider.

Well, better now than when it hits Live

Quote:
Originally Posted by Amerikatt View Post
I would recommend no taller than 7' tall. Male characters can go to 8' tall, but I'd stop with 7' tall for a female character.

In contrast, I believe that Wonder Woman is about 5'10" or 5'11". No more than 6' tall.
OK, honest question here - why no taller than 7'? I mean, it'd look odd for a realistic woman, that much I would grant you, but for a monstrous one? I mean, she's already dragging around an axe wider than what would fit through most doors, wouldn't epic giantness do this justice?

I had her at just under 7 feet before I made this thread, and the reason I made her taller is because she simply didn't measure up to most things I ran across. Oh, sure, she was taller than some normal people, about eye-level with some other normal people, only barely slightly taller than some regular-looking women and actually shorter than a few enemies who were still supposed to be human. I upped her height twice, and by a bit, before I even made this thread, but it didn't seem like enough, but it also seemed like I was skirting max height. I essentially just didn't know if I should. I have no problem making her max height, or indeed max height in all by name. I guess I wanted people to tell me to do it

I'll do some tweaking and run some numbers, then I'll let you know what I came up with. From the look of things, though, if scale 32 is the maximum, I'll probably go with something between 28 and 30. Not quite max height, but not quite not. I'll see about giving you an in-world comparison when I can.

*edit*
If it seems like I post too much and ramble on too long, I apologise. This is actually very interesting to me

*edit*
Bad memory... The scale goes from -27 to +36, not 32. What this means is I'm not looking for scales from 28 to 30, I'm looking for scales from 32 to 34. And I think I'll go with 34. And I should explain - those are fairly big increments on the slider.

Also, this has changed since the last time I tried it, though it may just be different on men. Last time I tried it, the max on men was scale 25. I'll have to have a look at it some time.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

Alrighty! I did some work with the help of a high-level friend of mine to give me access to more zones and more cooperative NPCs, and I managed to get a pretty comprehensive size comparison with a variety of notable figures. We have the following:

Brutticus and Henry Peter Wong - Aw! The little guy is so cute when he's angry ^_^

Brutticus and Back Alley Brawler - OK, he's HUGE! But apparently, so is Brutticus. Not quite as thick around, sure, but oh well.

Brutticus and Some Random Hellion - Dude! Whatever you do, don't look behind you!

Brutticus and Valkyrie - Yeah, she's really tall, but she's also so thin and spindly. Brutticus is taller AND more chunky. I win!

Brutticus and Positron - Looks like Positron needs to eat his greens! Wait, no... Forget I said anything...

Brutticus and Some Outcasts - Make way for big momma or be trampled underfoot!

Brutticus and the Freakishly Tall University Staff - What do they feed these guys? Depleted uranium? Anyway, Brutticus has probably an inch or two on SuperProf, and I'm counting that as a huge victory.

Brutticus' Axe and Positron - By my calculations, you, Sir, are as as wide across the shoulders as this axe. Now that I have your measurements, I shall have your suit done by tomorrow.

I hope you like those, guys. I sure had fun taking them, and I'm REALLY looking forward to Going Rogue now


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

btw...what you are saying about a women that are 7' is wrong and stupid. People, unless there is something is wrong with them, grow proportionally and person that is 5'4" looks no more stretched than someone that is 7'1".

The reason you may think other wise is because a lot of people that you see that are smaller/taller have some kind of genetic disorder (even though some might not like being told that it is a genetic "disorder"). Those without those disorders look the same as "normal" sized people. This I know for a fact as I know/knew people on both sides of the spectrum at the heights I mentioned.


As far as Wonder Woman ... She is 6'5-7' as she is generally shown to be taller than Batman and Superman whom I believe are 5'10-6'5" but I haven't looked it up recently so meh.


 

Posted

She needs to be tall enough to dunk.

Or at least have good fundamentals.


"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Durakken View Post
btw...what you are saying about a women that are 7' is wrong and stupid. People, unless there is something is wrong with them, grow proportionally and person that is 5'4" looks no more stretched than someone that is 7'1".
So, what you're saying is that taller people have bigger heads?


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Reiraku View Post
She needs to be tall enough to dunk.

Or at least have good fundamentals.
Pfft. No one watches women's basketball.















I kid! I kid!


