Sharks Fin

boxers can do this too. they look nothing like wolves, but the change in temperament, from big puppy to will rip your arm off can be striking. we had one that wouldnt bark..he would just quietly, but with clear purpose,move into position when there was a unexplained noise..he did not want to spook it away.

which is why I like this version that Omar Dogan drew

I beg to differ.

A little more on topic, some Rokea pics:

kinda bloody

To be fair, that's Felicia in name only. It lacks her physique, it lacks her oversized paws, it lacks her RIDICULOUS fur pattern... Pretty much all it retains is the hair. Sure, it looks good, no question there. Kind of cute, too. But that really isn't Felicia, so much as a woman in cat ears, which is kind of missing the point.

See, this is the kind of design I really wouldn't care for in this game. I wouldn't exactly go on a campaign to ban it, but to me this just doesn't look so much like a character as it does like a shark that grew arms and legs. Like I said, I have no love for fish and birds, so this really does nothing for me. The only reason I even found shark-themed characters appealing to begin with is because of those pics I posted, since they borrowed shark elements to place on ostensibly human-looking characters.

To me, that kind of pic is just going too far in replicating the animal in question.

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.

See, what I read there was "but to me this doesn't look so much like a character as it does a character"... which just left me confused.

Automatically doesn't count on the grounds of me-not-wanting-to-get-caught-up-on-CRACKED-3-times-in-one-week.

Which was one point I was making when people mention Talbain being cute. In all the source material, he isn't made out to look cute At. All. So them maybe it was more to do with the definition being used: cute things are just nice to look at for a variety of reason. sexy is attractive. cool is awesome. They may overlap, but they're not interchangable to me.

But I even thought the canon Felicia was pretty cute for her kitty mannerisms. For how she actually looks, I see other things...namely :boobs:



To me, those shark pics, while awesome (I actually like the very last one in that bloody link) don't look like characters. They look like non-player-characters. Like monsters you'd run into if you were playing a game.

I guess you could put tights on them and a cape and some spiked boots and a knarly belt to help personalize the frame, but then it stops looking like a shark and more like a person with a shark-head helmet. Got no problem with that and would welcome the addition. I'm just also seeing Sam's want of more optional accessories to future additions...hoods, hats, glasses, hair. You can't really add anything to those sharks though...no forehead.

So... beards?

A couple of my favourite characters from over the years are a beholder mage and a roughly 4' diameter amoeboid. 'Monstrous' is often the first thing I look for in a character. The only necessary difference between PC and NPC to me is which side of the screen I happen to be on.

That's more or less what I wanted to say, as well. These kinds of "adapted animals" look less like something that would be distinct and memorable enough to be a player characters and more like something you'd run into in a random encounter on a boat in Final Fantasy VIII. That doesn't mean it looks bad, but more that it doesn't have anything to differentiate it from an NPC. More on that below.

I think you and I disagree on a very fundamental aspect of character design, which is that I NEED the characters I play to be somehow remarkable, somehow memorable and somehow unique. "A shark man" is not unique. The concept behind the look might be, but the look isn't, because this look is essentially procedurally generated - it's a man that's also a shark. It's un-unique in the same way as a matte black humanoid shape is not unique - there's nothing about it that the creator had to come up with that isn't directly obvious from what the design entails.

To me, that's a lot like using, say, full set Enforcer. The resulting character doesn't look good, but it looks like every other person who picked full set enforcer. It's not unique because there's nothing done to it to customize it beyond what the very general costume set comes with. There's no personality in this costume, it's just the Enforcer set. Maybe the person inside is very interesting, but you can't know that because you can't see that, save for a bit around the neck since the Enforcer set doesn't come with its own face.

To say that NPCs and PCs are differentiated only by who controls them is, to me, really just missing the point of arguing for artistry. That's not to say you're wrong for doing it, of course - it's a matter of subjective opinion. But to me, a character needs to at least feign artistry for me to be interested in that character, and for this to happen I need to see a design that at least looks like something few other people would have thought to make. I've posted a few of my costume designs in the Best Costume Designs thread, and though not everyone specifically likes them, I do often get comments that I've found a costume design others wouldn't have thought would look good. That, to me, is the sign of a successful costume design.

That's kind of why I don't like the "animal heads" as they are. They're just straight up photo-realistic stuffed animal head props, and pretty much the only thing I can do with them is animal-head people. They're not as expressive or as diverse as I'd like to make them. I'd like to make a bovine girl with hair, I'd like to make a lion guy with glasses, I'd like to make a dragon that isn't just a retread of my lizard guy using the same head. Giving me the ability to use props with animal heads would go a long way towards enabling me to do this.

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.

A human with shark features is a man that's also a shark. A humanoid shark is a shark that's also a man. Both can be artistic. Either can be seen as rather generic. Personality and story can go a long way to set either apart. It's what keeps a bland troll girl from just being a generic She-Hulk knockoff with a sword, after all.

Cheapshot aside, I don't disagree with you. Story and personality matter, but I'm talking about strictly visual appearance here. I firmly believe that you can do a lot to a character to make that character visually memorable and distinct in addition to having an interesting and engaging personality.

