COH Concept Gallery

True story: I saw basically the entire set of Vess artwork for Spiderman: Spirits of the Earth before it was lettered at a Comicon and before the book was released (1992 I think).

Then I bought the book and saw how they lettered it and ... and ... and I don't remember anything after that. I'm pretty sure I made it home from the comic store, but its pretty hazy.

Actually, that concept came from a different artist. I art directed th3 3D versions of those, but that's the extent of my involvement on Resistance. Right now, we actually have 2 full-time concept artists taking turns on costume sets.

I don't consider it a derailing at all. All of this feels like concept shop talk to me, and I'm happy to hear your point of view. I'm blown away that people would give you grief for liking things as innocuous as comics (and computers!)--sorry to hear that.

A slider like that ould be pretty hard to do. The reveal I alluded to is cool and different from what you'd expect, but it's not a system-wide overhaul. I think you guys will dig it.

I didn't even find out about it until after it the 3D was already done, which is amazing, b/c it's not a simple, done-in-one-day kind of thing.

And thank you for allowing me to do this! I love working on this stuff, and none of us could do this without the incredible playerbase that we're blessed to have on this game. *warm fuzzies*

Could you maybe have it accessible in some manner in oroborus perhaps?

I wonder why we can't have both looks. Like have the lower level one have the old look and the higher ones the new.
In fact this might be something to think about for many new looks. Have them start off as looking simple and old like the rookies are wherein hand me downs and save the new bad assish for the top dogs.

I suggested this in the feedback forums. Why waste assets that are already there? Put them all together. It adds variety and a different look. I say bring 'em back

I disagree but we won't know until a movie has the courage to go there. Generally speaking film producers simply have not had the guts to attempt it outside of a few exceptions like Spiderman and the Roth Superman. It will be interesting to see the approach The Avengers will take. They have given their leads a film each to get the public use to them in costume and it looks like the main event will be embracing it.

Interestingly the Marvel franchises seem to be embracing their colourful roots and taking theatre-goers with them, while DC is ... well ... being DC

I think some directors lack confidence in their vision and use a revamp of the costume as a crutch to hang their "gritty realism" upon. Which has lead the otherwise excellent Nolan movies to feature a lead character that cannot look left and right to safely cross the street. While the less said about the new Superman costume the better. Could have been worse I suppose.

This kind of bugs me. I mean, I know where you're coming from when it comes to official artwork. You guys have a specific idea of the look and feel of content you want to make. That's fine - it's your game What bugs me is I worry about how much this affects things WE can make. And I have reason to worry. Let me explain:

When the Steampunk came out, someone on your team decided that "steampunk = brown" and pre-tinted all the pieces to be brown, such that they were either impossible to recolour, or remained brown-tinged even when you chose a different colour. To this day, the Steampunk boiler backpack is impossible to tint in a vivid colour. Then came the Celesital set, and apparently someone decided that "This set will be grey!" tinted the hell out of the base texture to the point it can't look like any colour BUT grey. It can't be white because it turns grey, it can't be black because it turns grey, and if you try to give it a vivid colour, it instead takes up this muted, faded, white-washed shade that both looks depressing and fails to match against anything else in the costume creator.

I get that you want a specific aesthetic for the things you create, and I respect that. However, can you please make sure that this aesthetic does not become a limitation for what we - the players - can make in your game? Specifically, can you please ensure that we are not prevented from creating costumes that don't necessarily agree with your general approach? Don't try to force new costume pieces to only have the colours you envisioned them as having by baking these colours into the pieces' base textures and please make sure to occasionally throw in the odd simple, stylised, perhaps even cartoony piece in there?

I get that in a movie, spandex costumes would look goofy just because even skin bends and fold. I get that in a movie, more detail is needed for things to look more photo-realistic. City of Heroes is not a movie, however. At least, it doesn't have to be. By all means, shoot for a photo-realistic general aesthetic, but don't kill stylistic designs in the process. If I still want to make something bright, colourful and bold, then let me. Please?

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.

Wow, where do I start? I spent three years in university covering pretty much most aspects; editing, scriptwriting, filming, post-production...I did a little work for community tv but now I find that I can do more from home, barring a few areas where I can't get access (sound design is a horrendous pain, especially when you want quality sound effects..so expensive for licensed sounds, ala The Matrix, a great source of weapons and weapons sounds). I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my home use and I keep my hand in with short clips of CoH, and anything else I want to film. Every chance I get I experiment with different techniques, from 1940's newsreels (I did one for my Golden Age-themed SG), up to full-blown title sequences. As you know, you can stumble upon happy accidents and just doing it teaches you as you go. My aim is to get into independent production as writer and director. I find I visualise really well and if I could draw at all, I'd be an artist. But I can't, so I'll do it in moving pictures instead.

I agree with you on the Marvel costumes particularly...the costume for Superman Returns tried to play the S-shield pattern too much, but the Spiderman costume for me remains a benchmark of design and aesthetic and balance. The colors are contrasted enough to draw your eye to them, and the aesthetic makes it seem like a genuine updating rather than a redesign. The WWII Captain America costume I loved, as it was probably the most functional and iconically designed 'real' suit I've seen in a long, long time. I think the primary thing that stands out that there's no 'uniform' look ala the X-Men black leather (armor with flares, I might point out), but rather a strong idea of individual design.

