COH Concept Gallery

Speaking of which, I'm sure you'll love 13



To be honest, I think that a costume which is ENTIRELY just one bright colour is much easier to take seriously than a costume that's a mishmash of rainbow colours.

That said - and I agree on mixing bright and muted colours - "cinema photo-realism" doesn't always conform to that. For instance, look at Superman Return. Superman both got a pattern on his "tights" and his costume had much more muted colours, both the red and the blue. Now, granted, a vivid red and blue costume does look very garish to a modern audience (and more so to me), but the costume failed to provide the kind of colour contrast which once upon a time made Superman pop. Instead of redesigning his costume to provide contrast another way, such as a darker, more washed-out blue "undercoat" against vibrant red panties, boots and cape or some such. What results in is a costume that, while it may be realistic, is actually quite boring.

It's very much possible to use muted colours and still come out with something that is, for all intents and purposes quite garish, yet still looks at least somewhat believable. Like so:



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Separate from that, I actually do have a question for you, if you find a moment to answer:

Do you consider WHITE to be a bright colour? That's actually something I'd really like to know, because it's been my experience that the monochrome colour range can often be used to supplement "actual" colours and add contrast to a costume without making it more... Fruity. For instance, a costume which is predominantly white and has only trace elements of colour... Like this one:



Would technically be "bright," as white is 255,255,255 in actual fact. In practice, however, this costume doesn't come off as garish, as white doesn't really "feel" like a colour. Similarly, a costume that is inherently garish like this one:



Still doesn't come off as absurd, even though I have NEVER seen anyone use that vivid blue for as long as I've played. It's one step removed from being fluorescent, yet because it's a secondary colour to a black base, it comes off as not feeling fruity. The costume comes off looking dark, despite the bulk of it being bright colours. This costume is almost entirely monochrome, as well (by accident), combining blue, teal and purple - all colours in the same general hue - with white and black which meld into the blues.

I say all this to illustrate my question - do you consider white to be a bright colour, and do you consider white and black to be colours when you talk about "colourful" costumes?

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.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with a single bright color, or even two well-matched bring colors. Movie incarnations of Spider-man, Iron Man, and Superman have proven that this works just fine.

We're zeroing in on a theory here, and I guess it's this: when you get a whole TEAM of brightly-colored folks on screen, it starts to strain credulity for the mainstream movie audience. So one hero: okay. But a group of differently-colored super characters tends to get into rainbow territory and remind people of the Voltron force or other traditionally kid-friendly material.

That alone may not turn off a mainstream audience, but combine that with a weak or silly story and it breaks the willing suspension of disbelief. I think that's more or less what going on with the average movie-goer right now. Interesting, the longer they're exposed to the bright colors, the less it'll probably bother them, and eventually, we'll probably be able to have parity between the comics and films without fear of alienating the audience.

Well, I think that states it perfectly, hehe.
I'm so curious to see how the Avenger movie works out in that regard. It doesn't seem like the characters' costumes will cause much of a problem in that way (Iron Man is the only one that might be particularly shiny and bright).
The bigger problem (in that case) is likely to be the audience's willingness to accept so many super heroes in one movie. They've set it up nicely and it seems like it may work... so long as the movie (backing up the concepts) is actually good. And that all departs the visual art focus of this discussion, hehe...

Mainly, I think the realistic lighting, plus dirt, grit and battle-wear and actual costume textures (as opposed to ink on paper), takes care of those characters' colors being too much.

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A lot of brightly colored costumes aren't that much of a problem. A lot of people in brightly colored costumes, moving, on screen, in an action sequence, is.

Viewers suffer from attention fatigue. They don't know what to look at, where the flow of the action is. Couple that with Hollywood's facination with fast shots, rapid changes of camera angle, and cgi special effects, and its easy to overload your viewer to the point that they'd rather do anything other than watch the movie.

This is also a problem with MMORPGs, this one included. The more effects, the more graphics, the more flashy stuff that's happening, the worse the effect is. If you could do a study of MMORPG players faced with team and multi-team raids, you'd most likely notice that most of them focus on the static elements of the user interface rather than the "action" that's happening on screen.

