The response to our Intrepid Informer initiative we've had so far from our community has been tremendous and we hope you will once again enjoy the Intrepid Informer with a brand new issue dedicated to another member of our Paragon Studios team but also to upcoming content that has already caused quite a stir amongst our community!
Introducing Cheryl Austin, one of our prominent Character artists, whom some of you may remember meeting back in 2009. Cheryl has not only continued to create truly outstanding content for City of Heroes but she's also helped push the bar even higher and you will be able to see what we mean by that very soon!
Read on to discover another shining star of our development team!
Introduction
By Cheryl Austin
Hello, my name is Cheryl and I am a Character Artist. I have been here at Paragon Studios for 2 Years. I have been in the Industry since 1991 and have worked on many titles. I started off doing a little bit of everything but decided that characters are for me as I find people to be very interesting. As well as an Artist I am also a huge gamer geek and spend maybe too much of my time playing video games I also have side hobbies that include art that I do on my own time. I enjoy mostly console games from many different genres but some of my favorites are titles such as the Dynasty Warriors series, FF series, Resident Evil series, Red Dead Redemption and too many to name.
But let's get to the topic of this issue of the Intrepid Informer. Today I will be talking about our upcoming Booster Pack that has a wealth of items often requested on the forums. It is time to let off some steam and get those cogs working with the Steampunk Booster Pack!
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!
The response to our Intrepid Informer initiative we've had so far from our community has been tremendous and we hope you will once again enjoy the Intrepid Informer with a brand new issue dedicated to another member of our Paragon Studios team but also to upcoming content that has already caused quite a stir amongst our community!
I also have side hobbies that include art that I do on my own time. I enjoy mostly console games from many different genres but some of my favorites are titles such as the Dynasty Warriors series, FF series, Resident Evil series, Red Dead Redemption and too many to name.
Introducing Cheryl Austin, one of our prominent Character artists, whom some of you may remember meeting back in 2009. Cheryl has not only continued to create truly outstanding content for City of Heroes but she's also helped push the bar even higher and you will be able to see what we mean by that very soon!
Read on to discover another shining star of our development team!
Introduction
By Cheryl Austin
Hello, my name is Cheryl and I am a Character Artist. I have been here at Paragon Studios for 2 Years. I have been in the Industry since 1991 and have worked on many titles. I started off doing a little bit of everything but decided that characters are for me as I find people to be very interesting. As well as an Artist I am also a huge gamer geek and spend maybe too much of my time playing video games
But let's get to the topic of this issue of the Intrepid Informer. Today I will be talking about our upcoming Booster Pack that has a wealth of items often requested on the forums. It is time to let off some steam and get those cogs working with the Steampunk Booster Pack!
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
Discuss this issue of The Intrepid Informer here!