Re: the setting, I had some nice chats with Troy Hickman (someone I saw you mention in another reply) and we both felt Statesman was best seen as the 1970's Superman, flawed but still iconically heroic. Going Rogue I thought was more the 1980's 'Dark Knight Returns' as a zone. The thing I keep bearing in mind is that a) in keeping with the feel I hope it blows out into a 'save the universe' story (very Silver Age) and b) Allows some moments for the players to really shine heroically, so it balances the stronger darker tones we've seen so far.

The art info has been copied and pasted for testing in Adobe Photoshop! Thanks very much for that, I love playing with Layers.


Re: updating art assets, I can see the reasoning behind that a lot, to be honest. It's a natural consequence of time that some assets will look dated (a simple comparison from say Doom to even the first Halo game bears that out) and they deserve to be replaced. The new cloth stuff sounds fabulous.

A two-part question on that, though; is it becoming harder to wrangle tricks and techniques with the character rig as is, with the eye of the needle narrowing as it were, and has there been talk of tweaking the legacy pieces to bring their resolution up to par, or is that just not an option due to player reaction or 'ruining' the piece?

I'm very grateful to hear that you want to stay up to date with costume pieces as well as offering 'base coat' textures, as I think just as audiences we're coming to expect that in our media. Subconciously I think CoH players particularly want to emulate that 'realistic/movie' look a lot more.

Is that becoming a problem though as well, because those costumes are becoming composed of more layers as time progresses? I think, coming full circle, back to the Marvel costumes, and Captain America in particular, has a lot going on detail-wise. I think 'base coats' will go a good way to emulating that, would you agree?


S.

squee!

I don't have any problem with that personally. Please understand though: concept art is merely a recipe for the 3D artists to follow, and I don't actually have any direct control over how the final assets are made.

Bottom line, there's no correlation between our interest in semi-realistic visuals and tints on costumes. Those are decisions made by two different groups of artists. That said, I'll try to communicate the issue to the team.

I'm 44 and was disappointed that the X-Men movie didn't use their real costumes. I'm not a fan of the darker, grungier looks. I don't want every character to look like a high-tech soldier, street thug, or normal civilian. Give me old school superheroes any day.

Thanks for letting us create all types of characters -- including the good ol' colorful spandex costumes. If I were to have one request from a costume standpoint, it would be that more such options be included as well (in addition to the rest). It would be great if we could have multi-color patterns, but I realize that is a current tech limitation.

Can you pass that same issue along to Tunnel Rat regarding power customization? Being stuck with a "dark" palette on a number of powersets (dark blast, dark miasma and pain domination come to mind) because the art team thinks that's thematically correct really hurts our ability to customize to OUR tastes.

Really looking forward to the details on this gem related to assymetrical costumes.

Edit: and oh, great stuff in DA. I'll watch for more. thanks for sharing.

This would be awesome.

- Raith

That's good enough for me Thank you, David.

And again, thank you for that. I really don't want to come off like trying to meddle in the development process. I'm just trying to make sure guys are aiming for as big a target as possible and not excluding anything wherever possible.

Specifically, please ask whoever is in charge of texturing new costume pieces to avoid putting tints on their base textures and to avoid making said textures too dark or too washed-out. It only serves to limit our use of the costume piece.

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.

I find it interesting that X-Men: First Class felt okay to go with costumes that were very close to the original comic while the first X-Men film had to give everyone rubbishy batman suits. Its as though because the film was set in the 60s the Directors/Producers had the confidence to do a "proper" costume. Even the ridiculous White Queen!

I am looking forward to The Avengers. Modern super heroes with bright flashy costumes

It is possible to have compelling heroes with an intelligent script without having to go Darkety Dark Dark. Troy Hickman has done that continually, and even used the oft-maligned cast of CoH to do it with.

Bruce Wayne can devote himself to making sure that no other child has to watch his parents be gunned down without having to have snapped like a dry twig and be a psychopath vigilante murderer a la Burton. As Mr. Hickman noted, if you want a psychopath vigilante murderer hero, make your own... don't retcon an existing hero.

Yes, I am another long-standing vote to have the CoH comic revived with Messr.s Hickman and Nakayama helming it. If that ever happened, Statesman would gradually become a popular hero for the vast majority of CoH players... those guys could make that happen.

Hollywood's all about the sure bet, and now that a working formula's been established, we're even less likely to see a 1-to-1 port of traditional comic book costumes on film.

I'd say it's pretty well documented at this point: the characters will be wearing costumes that acknowledge the colors of the source material, but in a much less saturated, toned-down way. That's what's worked for them in all the solo films, and that's what all the set photos seem to suggest so far.

In my estimation, both companies are muting and toning down the characters' costumes whenever possible. Where do you see a difference in approach between Marvel Studios and Warner Brothers?