I see this as a sales pitch. Over the years, people have been queuing up to tell me my character descriptions are tl;dr and why should I read yours and what makes yours special and so on. And I agree - what DOES make mine special that a stranger would bother to read my long bio and not someone else's? Well, if I make a costume that's distinct enough to make another wonder what the deal with this character is, then I can count on the bio to be convincing enough to seal the deal.

The trouble with concept characters, especially in this game, is that without a look which stands out, people will never actually know your story because they have to go out of their way to learn it. Other than trying to RP in-character (and that has its whole host of problems) the only face of yours the public at large will see is your appearance.

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I want to give you an example. When the Animal pack first came out, I tried making a full-body tiger because I wondered how it would look. I logged into the Praetorian tutorial and appeared next to two other full-body tigers in my exact colour scheme and pretty much my exact costume setup. Right then, I abandoned that costume idea and haven't gone back to it again. To me, if a number of people are likely to make a costume almost exactly like mine by just browsing through general concepts, then I haven't done enough to differentiate the costume.

I have to confess - I still have a few of those, myself. Take Zik, for instance. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I designed him, but that guy's essentially "yet another darkity" and I've been planning to update his costume for quite some time. To me, there's nothing about my character that looks distinctive, so no-one's really very likely to look into his story to see what he's all about. He may be a cool idea (he's my signature villain) but he LOOKS like a slapped-together look with no imagination. Fail on my part, and not one of my better works.

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.

It was't intended as a cheapshot, as I've enjoyed reading the bits and pieces about the character in question. It was meant to bring the explanation close to home, as it were.

You and I must have different sorts of visual memory. Monstrous details stick with me quite vividly. I can produce pictures from memory and imagination of beholders of various style, bulettes, werewolves, kobolds, etc., but as many times as I've seen pics of Elminster and Blackstaff I couldn't make a pic readily identifiable as either without a reference at hand.

I could give any given male drow two swords and pass it off as Drizz't though, because his monstrous traits are strong identifiers.

Similarly (and again, not a cheapshot), I might be put in the mind of your character by any largish green woman with a sword. I don't recall any specifics of her outfit(s), it's the monstrous traits that linger in my mind's eye.

I honestly don't think you could make a costume in this game that, in itself, would make me stop to read your bio. There are exactly two things (other than being asked) that have made me check bios in-game: interesting character names and down time between action.

All of that aside, this is, to me, a sort of visual semantics. I would see little real difference between the more realistically shark-like man with hair, clothes, and glasses added and one with less realistically shark-like features and the same window dressing. To me, it'd be just like seeing multiple artists draw the same character in their individual style.

Quite possibly. I'm very sensitive to colour and contrast, and I'm much more likely to remember a character based on what colour his outfit is and how that colour is arranged in patterns than I am based on body shape. To my eyes, a big brown man is the same as a small brown woman is the same as a toothy brown monsters - so long as they're all brown, they look the same to me. It's why I was left so disappointed with Diablo III's aesthetic - everything in that game looks the same to me, aside from the pac man monster.

And I have actually stopped to read the descriptions of characters whose costumes have caught my eye. Those are typically characters with odd skin colours or those have an "iconic" look. Sadly, most of the time there IS no description, which is greatly disappointing. Still, I keep trying. I don't actually even look at the names of people's characters. I have Individual Name Colours turned on for chat, so I rely on name colour and name length to tell people apart. Most of the time when I team, I leave without having really read anyone's name. Hell, it took me eight years to figure out Numina's name is not "Numia," just for reference.

Similarly (and again, not a cheapshot), I might be put in the mind of your character by any largish green woman with a sword. I don't recall any specifics of her outfit(s), it's the monstrous traits that linger in my mind's eye.[/quote]

With Xanta, looking like a She-Hulk ripoff was a primary concern of mine, so I went through quite a few colour schemes before I settled on the one I went with. I looked through many pics of the She-Hulk and quickly discovered that her look was largely monotone - green skin, green hair, green eyes and so on. So I went with a sort of "fiery red" hair which is actually pure red and pure yellow mixed together, very white metal armour and blue fabric tights. I figured scattering her colour scheme across the spectrum but keeping it piece-specific would give her more of her identity than just the green skin does. If I could, I'd actually like to take the green skin quite a few tones down so it doesn't compete for attention with the rest of the outfit as much, but the costume editor won't let me.

I don't see anything wrong with a realistic shark head, I just wouldn't have any use for it since I don't like fish-themed characters. The reason I'm campaigning for hair and glasses and nose rings and such is that it gives me more options to play with. The more options there are, the better my chance of finding something I like is. With just a stock shark head, you either like shark heads or you don't. With a customizable shark head, people like me who don't specifically like it can still alter it into something we do like. And that goes for all animal parts, not just shark heads. If I could use the Cheetah head with hair, I'd definitely stop using the Feline face so much, just as an example.

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.

Right, it seems like we'd both like similar ends as far as customisation goes. Even if we can't agree that monsters are people, too.