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
So, what you're saying is that taller people have bigger heads?
Generally speaking, yes, but height isn't 1 to 1 with head size. There are plenty of people with much larger heads that are smaller than average.

It's not really something that is noticeable unless you are going around measuring heads. I mean do you notice a difference in head size between someone who is 6' and 6'6"? Of course not. and when you are drawing if you use the 8head model it's 6 inches divided into 8 parts which is .75 inches per head length. Add another 6 to get to 7' and it's still only 1.5 inches and that really doesn't look all that different.


 

Posted

I was reading a similar thread about a week or so ago. I'm not sure where to find it but the gist was that many npc's are very tall in this game. Keep in mind also, the female max height is slightly shorter than the male which is in turn slightly shorter than huge. One of the things that was mentioned in that other thread was to use the slider to decide and ignore the height markings because they aren't accurate. You can make a toon that is 6' tall and the powerless civilians that walk the streets will tower over him/her. From what you are describing, I would say that you should go with max height or slightly shorter. Personally, I have a female toon that is max height and I notice that npc's like Anathema (Lost) are still at least a head taller. You mentioned that "with GR on the horizon you want to get her costume right". I could be wrong on this one but I thought I remembered reading that there would be new costume pieces with GR. Just thought that's another thing you might want to consider.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Durakken View Post
Generally speaking, yes, but height isn't 1 to 1 with head size. There are plenty of people with much larger heads that are smaller than average.
Well, I can handle being wrong. I was under the impression that head size was fairly universal among people and determined by the size of the brain it needs to contain, whereas body size not so much, so a taller person would have a similar head size to a short person. Maybe that's simply not the case.

It doesn't change much, though, because:

Quote:
It's not really something that is noticeable unless you are going around measuring heads. I mean do you notice a difference in head size between someone who is 6' and 6'6"? Of course not. and when you are drawing if you use the 8head model it's 6 inches divided into 8 parts which is .75 inches per head length. Add another 6 to get to 7' and it's still only 1.5 inches and that really doesn't look all that different.
Pretty much. You can upscale a small character, head and all, and pass that off as a larger but still proportional character. In fact, if you use the City of Heroes editor, it WILL NOT SHOW you the relative scale of the model. You can pick the largest or the smallest model and it will still look exactly the same with the same costume. It's only when you put that character in the actual world and measure it up by other characters that it becomes apparent.

This is something I'm trying to avoid, and I am consciously designing my "big" costumes to look big in and of themselves, even when seen in the editor with no sense of size or scale. This is why you'll notice Brutticus having what Zombra once dubbed the "pinhead effect." I can make her body as big as I want, that won't stop her from looking like an upscaled normal woman. So what I did was shrink her head down (and by quite a bit) which makes her more heads high and more heads wide without actually making her practically bigger. Makes her shoulders feel wider, makes her legs look longer.

Now, clearly this isn't to everyone's taste. Linkara was pretty flabbergasted when he measured Thunderstrike in one particular pic and came up with 11 head heights tall and 5 head widths at the shoulders. Maybe I don't have any taste, or maybe I just like the more "out there" stuff, but that doesn't really bother me visually. I'm much less interested in realistic depictions of human beings (if I were, I wouldn't be watching anime) and much more so with iconic impact of characters. If I have to make them distorted to achieve that effect, then so be it.

Incidentally, I'm pretty happy with the height I picked for this one, as you can see in the screenshots. As far as the editor permits, that's just about the most I can get, anyway.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

your screen shots... never measure from a look up or looking down perspective... there is an illusion that happens because we see ourselves as the viewer and measure heights based off our own heights... so when you look down you will measure everything as smaller than you and you look up you will measure everything as bigger


Proportions are either 8 heads or 3 heads. I forget how to measure with 3 heads, but there are a number of characters built with it, such as wolverine. 8 heads is universally standard. The reason you see a difference in anime is more or less just a visual trick thing. But even with the 8 heads rules it doesn't always follow because some people have short torsos and long legs and others the opposite... look at Tyrant's picture on the official going rogue site... he's got a long torso and short legs which extends the arms.

