Discussion: The Intrepid Informer: Issue #6

Inspiration: Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, involving an era or world where steam powered technology is still prominent. Often the basis for these works stem from a Victorian era British origin, usually featuring anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them. My inspiration for Steampunk comes from various sources, mainly my love for the Victorian era as well as my interest in Gunfighters. Another source was my other hobby which is "Asian Ball Jointed Dolls" a huge hobby for many and Steampunk is a big part of this hobby. It resulted in so many creative ideas. The term BJD generically stands for "ball-jointed doll" and refers to any doll that has ball and socket joints. In the Asian ball-jointed doll hobby, this definition is generally narrowed to only include resin dolls that are strung with elastic and meet a certain visual aesthetic. They are highly customizable and are very poseable.

I took the concept art and put my own spin on it from doing my research through these various sources. The biggest challenge in making a set of Steampunk costumes is limiting it to some of the key visual aesthetics, the genre is huge and has so many influences from fantasy to cyberpunk that identifying what makes something "Steampunk" can be difficult. Ultimately we felt that one of the common threads throughout the genre was the clothing, generally it's older and a bit more formal than modern clothing. Obviously gadgets are also a large part of the genre, but these gadgets are usually bulky, steam-powered contraptions or very small clockwork gadgets. As a result, a lot of the costume pieces have small or subtle clockwork pieces to them, whereas the accessories, such as the guns, the wings and the backpack are bulky external contraptions.



Victorian vs Classic Steampunk: Steampunk is such a broad genre and my interpretation is only one of many. This pack begins to address two sub-genres within Steampunk, specifically what we're calling Victorian and Classic. I've always viewed Victorian Steampunk as the more refined interpretation of the genre, costumes are more high-class, less haphazard and not as flamboyant. Classic Steampunk always felt a bit more edgy and garish, built from what's available and practical as opposed to being built with "the Queen's sensibilities" in mind. A good example of the differences between Classic and Victorian steampunk sensibilities would be Girl Genius (Classic) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Victorian).



New Techniques: We're always trying to improve the look of the characters so we tried a new technique the make the faces look higher res by using a High Poly head sculpted in Zbrush and projected it onto the current low res head and baked out a Normal Map which is what you see in the game. This has the effect of providing a bit more depth to the faces we created for the Steampunk pack. We also applied this technique to some of the costume pieces included in the pack, which allows us to build costume pieces with more detail and texture than some of our previous costume offerings.

Additionally, we've provided a Backpack costume piece where we have some particle effects built into the piece. We're doing a little bit of this in this pack as an exploration, hopefully everyone likes what we've done. We felt like Steampunk gadgets that don't kick out smoke and steam, well, they're not very steamy. The wings have a very clockwork feel to them and we decided to use the more mechanical flapping animations on them to really give them the appropriate movement. For the weapons we went with a very classic brass and wood look to them to try to sell the more anachronistic aspects of the gadgetry.



We're looking forward to taking some of the techniques and tricks we've implemented as part of this pack into future costume sets to provide an even broader range of looks, textures and styles for you to build with. Hopefully you enjoy this pack as much as I enjoyed building it!



Thanks,

Cheryl Austin

*grins*

The Facemaker?

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

I wholeheartedly support this endeavor.

I third this.

Nthed

You wouldn't believe how many people seem to consider that the mandatory response when-ever the dolls are shown or mentioned. I swear, it's like being afraid of clowns... Everybody just HAS to mention how terrifying they are.

I don't mean to pick on you, Jake, but it happens so often it's become a running joke among the people who collect the things... It seems the most frightening objects in the universe are two-foot-tall resin action figures.

The dolls themselves don't frighten or disturb me... But the way that some of their owners behave in regards to them; that's a different story.

Back on topic though... Nevermind, I already feel like a broken record. I've voiced my opinion in multiple other threads at this point and one man's opinion isn't going to make a difference when they're already done with the pack.

I think you'd find that a fair number of us actually agree with you on that point... It can be a pretty freaky crowd, even to other doll collectors.

Nothing's stopping you from starting that discussion

hehe


Anywho, i just might have to buy this pack when it comes out. *sigh*

And an Axe made of cogs!

It is good to get some weapons that aren't Dual Blade/Broadsword but please give the other sets some love soon

But anyway - love the pack, I have a couple of characters that will suit it perfectly and I can't wait to get my hands on the glowing aura

Member of GGRRR, a SG on Defiant - check out our website - GGRRR

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

GG might get..a second costume????

Just faces? Set your sights higher Liz!

The pack looks great, but they main thing that struck me from the article was this: Normal Maps Work In CoH.

They could reskin the entire game and make it look amazing.

They could potentially make every costume piece, every character in the game look like it was made from many, many more polygons just by switching the texture maps.

Wow.