I think I use that blue on Secular Energy as the primary. His secondary is the bright teal.

You may have something there. I know a lot of time on trials I try to keep very focused on what's going on and try to look past the effects, which get annoying in such large doses, and sometimes lose my mouse marker (that thread on modified mice icons should be stickied!!!). I think your explaination reflects what's going on very well.

I also agree that I can see that having an effect in many types of visual media, movies and games included.

EDIT: At least in-game, maybe there should be an option to negate all other character's visual effects other than your own? That might help cut down on the 'attention fatigue' and also make the player feel like they stand out more from the crowd, which is what most players want their characters to do anyway...

I think the logic behind bright colors is that there supposed to be living targets. To draw attention away from the civilians. Works great if you only have one or two guys like that. But to many and...

And it goes without saying, or maybe it doesn't that the colors can be as bright as you whant as long as the FX/super attacks are even flashier.
I'v bin wanting some mahou shoujo lyrical nanoha, Dog Days, or My-otome anime style magiteck super gear/FX for a while.
What? Manga are comics to.

Huh... OK, I admit, that's very well said and an angle I hadn't thought of. Congratulations, David, you've convinced me

I'm serious here. For the longest time, I've been looking at this in the micro aspect of a single character and how that character's colour scheme can be made to be loud yet still believable. But you're absolutely right that when you get a team of them, especially a team of them in all different colours, it starts to look very goofy. And, yes, it looks goofy even to. I fully understand your position now that you've explained it like this.

OK, counter-question: What about a team of brightly-coloured heroes with a matching colour scheme which resembles a uniform?

The problem with the X-Men, at least circa the 90s Fox cartoon, is that they had loud uniforms, but everyone hos own colour scheme. Cyclops was mostly blue, Wolverine mostly yellow, Rogue was green and yellow, Gambit was purple and blue, Storm was white and so on. They look like a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, to quote the Rock.

On the other hand, look at First Ward's Carnival of Light: They're white and yellow and intentionally very loud, and they're intentionally asymmetrical, yet their look still feel both logically and aesthetically pleasing, because they all conform to the same colour scheme. They're colourful individually, but they're monotonous as a group, which provides a good sort of balance and contrast.

To swing back around to my question: How do you feel about teams of colourful characters that share the same consistent colour scheme with each other?

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.

This is also very well said, and it brings to light two specific discussions.

One is of MMO large teams and the "effects soup." I know that when I team with more than about three other people, I start to lose spacial and situational awareness, developing tunnel vision and being able to process only my direct target I'm attacking, ignorant of strategic goals. Too many people, too many enemies, too many effects make a scene so chaotic that my brain is incapable of processing it in real time, thus I'm incapable of functioning, or at least functioning well in this environment.

Attention fatigue is a major buzzkill, and it's what's kept me off large teams for the past seven years. Well, one of the major things, anyway. It partly has to do with flashy colours, but it also partly has to do with just an overly-busy game. Some people - like me - like to keep their situation and surroundings in mind at all times, and when we're incapable of doing this, we more or less shut down and just hit things.

The other discussion is one of specific design, and in particular stylised design vs. costume complexity. So far, David has vouched for complexity, but here's the thing - you can have a costume that's complex in graphical details but simple in colour scheme, or a costume that's complex in colour scheme but simple in graphics details. Once you have a costume that's complex in both, people become incapable of comprehending the costume, thus they become incapable of seeing the costume as anything more than an amorphous, multi-coloured thing. Think back to Michael Bay's Transformers movies and think about how the Transformers - who resembled alien bugs, as a friend of mine put it - were so complex, busy and colourful it was next to impossible to tell what the flying Dutchman was going on when they transformed.

A good costume needs to be simple in at least some way so that people can actually comprehend it, remember it and be inspired. They must see more than "a costume" and "some colours," they need to see the idea behind the costume, as communicated through some factor of the costume that they can understand. Factual complexity and practical appearance don't matter, because if the costume is too busy for people to "get" at a glance, all they'll see is shapes and colours that they can't reproduce.