The reason Linkara was ******** about that image has more to do with he fact that western artists like to say they draw more realistically to slight people that draw anime but more often than not... western artists are the same or worse than anime artists in that they can only draw surface pretty and that ends up causing tons of problems which are readily apparent in most western comics... especially the 90s which is where a lot of his review books come from.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Durakken View Post
your screen shots... never measure from a look up or looking down perspective... there is an illusion that happens because we see ourselves as the viewer and measure heights based off our own heights... so when you look down you will measure everything as smaller than you and you look up you will measure everything as bigger
The point of the screenshots was not to be scientifically accurate but rather to look pretty, so I took some liberties. If you can't trust the pictures, then trust me when I say they are close enough It may not show from the exact screenshots, but I had a much better perspective when making them, so I know where she stands. And aside from BABs and that SuperProf, she really is taller than most people, at least when she isn't hunched over in combat pose.

The results I found satisfy me, and none of them were really grotesquely out of proportion (no more so than I'd have wanted anyway), so chances are I'll be going with that height when the time comes.

Quote:
The reason Linkara was ******** about that image has more to do with he fact that western artists like to say they draw more realistically to slight people that draw anime but more often than not... western artists are the same or worse than anime artists in that they can only draw surface pretty and that ends up causing tons of problems which are readily apparent in most western comics... especially the 90s which is where a lot of his review books come from.
To be honest, outside those instances where they get the human anatomy completely wrong (His leg looks like it joins his body just under the pectoral muscle!), I don't actually mind the "Leifeldian" style much at all. Sure, it produces crappy artwork like the perpetual scowl or the Youngbloods' Disease, but it also produces the kind of off-the-wall artwork I really like when given to a half-way decent artist.

To be perfectly honest, I don't like realistic designs in non-real fiction, which is basically anything that's not live action. I don't like the super-realistic anime because it misses what I find to be the charm of the genre, and I don't like the kind of Western animations that shoot for a realistic look like the Centurions (now there's an oldie). And I ESPECIALLY hate this plague of realistic 3D artwork that seems to be spreading among Japanese games. Ever since Silent Hill, and possibly even before that, most of what's 3D follows this kind of attempted realism that both falls into the uncanny valley all too often (no mean feat since I don't actually GET the uncanny valley feel) or simply end up looking like crap. People love to rag on Dragonball Z's crazy unreasonable hair, but for a show with that premise, it just fits the bill.

By the way, through what I've posted in the past few months, I may come off as some kind of super fan of huge women. While I would never actually deny that, I like all styles, from the small to the big, from the thick to the thin, from the fancy and fashionable to the utterly alien to the power-suit-wearing ones and, yes, even to the furry-inspired ones. But a more muscular look for women is the one thing in this game that you simply cannot fudge in any believable way, and so I've made it a point to take every opportunity I can to argue for it, so it seems like that's all I have on my mind. It isn't. Those two that I've posted here are literally the only ones I have, out of 12 or so female characters that range all throughout the spectrum. The others just have more options open to them.

Men have it easy in this regard. Their sliders go from scrawny to tumorous, and if even the thickest man isn't quite thick enough, you have the Huge model which is basically Rob Leifeld's wet dream, and then with that you can go so high I question what people need it for. Men's weapons, furthermore, are scaled much more favourably, with not too much of a rift between the Legacy items and the current customization options. But for women, it's just sad. Their models go from frighteningly bony to skinny to kind of chubby, not even skirting "muscular" along the way and, unlike men, only have a single skin texture that's more appropriate to a beach bunny than anything else. Furthermore, their weapons scale down so harshly that even the supposedly biggest customization options, such as Rularuu's Bane, are towered over the very basic, uncolourable Legacy options.

You'll note that the axe I pictured in the screenshots is about as wide across as the spiked targe. That's because the axe is Legacy. I'd originally planned to swap it for that one single-bladed Cimeroran axe like what the Minotaurs use, but that fell completely through because that axe is shorter, narrower, has a smaller balde, isn't as thick at the mounting ring and doesn't really feel nearly as heavy. BABs talked about larger weapons by design, but I'm not sure what became of that, considering the largest weapons women have access to are STILL the legacy options.

*edit*
I'm actually determined to do a comparison between weapons on the female model, because you can't really see the scaling difference on ParagonWiki. The weapons there are shot from all models, given without size reference and oftentimes outdated.


