Bubbawheat

Quick translation clarification:

Still four more competitors unaccounted for. I think.

Love the fortunata as the White Rabbit!

From Crestent's journal:

And here I was expecting the mad tea party to be a favorite. I guess I just scared everyone off of it with my early entry.

That wasn't me! This floor is squeaky! I swear!

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

And of course, once I got that far, I just couldn't leave it at that. Total time, about an hour.

Still no comments? Oh well, here's another work in progress to show for myself, this one by OCR. Spent about 20-25 mins on it so far.

Original:


My colors:


Edit - couldn't leave it alone, spent another 10-15 mins on it, especially would like comments on the helmet shading.


Ref:

A bit short on time, so I'm just setting up some early groundwork for a skeleton mission framework for the first two missions, since I feel that getting those two missions right is crucial to the success of the arc as a whole. Ok, it's ending up being even less than that, just choosing the map for the first two missions.

Map: Unique Maps -> Banks -> 22nd National Bank 01
5 allowed boss/ambush/patrol/destroy
2 allowed ally/rescue/escort
1 allowed floor collection (back) - I'm assuming inside vault.

Little late to the party, and kind of tired, but just popping in to point to sig. There's no actual builds, but a lot of build advice as well as IO suggestions.

The story:

I don't think I want to copy Memento too much, so I don't want to do a murder mystery, but I definitely want to have some sort of mystery involved. And when Alice in Wonderland is the theme, the go to mystery is the tale of the tarts. This will require the use of some customs - The Knave of Hearts, the Queen of Hearts, possibly the King of Hearts, as well as a small selection of card guards. I might be able to mix in a few recolored standard mobs to fill out the group and save space, as I'm looking at a five mission arc, and don't want to spend all my space before double filesize gets here. I also have already made Alice, The White Rabbit, the White Queen, The March Hare, and the Mad Hatter, so I might use some of those as well.

Now, with such a complicated structure and plot, I intend on using all five mission slots. As with my most popular arc, which has a related structure - the time loop, the first two missions are important to set up the concept for someone who hasn't seen Memento before. I'm tempted to use another concept from Memento and have the "final" boss in the first mission be your contact, which is something that's also often used in other players' AE arcs.

I need to use a small map so as not to spend too much time establishing the structure of the arc, such as a casino or bank. But I also want to be able to add objectives in the second mission so it's not overly repetitive. I think one of the larger bank maps might work out nicely.

Mechanics

Mission 1: Single boss battle with dialog.

Mission 2: A couple events - ally?/boss?/patrols? - ending with chained boss battle with the exact same dialog from Mission 1.

Arc #380533
Current status:
2 missions with minimal story and wonderland customs.
# of costumes: 6
% space used: 42.57%

I started this before, but I lost my account, lost momentum, then lost interest. And now I'm trying again. This thread is my attempt to chronicle my next arc from concept to completion. Comments, suggestions, and discussion are all welcome in this thread as well.

My idea this time is that I wanted to recreate the structure of the movie Memento in the Mission Architect. I would like to craft a complex tale of mystery with a plotline that works in the aforementioned structure. And I want to do it all using Alice and Wonderland as a backdrop theme to it. It sounds like a big undertaking to pull this off well, but I hope I'm up to the task.

Now I'm not always conventional when it comes to writing. I don't often use an outline, I often keep most of it in my head until it's all ready to come out. But we'll see how this goes.

Welcome to our little corner of the forums. I'll go ahead and throw my hat into the ring with Matchstick Women #3369 and Whack a Mole #2711. Link's in sig, both should be on mission review, but your forum review is fine to stay in this thread. Have fun playing some great arcs from the folks here. It looks like you're enjoying them so far.