Think back to the Arachnos base tileset. This is one of the game's most repetitive-seeming tilesets, despite being one of the most varied and detailed. Why? Because while a pipe may be different here or a grate in a different place there or this incomprehensible machine different from that incomprehensible machine, to my eyes, it's all just stuff I don't understand that all looks the same. In an office map, I can tell the difference between a hallway, a cubicle farm, an executive office and a rec room. In a sewer map, I can tell the difference between a tube, a large square room with a suspended platform and a large cross-shaped room with a stone truce in the middle. But Arachnos maps are almost ALL square corridors with props I can neither remember nor tell apart.

In this way, a good costume needs to have SOMETHING about it that's memorable and easily comprehensible. Maybe it's the colour scheme, maybe it's the silhouette shape, maybe it's the specific choice of costume pieces, but it has to have SOMETHING that I can see, comprehend, remember and feel compelled to later reproduce. And the thing with overloading your costumes with fidelity and little details is you're more or less forcing players to shoot for complex detailing, thus in turn forcing them to shoot for simpler colour schemes, lest they come off like an unidentifiable blob.

Time and again, I've tried using different primary and secondary colours on newer items, and time and again I've found I simply want to pick both colours to be the same. The costume pieces are so busy that me putting loads of colours on them just makes them incomprehensible.

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.

Actually I think its all about "How you get there."

Yeah, we're discussing art with David Nakayama, the concept artist, in a thread he started about art, prompting us to ask him questions and discuss things with him. I don't know what we were thinking.

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 have underlined a key-word in that discussion, Sam. The level of absurdity is not by any means objective. I, for one, feel that the costume you presented is quite absurd (though I still think it is put together well)... it is not at all a costume I could take seriously.

No, it comes off looking completely and utterly screamin' BLUE!

My point is, there is a great deal of subjectivity going on here... and you seem to be making arguments as if there is a right answer. Which I find odd in an art thread.

That was actually a mistake on my part, and something I had to fight Zombra tooth and nail over. Unwittingly, I picked all the non-monochrome colours on the costume to be in the blue hue. You have blue, cyan and magenta, all of which are "blue-ish," giving the character a monotone look. That costume is right around four years old at this point and done without any real foresight into colour contrast or colour scheme.

Were I making this costume now, I would have picked primary colours which were less loud to offset the blue skin, or at the very least picked colours which contrast better against the blue. I would probably have picked either bright yellow tech similar to the 90s Fox cartoon X-Men communicators, and I would not have used black for a fabric colour. You can't believe how many times I've had to explain that that's not a two-toned suit, but rather leather over blue skin.

Inna is hardly my best example of artistic design largely because I goofed on her colours, but I maintain that the bright blue looks good on her. Obviously it's subjective, but again - she's hardly my weirdest design, or indeed my loudest. I think the disconnect between you and me is probably that I really, REALLY like the look of that blue against black on pretty much any costume. In fact, right around the time I made Inna, I also made Jack's original costume. It's not very good, so here's his current one:



I actually think I should have used him, instead, but he's actually even more blue. Jack is actually THE reason I like that colour scheme. When I was designing him, I picked his tech to be black, started tabbing through detail colours and saw that vibrant blue that the costume editor had randomly selected as my secondary colour and I hadn't changed, since I like to puck my details first and set their colour second. And since then, I was hooked.

The reason I like that blue on that black actually goes back to Need for Speed: Underground, where a specific perlescent paint with a certain vinyl coloured light when looked from a certain angle appeared to fluoresce in the darkness of the night. City of Heroes has some of the same properties, in the sense that our nights don't just turn dark, they also turn blue. While most other colours grow muted at night, blues only grow more vibrant. At night, black becomes even darker, almost solid, while blues grow darker, giving me this almost glowing look, which is why I used it.

Jack's design is actually even more straightforward - black/blue tech, red/green carapace. You will likely disagree with me that this is a good design (especially with his blue darkness ), but I actually feel it gives him a decent "technodemon" look, between the glowing Tron tech and the chaotic, almost decaying flesh. When I get around to playing him again, he'll probably swap for IDF gloves and boot so he's not as goofy (the Enforcer set has a LOOOT of camp value...), but that colour scheme is less "absurd" and more just weird.