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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

My thought would be 7' tall. I would say that being 6' 6" sets her above most men, but with the way everyone makes their characters a bit bigger in this game, you might want to push to 7 feet.

Of course, you could go the opposite way and decide that the winning advantage on this bruteworld ended up being small and fast.

Lewis


Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan

 

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Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon View Post
My thought would be 7' tall. I would say that being 6' 6" sets her above most men, but with the way everyone makes their characters a bit bigger in this game, you might want to push to 7 feet.

Of course, you could go the opposite way and decide that the winning advantage on this bruteworld ended up being small and fast.

Lewis
Since this game is "City of Giants" I made my most recent scrapper 4' 6" I find she gets more buffs that way


H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD

 

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Fun reads and I enjoyed the pics, hehe.

It looks and sounds like you found what you want, Sam...
But, for prosperity, I'll offer up my thoughts.

Being from another world, that obviously opens up any option you want for size. So, that's great.
You could go max height, but I also think that would be a shame to diminish your other max height female character (Unless, of course, that was what was called for).

Anyway, my initial thoughts were 1) I tend to go by the foot marker behind the slider (Despite knowing the deal with the other NPCs and all in the game). Thusly, 6'8" would probably be around where I'd start for her... but I could definitely go higher. 2) Since she's from this other world you have described, I'd likely go bigger since I don't completely hide myself from the NPC scaling issue... And I'd think anywhere from 7-7'4" would likely do the job.
As you've said... the scale, more than the height, is the real crucial element.

I'd probably beef her up just slightly... But that is entirely just a matter of personal opinion and, regardless, I think she looks great.
I have one design for a human female barbarian type... Actually based on an old D&D character of my wife's. I like the overall look and shape of her, besides not being able to make the arms bulkier (And I'd love to see the alternate muscular texture options come to the game some day). All the stuff in this thread is making me want to go and make her, hehe.

So, looks like you got it right and seems like I may have chosen a similar scale. Just may have gotten there differently.
I wish the citizens were smaller... I don't mind the enemies being larger than one would expect (Even if it doesn't necessarily make sense), but those citizens annoy me, hehe.
Another option is to always travel to Skyway and train with Mynx


@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"
-Dylan

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
I'm actually determined to do a comparison between weapons on the female model, because you can't really see the scaling difference on ParagonWiki. The weapons there are shot from all models, given without size reference and oftentimes outdated.
That would be great! I'd love to see it. Doo eet!


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Originally Posted by newchemicals View Post
Since this game is "City of Giants" I made my most recent scrapper 4' 6" I find she gets more buffs that way
Haha! That is quite interesting if true! The implication being that players subconsciously factor in a character's smaller size as a possible need for more help, hehe. That's funny. Unless you're little, I guess
Well, I've heard of worse things.


@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"
-Dylan

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight View Post
You could go max height, but I also think that would be a shame to diminish your other max height female character (Unless, of course, that was what was called for).
That was my biggest fear, to be honest. Xanta was my original "giant woman" whom I brought from Lineage II (still the best orc women around) and adapted as a Troll girl with a rather grim history. I wanted her to be ostensibly a huge, imposing monster, similar to what the She-Hulk very nearly was and completely failed to be in the 90s Fox cartoon. When I realised how screwed-up the height scaling in the game was, I cut the middle man and went max height. Would have gone higher if I could, but that's as high as it went.

Brutticus, by contrast, originally came from MyBrute when a friend invited me to play it. I couldn't figure out what name to use and all I tried was taken, so I ended up figuring "Brutticus the Brute" made the most sense It's been free in every game I've ever tried it, so I feel really creative about it. I needed an actual concept for the idea when it came to City of Heroes, and the "Savage Earth" idea just popped up on its own. Since then, I've wanted to make her really big, too, but possibly not as big as Xanta. Why I didn't want that, however, I do not know. I'm sure I had a reason at some point, but right now, all I can think of is "Err... Why not?" My mind works in mysterious ways sometimes.

Sometimes I tend to think in comic book covers. You know those "vs" comic books that have the faces of both characters scowling at each other? Like, say, The Thing and the Incredible Hulk just sizing each other up? Think something like this, only with more ANGRY. That's sort of how I imagine the relationship between these two, and that's sort of why I actually wanted another giant woman on my roster. That alone pretty much requires them to be at roughly the same height.