I'm really liking this style of reviewing, it's much easier and fun to do. Shorter paragraph style review with overall comments, and tweets following the minutia of the arc written as I go. And my next victim is already dead, so it's time to hold

A Wake for Dead 6 #379160 by Clave Dark 5

This arc uses an interesting narrative device that is rarely used in the MA, the bookend/flashback. My contact is Meter Rabbit, known in Clave's earlier arcs as The Rabbitual Criminal. He's lost his powers and reformed while still in the Zig doing meter repair work, from all the mayhem missions going around. The arc is based around your character or Meter Rabbit telling stories about a hero known as Orange 6 while he was alive, and Dead 6 while he was dead, which didn't stop him from doing heroic work. It's a unique device, and I commend the effort, but personally, I felt it left parts of the experience lacking. Notably the sense of direction, most of the mission briefings just set up the story and ask you to tell it, but don't actually tell what you're supposed to do.

The only other problem I had was it did get a little bit confusing with the character of Dead 6 and the flashback nature of the missions. Mission 1 is about the first time my character met Dead 6, Mission 2 is about when Rabbitual Criminal had a run in with Orange 6 which is played by my character in this flashback. Actually, my character's perspective shifts within the mission. It starts out as Rabbitual Criminal's experience placing his crate, then 3 more objectives pop up (unfortunately, I missed two of them due to being completed by Rogue or Ally patrols) and I fight Rabbitual Criminal as a boss who refers to me as Orange 6. Mission 3 is where it gets a little confusing, it's a flashback to just after mission 2, but it refers to my character working with Dead 6, and it reveals how Dead 6 died, or Orange 6 died, or both if Dead 6 found peace by showing my current character how he died, and I'm confused again. Basically, Dead 6 is an ally in this mission and leads you to a large explosive. You realize it has already been disarmed, and you find an imprint of a body in the dust where the small explosive detonator had exploded. Dead 6 lies down in the imprint and you realize that's how Orange 6 died. And the final mission has your character remembering how you took revenge on the Council who placed that bomb.

The Villain Loses His Power: In this arc, it's your contact Meter Rabbit, who went by the name Rabbitual Criminal while he was a villain (and has appearances in at least two of Clave Dark 5's other arcs). It's something that happened outside of this arc for the most part, and he doesn't get his power back, though you do destroy (or remember destroying) the cause of his power loss. It is a unique device for the challenge, but it felt like a minor sidenote to the main Orange 6/Dead 6 storyline.

The Arc as an Arc: As mentioned above, the bookend/flashback device is unique, but can be a little off putting to some people, especially with the occasional lack of direction and self-completing objectives. But the overall meat of the story was very interesting and engaging. I liked Dead 6 as a character even though he wasn't much of a talker, and I really liked how his heroic sacrifice was handled. I'm just not sure about how it was presented.

Appropriate for the Level Range?: Absolutely, I didn't really have any problems with the difficulty at my level. I had a couple close calls with a double spawn of Council, and the final boss with his Fire Blast, but I prevailed without deaths (other than one caused by inattention).

On to the tweets.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA A Wake for Dead 6 # 379160 by @ Clave Dark 5, yet another second Aeon's Challenge arc. Probably only time for 1 mission though.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Contact is Meter Rabbit, formerly known as Rabbitual Criminal, and yes I have fought him before.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA I like the little editor's note about where we saw the contact last, very comic-book-y.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: Ahh, a flashback. And I finally read the title right, before I read it like "Left 4 Dead" with a random sequel number at the end.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA But it's actually an arc about a villain named "Dead 6" and his subsequent "Wake" after he has died, for real apparently.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Anyway, back to the M1 flashback - It's set up that I'm telling Meter Rabbit about the time I first met Dead 6.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Oops, alt + tabbed back to a dead body at the front door of the mission. Guess I should have been quicker.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Ok, back to the ghost hunting with me and Dead 6, who despite his name is actually a hero like *ahem* me...
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Dead is kicking butt and not even bothering to take names. Ok by me, keeps me below 10 longer.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Rescued a random citizen named Julie, and Dead was very quiet the whole time.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: This time Meter Rabbit is telling the story about when he first ran into Orange 6 (Dead 6 before he died)
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: very empty office building, except for that hole in the ground... haven't I been here before?
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Kind of funny, the office is empty, and all the guards are hanging out in the caves.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Dropped off the crate and had 3 dialog type objectives pop up. Then a couple NPC lines of dialog got me back down to 1.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: And the role of Orange 6 will be played today by: me! And Rabbitual Criminal as a boss tells his story as you beat him down.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: And here's where the power loss comes in - Rabbitual Criminal lost his powers, but there was a fire in the hospital...

