My City of Heroes Tribute

Sorry if this is in the wrong section, I didn't quite know where to post it.

Back in May when the future of City of Heroes was still bright, I entered the competition to do a Movie Poster for the City of Heroes world. It was a runner up and I liked it so at the end of June I decided it would be a good portfolio piece to try to up-scale to full movie poster size: 27” x 40”. That's 8084 x 12000 pixels in total, with the 300 dpi file weighing in at over 4.5GB. In upscaling it I quickly realised I would have to completely repaint every aspect again so I took it as a summer project. Well I've literally spent well over 200 hours just on repainting all the faces in this poster to be as lifelike as I can paint them.

So why am I telling all of you this?

Well along came the big announcement that City of Heroes would be closing and I decided to repurpose the painting to be my tribute to my time in City of Heroes. As I am getting closer to completing the poster, I figure that it features a group of superheroes uniting to fight whatever they come up against and that it could be something that a wider group of people could look at up on their wall and remember their time in City of Heroes – the good, the bad and even the ugly times. So I am starting up this thread to show you what the poster looks like currently in the game (you can see it at any of the in-game movie theatres, called Ascension) and opening this up to the wider City of Heroes community.

If you would like your own 27” x 40” copy it will cost me £15 to print the poster for you and then delivery will vary depending where you live. The method of payment will be Paypal. If you are interested either leave your name in this thread and I will get back to you via PM or you can PM me. I want to make it clear I will not be making a profit from this in any way.

Currently the credits at the bottom of the image relate to the Union server, but I am thinking of changing them to the names of the developers instead.

Below are a couple of crops of the image. None are at 100% zoom.

The Ascension poster that is in the game from the facebook page:



A 75% crop of one of the character's faces (this is the guy on the poster with glowing eyes' face):



This is a very small res (4-8% magnification) of the poster in its current form:



I want to be clear here, I'm not trying to make a profit from my favourite game going under. Far from it. I will be asking a small charge to get the poster to you and to cover the cost of printing it but that is all. I thought that a poster reminding me of my time in City of Heroes would occasionally help me to remember the times I spent in the game and I thought I'd offer up that opportunity to all of you. If there's no interest that's fine, but I felt I had to at least share this with you all.

Note: If I get any interest I'll update the pictures as I get closer to finishing. Also if the current images are too big let me know and I'll reduce the size further.

/em clap

Well done, Soul Storm! An impressive tribute to both your love of the game and your artistic talents.

I really liked hearing all the stats about how much work you've put into this project just this year. It will rightfully be a point of pride for the rest of your life.

Yes, please do continue to share pictures and close-ups of the piece as you work on them. I'd very much enjoy sharing any further evolution you put into this piece.

Amazing work!

I'd love a copy.

And of course what would a superhero movie poster be without a bum shot of one of the female leads.

This is amazing, id love a copy.

Well I never expected to even get a single reply let alone any interest! This is amazing! I will contact anyone that shows an interest in getting a copy directly via pm.

Funny you should say about a bum shot, because as you can see there is one and i'll be getting to that soon enough! As you can see at the bottom of the image I've put in the Cryptic, CoH and Paragon logo's. I have been debating for a heck of a long time whether or not I should stick the NCSoft logo in there too. Any thoughts?

As I progress on this I'll post a few more shots.

Fun fact #2: It takes over 20 minutes to save this image.

Nuff said

That's very cool.

That's outstanding work! I'm in awe

Hey guys sorry I've not posted in here yet, I've had to finish a project etc - life. I should have most of the day tomorrow and pretty much all this coming week on the poster so I'll be posted more in here very soon.

Fun fact 22: A full size JPEG is over 400MB in size.

Very nice work, gonna cast another no vote for the NCSoft logo.
Don't need a constant reminder of them.

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

Hey all as promised I thought I'd stop by and show you a bit of an update. Had the chance to work further into the picture a little this week and I've managed to do another face more or less. Still got a little bit of work on it before I move to the hair tomorrow. Let me know if anyone's actually interested in seeing how I go through my hair process in Photoshop!

I think there's a general consensus of opinion that NCSoft shouldn't have a logo on the page. I put Cryptics on there (their modern logo) because they basically came up with the engine and the game, no matter who was behind it *cough* jack *cough* the game wouldn't have been possible without them. I'm also thinking of changing the bottom strapline to "Heroes never give up". Let me know if you think that works better. PM me if you'd like a copy of this poster on your wall .

Without further ado this is the latest progress shot for the face of the girl with her backside turned to the viewer:

Looking good Soul.

As for the tagline, personally I prefer "Heroes don't quit". To me, "Our Heroes live on" or "Heroes never give up" sound either too cheesy or too much of a mouthful.

Also, in the case of "Heroes don't quit", I'd move that to the top of the poster, and "Impossible just got easier" to the bottom, underneath the credits. But I'm probably overthinking this, as its your baby x).