Statesman's Log-in Screen Flatness...

You would want the developers to choose favorites among their customers?

If you want a custom log in screen I believe that some players have been making their own. You could look into that.

I really don't like it, myself. However, there are still more options between Leifeld and Superman. What bugs me is that her costume doesn't make "sense" on an instinctive level. I've heard David's explanation of why he went with it and I can respect it, but what I mean is I look at this thing... And I just see shapes and colours. And when I look away, all I remember is shapes and colours. You could show me pretty much any of the other concept costumes for her and I probably couldn't tell the difference at a glance, because the difference is in the finer details that I have to really look to see.

Maybe it's just a sense of design aesthetic, but I've always preferred costumes that have something iconic and memorable about them, even when they're otherwise busy. Black Scorpion, for instance, has one of the busiest costumes in the game with all his little scientific doodads stuck all over his armour and the blinking lights and such, but do you know what I remember when I see him? Large black armour, head suspended inside it, claw and blaster hands, scorpion tail. The busyness of it adds to the costume's fidelity, but it is not part of the costume's identity, is what I'm saying.

The trouble with Penny's costume is that the sum total of its identity is held within its fidelity, and this makes it unmemorable. It's like trying to get me to remember the arrangement of pebbles on a river-side. Yes, I'm sure I could identify each separate one, track its position and orientation and later identify that same pebble beach through a single photo of it... But to my brain, it's still just a pebble beach. Having to examine the costume is a mental step that I don't make instinctively, hence why her costume isn't memorable. To my eyes, it's a mish-mash of colours and patters and pretty much the only thing that's memorable about her is that hair, which so far is unique to her among NPCs.

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.

Here's what I remember from looking at the login screen, roughly 30 seconds ago: Big blue tattooed guy with claws, wearing bear pelts, fighting a black haired girl with stuff on her face.

I'd have to look again to give more details.

The worst part is the addition of white tights to an otherwise white-less costume. It just looks stupid, and I'm sure it'd look loads better if it was black. Even if the white was on the top half of the body, it'd look better. Right now, it looks about as bad as someone wearing a long sleeved shirt with shorts.

Also, every time I look at her face, it looks more and more like a trollface picture.

The only things i can recall after the brief glimpse of the screen was the weapon she was wielding and that it was some big blue dude jumping at her, which seemed to be some sort of mook rather than actually be a prominent character for i23.

That's kind of what I'm saying, yes. Shadowhunter (I assume that's him from comments in this thread) is just much more memorable than Penny, because his costume is both simpler AND has more stuff that's memorable. He's blue-skinned which is memorable on its own, he has contrasting yet simple tattoos which may well be the FIRST NPC in this game to have them (the Tsoo tattoos are far more complex and don't count), he has a bear hood which REALLY stands out, and if you look carefully, he has digitigrade legs. Yeah, the finer detail is still there, like the spiked gloves, the skulls on the belt, the wraps on the digitigrade legs (******* finally! "Clothes" on digitigrade legs was a long time coming!) and those do add to the overall look, but you don't need to remember them in order to spot the character at a distance.

Penny really does look like a black-haired girl with face junk and a busy costume.

Yeah, this is something I brought up the first time we discussed it - the white on the pants just seems out of place. It makes her bottom look like it has a red base with a white secondary while her top looks like it has a black base with a red secondary. There's no symmetry in there, and this lack of symmetry is what prevents my brain from remembering it. I literally CANNOT even remember which of her colours were where, and I've looked at that wallpaper like 10 times writing this post.

David explained this as Penny being both rebellious and going for fashion, thus combining elements from Vanguard, Longbow and her own personal touch. The problem is that A) this would never have been obvious if David hadn't said it since her costume looks like neither group and B) making the costume a mess intentionally as an ironic statement is all well and good, but it doesn't keep it from being a mess. If she had LITERAL Vanguard Gear with Longbow pieces on top, kind of like how Fusionette starts getting progressively more Vanguard pieces every time she shows up, then I could buy it, but that's not what it is.

That, and the first time I saw Penny, I thought she was running around in a bare butt

It's the chin, isn't it?

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 the eyes.

Honestly, at this point, the whole thing looks like it. Taking her face and morphing it to the correct shape is all it needs.

And I'm betting it wouldn't take much work.

Yeah... looking at that login screen, I get "Reference to Longbow" right away from the waist down. But Vanguard? I don't see it, at least in that piece. And in the WWD funeral shot, again, what we saw (as the "mystery girl") *screamed* Longbow special NPC to me. Vanguard came to mind about as obviously as Devouring Earth or COT.

I can understand not going with all black and red - despite Longbow SpecOps having that (kinda sorta - more dark red, I think, than black, IIRC) it's generally perceived as a "villain" combination.

The outfit kind of brings a comment back to me that a friend in high school made, talking about me vs. another mutual friend and our cars. He said he preferred my view on things, since I took the whole car into account, while the other person was more into the pieces - "ooh, cool rims, ooh, nice piece here" whether or not they all "worked" together. And that's kind of Penny Yin (and I can't say that without starting into Penny Lane in my head) and her outfit, I think. Lots of "ooh, neat" pieces, but no coherent whole.

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That's my take on it, as well. I like the buckles, I like the backpack, I even like the face junk, heaven help me, and hell - who do I have to kill to get a belly button for my own characters? They're all neat pieces, but I just don't think they work on the same character.

Actually, do you know what Penny reminds me of? The Sinister set. I don't mean to say she looks sinister, but her costume looks like a costume set created for the broadest range of options but never really designed to go together. Some of the Sinister pieces are better than others and they make for pretty good combinations, but the WHOLE SET just looks goofy. To me, it looks like Penny just got "the whole set" of something just released with no regard for what actually works best, which pieces might be best left off and which might be best replaced with pieces from existing sets. She looks like a tech demo for new costuming technology much more so than she looks like someone with a solid single costume.

And that really shows in the wide shots. If her colour scheme were gold and brown, she could pass for a Merit Vendor.

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.

How can she look " Liefeldian " ? She doesn't have geisha feet

Dat chin

Would you rather have Rob Liefeld artwork? This new screen isn't that bad.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Add some pouches and hide the feet and this is about on Liefeld's level.


lmbo

It's Shadow Hunter

Her movement and pose are both quite natural - any athletic or even semi-athletic person can copy it.

She's not really lacking there - she's got nice proportions and looks like a normal woman with curves.

Better tell real life women that they can't do that, too, in an even more extreme way....

Er... no. It's not that far off from this:

Whereas Liefeld... well, maybe if she stuck her feet in a pencil sharpener and were stung by a few thousand bees, then went and bought a few dozen pouches, then had her intestines removed....

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