Bubbawheat #CoHMA Continuing A Wake for Dead 6, M3: remember when Dead 6 and I saved everyone in the hospital, but Dead 6 got all the credit... jerk.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA And it's the mayhem hospital (of course) with Council roaming around.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: Nav bar is no help, title "You followed Dead 6" objective "Dead 6 lead you to this". Makes me think this quals for 1st chal too.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: It seems Dead 6 only has 2-3 attacks, but boy do they pack a wallop when they land.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: That's it? Dead 6 pointed to a barrel and we're done. So, he's part Golden Retriever?
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: So that's how Orange 6 died. He pulled the detonation device off the large explosive and it went off, killing him but no big boom

Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: So the bomb was meant for my contact, and one last doodleydoot to when "I" took out Sprack.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: Had a little trouble with a double spawn of Council, but it was nothing my Gemini Pistols couldn't handle.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: destroyed a crystal, with the crystal echoing Meter Rabbit's bookend meta-comments "Ooh a crystal? What was that".
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: I see Archon von Sprack. Classic mad scientist look with black cape and red gloves/boots. He's jumping up and down like a madman.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: Sprack packs some serious firepower - pun intended - but I eke out a victory!
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: Meter Rabbit realizes they used the power robbing device on him, but he's happy. But was M3 Orange 6 or Dead 6 dying?

Ahh yes, silly me. I did mention it in my comments on the dA page, but the original pencils are by TechnicDragon, I merely added the color - there's a link to the original right under the first pic in the first post. And I am completely open to any and all critiques. I know I'm an amateur, and the only way to get better is to take criticism (or practice, practice, practice).

Sorry for the delay in posting, this month had a much lower turnout than I anticipated, and so I'll be taking a much longer break from these, probably not until after Going Rogue is released. Nevertheless, on to the voting!

Best Short Arc

• You may vote for one arc in any or all categories - those with one mission, two missions, or three missions.
• In the One Mission category, please make a first and second choice.
• Voting will be open until April 12th at 11:59pm EST.
• Nominees may vote however they choose to.

One Mission Arcs

Storming Citadel #379488 by @MrCaptainMan
The Extadine Lab #2595 by @Vanden
Jabberwocky #1573 by @Rodion
Don't Freak (Customs Version): 384769 - @Gypsy Rose
Eagor to Please - 169260 @Gno Man


Two Mission Arcs

Becky's Revenge #60197 by @New Age Ronin
Death to Disco Arc ID 84420 @Wrong Number
Poi, Demonology, and Everything I learned from Hellions #164235 by @londerwost

Three Mission Arcs

Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers From Hell #340316 by @LaserJesus
PENGUIN #29205 by @Tubbius
The Missing #37636 by @Shadow-Rush

Today brings a bit of lightheartedness to the competition when I played

The Spider Without Fangs #379248 by @TheDeepBlue

My contact today is Operative... 867-5309? No, that's not right, must check my twitter notes... A Ha! Operative 647-8725, she works for Arachnos and has a severe case of bad attitude. Which is explained later in the arc (and will be spoiled here for those who like a good mystery). She wants me to retrieve a random magical artifact from the Legacy Chain but won't tell me what it is or what it does, but boy will she be pissed if I don't come back with it. And boy does she stay pissed for these five missions until I finally get it. Legacy Chain moved it to a different warehouse, they transfer it to Longbow custody, and I have to make a pit stop at Arachnos to get Longbow information, I have to stop some Longbow patrols, and I finally get what I was looking for, and then some.

The Villain Loses Her Powers: Ok, time to let the cat out of the bag, the contact turns out to be Ice Mistral. Throughout the arc, you find out piece by piece, in a pretty good flow of information, that Ice Mistral got drunk at a club, hooked up with a guy that turned out to be a Paragon Hero, he took her mantle and is holding it more or less hostage to try and redeem her as a hero. Sound funny? Well it is. And this arc throws a lot of pieces of humor here there and everywhere along the way. With humorous situations, non-required glowies, and just the situation itself, it's a pretty fun romp throughout.