More specifically to the argument at hand, while bright fluorescent blue on dark black may be well weird, possibly even bizarre (which is why I like it), it's not weird in a "childish" sense, in that I don't think it makes the characters look like they came from a kids' show, so much as that they came from someone who may or may not have been thinking straight when making them. Remember - BAD costumes aren't the problem here. Childish ones, such that make the source material appear to be aimed at kids, are what caused the problem. My designs are almost always bizarre, but I have fairly few that are actually cartoony.

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.

And here I thought the discussion was about how superhero costumes tend to look cartoony when ported directly to movies, David's opinion on the matter, and everyone else's point of view, which seems like more of a tangent than a discussion of David's creative offerings, but don't let my observation stand in your way.

First, here's what he said:

Second, in the past, David has proven to be a very cool cat and more than willing to discuss, generally speaking, "all things art" as they come up with. The "brightness" of costumes and its relation to an audience's ability to take said costume seriously is a subject he brought up, himself, as well as a subject he seemed interested in discussing.

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 am actually curious if there are any upcoming big-systems improvements that might be in the works..

If I could add my two cents, I'd say it's the problems of trying to parse what was good about the Blade movies and the actual nature of the blade comics. The more supernatural aspects of Blade in the comics can clash with the Sci-fi aspects of the movies. The "caught between two worlds" aspect of the movies wasn't as big a deal int he comics until after the movies, either. They're just two different projects that people have been trying and failing to amalgamate as of late.

As long as the discussions's about art, it's all good. Theorizing about why certain things do or do not work on film is completely on topic, as far as I'm concerned. When I want to get back to talking about concept gallery posts, I'll probably just start a new thread.

Actually, for some reason, I haven't really worked on much tech costume stuff so far--something I've been meaning to rectify! Other artists did most of the tech armor in GR, but to date, the only things I've worked on that could be considered scifi/tech-y are Noble Savage, Neuron, some robots, and a couple unannounced things.

Each project has different requirements, so I wouldn't say that I have a go-to style (clean or chunky), but who knows, maybe you'll see a trend develop over time. Let me know if you see one.

That reminds me - tech itself is as variable in theme as anything else, and I feel we can use clean, sleek, art deco tech and dirty, dinged-up square "ugly" tech in about equal measure. Recently (as in, just yesterday) I went through Portal 2, and I was reminded about the original inspiration behind my 13 (red robot girl from a few pages ago), which is to say smooth, shiny super-tech. However, looking back over what we have... We don't actually have much "square" tech, do we? About the only bulky, angular concept I can think of off-hand is Jay's old Enforcer set, and that's still sleek high-tech, it's just of a more angular design.

When I say lower tech and angular, think something like the Freakshow. These guys are essentially made of scrap metal, and I WANT THEIR CLAW ARMS!!!

... ahem ...

The Freakshow are a good example of the kind of tech I feel we can use a bit more of. Theirs is dirty, rusty, oddly-shaped and cobbled together. Not quite steampunk for lack of steam, not quite cyberpunk for lack of sophistication (even though they're cyborgs AND punks) but a little bit of both AND some high-tech in there, as well. Especially the "Rikto-freaks" that show up so rarely are a great idea.

In broader terms, I define "square tech" like what you see in Aliens or Avatar or other James Cameron movies. It's technology that's sophisticated and advanced, but looks more brutish and built to batter down walls than built with precise calibration and great sensitivity in mind. Take, for instance, the classic pulse rifle:



That's some pretty high-tech weaponry, but it still looks like someone grabbed it by the stock and used it as a club. It looks like you can drop this thing in the dust, run it over with an APC, dunk it in the ocean, shake it up and it'll still fire. It's not entirely square, but it has a very tough, utilitarian look, and that's the sort of tech I feel we can use more of. Come to think of it, the look of the Robotics Mastermind robots is more or less in that vein, but I'd say we can use more of that.