For me, Marvel's doing it perfectly, by including each character's original colors, but with a much more subtle application: large swaths of color are reduced; hues are desaturated; detailed, layered textures get us away from the skin-tight look. We can tell at a glance that it's Captain America, but he sure doesn't look like a traditional comic book character.

Remember how Joel Schumacher basically destroyed the Batman movie franchise? His stated attempt was to make the films more like a comic book, which for him meant bright colors, a certain level of silliness, and very little in the way of nuance or atmosphere. That was a test, and it failed; Hollywood learned that a financially successful superhero movie must embrace visual realism (grit optional) and, like most action movies, maintain a certain gravitas. That's the fine line, and anything past it appears to turn off the mainstream film audience. Again, I love the comic book aesthetic, but I don't think it would be profitable in a mainstream movie context.

It's often said that a hero is defined by his villains; the darker, scarier, and more powerful the foe, the greater the sense of accomplishment and heroism when the hero wins. Praetoria has some pretty dark and deadly enemies, and I certainly enjoy taking them down.

So I wouldn've thought there'd be a limit too, but we're nowhere near it yet, as it turns out. For example, we're only beginning to scratch the surface of what's possible in several keys areas: normal mapping, cube mapping, scrolling textures, glows, fx geo, and fx geo with animation. All of those offer a TON of possibilities for future releases.

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Veteran players have made it clear that they want to keep the old stuff no matter what. Therefore, we'll introduce new things in parallel that offer similar design possibilities but with much better texture treatments. Personally, I'd rather upgrade and update on a 1-to-1 basis in the interest of keeping the game modern, but I want to make the players happy.

That's why there's a so much interest in the 'base coat' kind of costume part right now. We've got plenty of detailed stuff to layer on top, so now we need more 'connective tissue' to mesh it all to together.

As for Schumacher, at the time I felt a little betrayed, and that he was only shooting for the 70's camp. I later realized what he was trying to accomplish and respected it for what it was, but realized it was doomed to fail as bad as it did in the long run. There's a line, as you say, and I fully agree, it's a fine one.

In the modern media fare, I like the turnaround, but I think the difference between MARVEL and DC (outside of the Batman movies) respectively, is that MARVEL isn't pulling punches with story where DC is, in the attempt to make it more family friendly.

Visually they're both fine, so far, which I'm sure is your concern on that note. The trick is in the storytelling. I'm not counting Spider Man or X-Men at this point since MARVEL only has a tenuous ammount of control over those properties at this point. I didn't like Superman Returns much, but because of how the characters have grown past their 1978 movie roots, and what I expected of them, for example. On the other hand, I didn't mind Green Lantern but again it didn't portray what we know of Hal Jordan, but a 'remake' of the idea behind the story, and that did it a disservice. Visually both are fine, but the roots of the storytelling made the difference... to me, at least. Which only goes to show that look is extremely important, but isn't everything. I actually liked the look. It's the storytelling where they kind of fell short (though I actually didn't mind the changes in Green Lantern, but that's a different post).

It's almost ironic how a producer or director wants a 'comic book' feel, but then fails in the box office and with the fans in the attempt to reproduce it. I recall certain fans being upset about Transformers not having the Autobot/Decepticon scene changing symbol in the movies, but I honestly don't think anyone would have taken it seriously if they did.

That, if anything, will bring an end to the superhero/sci-fi fan movies. They'll come to the conclusion they can't make them happy, ignore the fine line, and move on.

It comforts me that you guys can see there's a fine line, and try to straddle it. I salute your efforts and say... ride on.

Pardon me for jumping into this, but I thought a bit more perspective was needed for this little facet of this particular interesting discussion...
Yes, there is a fine line.
However, Schumacher went way way farther over that line than just a smidge! And I'm not certain that the art direction was the culprit in those movies'... badness (as much as I, personally, despised the look of them). There was plenty else wrong with those.

Anyway, what you have said about the muted colors, I do agree with, David! I just also believe that success can be had a little closer to that line than X-Men did (although, as the first, sort of break-through, comicbook movie for that time period, it was probably the wise decision) and they can move much closer to that line, than they have so far, without even approaching the puke-worthy visuals of Schumacher's Batman, hehe!
Also, zero doubt, Hollywood will go for the sure thing and avoid risks. No argument from me on that. That doesn't mean I have to agree with it though. And, you know how it is... Some of today's risks are tomorrow's standards.

As always, loving the art, David! Thanks a lot for sharing these. I went through and looked at a bunch of it, but am falling over tired and I'll hopefully get around to asking a few things that crossed my mind as I looked at them (should have typed them down as I browsed, hehe).

EDIT:
I have to mention...
Picture the film "Hero"... Imagine a comicbook movie with an artistic approach of such vivid colors for a super hero movie. It may not be that bad of an idea when you think of true, quality visual art of film, rather than bright colors on a costume in a standard Hollywood movie. I am, so they say... a bit of a dreamer.

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I'm sorry to hear this. Last I heard there was discussion of keeping the old-res versions and making high-res an option for the costume editor. I guess that idea has been rejected?