Appropriate for the Level Range?: Yes, the Legacy Chain had given me a few fits in an earlier arc, but this one had a better choice of bosses and no difficulty problems for me at all.

The Arc as an Arc: This was a fun little mystery ride. It had a good variety of somewhat uncommon (Legacy Chain) and common (Arachnos/Longbow) enemies, a good number of patrols - not too many to worry about clumping up - but enough to add some interest. And I enjoyed the humor spread throughout the arc. My only downside was the contact, but I've been told that she's fairly representative of Ice Mistral in game, and I wasn't too fond of using the red text in the briefings instead of bold. I expect it for warnings or important information, not emphasis.

Edit: As usual, as-I-go tweets below in order.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA The Spider Without Fangs # 379248 by @ TheDeepBlue, entry in Aeon's second challenge
Bubbawheat #CoHMA My contact today is Operative 647-8725, but I don't think her name is (Jenny).
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: My contact has a very commanding tone and I'm supposed to get a random artifact from the Legacy Chain because she said so.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: Patrol walks by talking about working with Longbow and leaving someone to rot. Interesting...
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: A fake defendable dangerous artifact right in the front.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: Some funny non-required artifacts laying around, like a mummified Hitchiker's thumb.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: Looks like boss Radiant Cadogan might be guarding the artifact.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M1: Cadogan had the artifact transferred to another location very quickly, and before I got there. I'm worried about the reaction...

Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: The author likes to highlight somewhat useful lines in red... and the occasional joke or random word.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Still not a big fan of brow-beating contacts, especially villain ones.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: But she did know where this other Legacy Chain base was, and is "graciously" letting me go get it, and no payday until it's done.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: An arachnos huntsman Operative Sergej is sitting in front of me, that can't bode well.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Legacy ambush sounds like Gomer Pyle in my head "Sounds like someone's fighting over there" well goooollly"
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Nice meta-humor, found essentially a single experience point, an elusive object for level 50s.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Totally expecting something to happen, there are too few enemies around.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Found a longbow Agent Lewis. Seems suspiciously set up just like the last mission.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M2: Agent Lewis told me that my contact is... A VILLAIN! *Gasp*, Oh wait, I knew that already...and I'm really looking for her power.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA A Ha! *spoiler* My contact is http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ice_Mistral though bio says nothing about a mantle, but not a big stretch.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA Now I've got to infiltrate an Arachnos base to get tracking info on Longbow, who now have Ice Mistral's Mantle.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3:Found the base commander, and the computer but no info on Longbow. Looks like it was removed, or my contact's messing with me.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: The info was removed... by Scirr...oh crud. Yes, that's the name displayed over his head. Especially funny when he starts talking
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M3: Scirr...oh crud tells me that I need some leverage, or my contact will kill me when she gets what she wants.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: Fought some Longbow squads at Mercy Beach and rescued Ice Mistral trying to fight off Longbow with a rusty pipe wrench.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M4: Also snagged a pic with me and Misty, not useful on its own, but might be able to combine with later stuff for leverage.

Bubbawheat #CoHMA M5: Infiltrating the Longbow Sub to get the mantle "for real this time". Also, destroying some medi-ports for good measure.
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M5: Fought off two <Paragon Heroes> and found a Polaroid of Ice Mistral dancing at a club with one of them. Now to upload it...
Bubbawheat #CoHMA M5: So Ice Mistral got drunk, unknowingly hit on a no-name hero, took him home, and he sped off with her source of power to save her.

More arts, kinda. I went and colored one of my older sketches I had gotten for my Scrapper. Check it out, I think it turned out pretty well.



I'm looking for comments and suggestions, so please comment here, or in its own thread.

And finished it tonight, still would like any comments/tips/suggestions.



And added a background, not sure if I like it though - that's why it gets its own spot so I can delete it later if I choose to.