To turn this into a question: David, what's your stance on sleek vs. shiny tech and beautiful vs. rough tech? I know you've been a great proponent of shiny reflective metal in the past, but does this extend to a general aesthetic you enjoy or is it more just fascination with graphical effects? Feel free to reinterpret the questions if you wish

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'm not sure. Each of those series has gone through so many alterations over the years they may cover all aesthetic types of sci-fi technology

Let's take Star Wars, since that's what I know the most about. Almost the entirety of the old series deals with square technology, for the most part. R2D2 is a trash can, the Millennium Falcon is covered in boxes, the Death Star is replete with trapeziod doors, rectangular bridges and pretty "low tech" devices like garbage compactors and pivoting turrets. By contrast, the prequels are chock full of sleek technology. Many people fly around in "balls," many shuttles are smooth, streamlined, shiny and reflective, many structures are tall and sleek and much of the grit and grime has been replaced with poetry and pretentiousness.

Actually, Star Wars is a good example in another way. The original trillogy is a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, but most of the emphasis is on the sci-fi, with the jedi appearing almost anachronistic, preaching an ideology and religion that the world at large has forgotten. Most people are merchants, soldiers and engineers. The prequels reverse this, and represent a world which is much more fantasy than sci-fi. A council of veritable wizards rule the galaxy, they talk about destiny and fate, they wield magic and deal with philosophy. Most people are politicians, knights or peasants. The type of technology the trilogies represent is, thus, of a different style to match the thematic. Where the original trillogy is a sci-fi future with interesting technology, the prequels are a fantasy future with magical technology.

Honestly, I don't really mind fantasy tech much. The Final Fantasy games have done a good job of it. On the surface, it looks like magic artefacts, but it's still technology and supports an industrial world ruled by economics and invention. On the other hand, it still leaves the door open to a feudal world ruled by religion and royalty.

To be honest, Praetoria itself isn't all that far in the "sleek tech" look as most people make it out to be. Yes, it's white, clean and clinical, but for the most part that's just a façade over a much deeper whole, which is precisely why the Clockwork pieces are so awesome - they're a shiny metal exterior over an amazingly complex interior. I think Nightstar is as far along the shiny tech path as anything in Praetoria, and she still has her cables showing.

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Actually, I think WALL E is a very good example of the contrast between tough and sleek tech, now that I think about it. On the one side, you have WALL E itself, which is little more than a garbage compactor on caterpillar tracks. It is not a beautiful machine by any stretch, because whoever designed it wasn't concerned with making it beautiful. It's a tractor - tough, functional and ugly. WALL E is attractive not for aesthetic reasons, but for engineering reasons. It's attractive because it works.

EVE, by contrast, is the polar opposite. EVE is a sleek, stylised, bold statement of art within science - that the future is bright and hopeful, that in the future, our technology will be beautiful and refined. EVE is attractive because its appearance is aesthetically pleasing, and that's an intentional part of its design. True, EVE is generally seen as more capable than WALL E because EVE has the technology of the future, and that is part of the statement - future technology will look better AND function better. But EVE is still attractive not so much for its function, but for its form.

City of Heroes, I believe, is somewhere in the middle, but mostly leans more towards EVE and less towards WALL E. The Freakshow and Crey, to some extent, are more WALL E, but they're seven years old, if not more. A lot of the game's newer technological heroes and villains have almost always been sleek. City of Villains gave fake reflections, and thus the post City of Villains tech was shiny. Arachnos, despite being black, have refined, smooth, clean tech, even if it's somewhat chaotic and the remade Rikti, though visually complex, are still mostly sleek. Going Rogue gave us real-time reflections, and so most of the new technological characters were sleek. The Clockwork are shiny, the PPD, TEST, DUST and EDF are stylised.

Even the Resistance - the supposed rat revolutionaries - still keep themselves pretty tidy. You don't see them using robotic arms strapped to their chests with pistons exposed, you don't see them using dissimilar pistols... You don't even see them wearing different clothes. They have their uniforms, they have their polished shiny metal shoulders, they have their supposedly patched-up guns that still look purpose-built... Even at its lowest tech, Praetoria is still sleek.

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.