And, by the way - it might seem like I'm rambling (and I am), but this actually helps me a LOT. I don't know why that is, but I can never seem to put my thoughts in order in much the same way just by myself if I'm not replying to someone, even tangentially.

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Anyway, my initial thoughts were 1) I tend to go by the foot marker behind the slider (Despite knowing the deal with the other NPCs and all in the game). Thusly, 6'8" would probably be around where I'd start for her... but I could definitely go higher. 2) Since she's from this other world you have described, I'd likely go bigger since I don't completely hide myself from the NPC scaling issue... And I'd think anywhere from 7-7'4" would likely do the job.
You know what? I'm starting to think the ruler is almost completely pointless, to the point where I intend to list my character's height by costume file scale. By costume file scale, Xanta is 36 out of 36 high and Brutticus, as of right now, is 34 out of 36 high, but I can see her growing another unit between now and Going Rogue. The Female Scale goes from -27 to + 36, with 0 being mid slider (yeah, it's not symmetrical) and the Huge scale goes up only to 25 and I'm not sure to -what. I'll have to have a look. Worse come to worst, I can always use percent scale, which would put Xanta at 100% and Brutticus at ~94.4%, looking at ~97.2% in the future. It's not simple to hand-edit that number into the game, but it's not exactly hard to do if you teach your computer to open *.costume files with Notepad.

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I'd probably beef her up just slightly... But that is entirely just a matter of personal opinion and, regardless, I think she looks great.
I have one design for a human female barbarian type... Actually based on an old D&D character of my wife's. I like the overall look and shape of her, besides not being able to make the arms bulkier (And I'd love to see the alternate muscular texture options come to the game some day). All the stuff in this thread is making me want to go and make her, hehe.
There actually isn't a lot of leeway in the game for beefy woman, to be honest. Where the sliders default to is way too frikkin' skinny, and it's hard to just up them without ending with something that looks more chubby than muscular, which misses the point. I've noticed, however, that if you up the shoulders, use longer legs and a wider waist, you can mitigate a lot of the awkward chunk, especially if you finish that up with bulky costume items to balance things out. As of right now, I THINK she's close to max muscle slider, close to max shoulders, around 75% waist, probably max legs and around 75% breasts... I mean chest. I didn't really want to up her bust, but the way the musculature scales up, you really can't notice, and it actually feels a little out of place. Besides, I'm a guy, so why not?

I should probably think about narrowing her pelvis. Right now, I have it about as wide as it will go, and I'm still trying to trace back through my thought process to figure out why I did that. I found out with Xanta pretty early on that one of the key things I needed to do was narrow the hips to offset the big butt that larger "muscle" slider values create, so what would possess me to up the pelvis on this one I do not know. I'm thinking I'll leave it as it is, though. Don't really want the two of them to be just skin swaps of each other.

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Originally Posted by Electric-Knight View Post
That would be great! I'd love to see it. Doo eet!
It's actually done and pasted in the All Things Art thread, but it wasn't as profound as I'd hoped. Largely, because I was wrong about rather a lot of things. It also doesn't hold all weapons, and not because I don't want to do the leg work, but rather because I can't pictures big enough to show 'em all. I picked the Legacy weapons and the largest weapons I could find, but I can do other comparisons if anyone else wants.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

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Originally Posted by KayJMM View Post
Hi Samuel!

Well... first thing I would considerate is: She is stronger... but why people on that planet evolved to be stronger?

If they are that way because of too many extremes of the planet Biome, I would try making her as strong (and big) as I could get, maxing every slide.

But one concept that I would also consider is "density"... I think (with no science basis whatsoever, just pseudo-considerations) I would make her a little (some 30%) SMALLER than an average person, but at the same time maxing all the other sliders (except legs, as it would actually make her bigger, and that isnt the idea) to the max. I would think on a very tough woman, shaped by her world to be really hard. She would be brutish, but not hulking brutish...
A heavy-worlder should be shorter than a person from a 1G planet. Under stronger gravity being tall would place extra stress on the body, not just the skeleton but pulmonary system as well (extra distance from heart to lower extremities means extra stress on the heart, greater blood pressure, etc..)

The only example I've seen of a tall heavy-worlder is Buck Godot and he's almost as wide as he is tall just to have the skeleton and muscle to support it all.