Chisoku

Those costumes are just wacko. They definitely took a good look at the toys when they made their suits!

You got ELECTRIC SPARK.

Nice video. What editing software did you use to make it?

Excellent! Sketchy, but Excellent in it's quickness!

[ QUOTE ]


a Carnie's spirit just after "dying"

[/ QUOTE ]

That really is a good find!

I remember seeing him a while ago. Captures the mood well.

I decided I'd try and illustrate the different styles of hero I've already listed by creating my own costumes. It took me a while to get the mood right on each, but here are the results:

Golden Age Hero - Radian All of these costumes are made on scratch characters, and because of this, I couldn't give my hero a cape.

Silver Age Hero - Unicorn

Sentai Team - The Solar Warriors - Red Mars Gladiator, Blue Uranus Sage, Yellow Mercury Brawler, Green Jupiter Knight, Pink Venus Enchantress, and the Purple Pluto Renegade, demonstrating a member of the team that's... Not very legitimately part of it.

Henshin-Style hero - Vox Racer Honestly, CoX is horrible for this Genre, since in many cases, retro Henshin Heroes have more than just two colors on different parts of their costumes, and there's also a lot of breastplates and armor involved in some cases. Most of which is exempt from the current costume system. Vox Is also supposed to have a scarf, but I couldn't include that because of the limitations of a level 1 character. I also lacked good examples to go by. The Henshin Style is a style that has a very widespread amount of styles; more than I will bother to deal with.

So, that's my costume skill. What'chu think about it, eh?

Here you go: Chisoku. MA/SR Scrapper, with next to no special effects. No auras, just a scarf and metal suit.

Woah. The orange effects still do go along well with your white costume, you know.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
'I don't care about the crimes you committed; you have something I want, and you're getting out of here alive, wether you like it or not.'

[/ QUOTE ]

Love this scene. The posing is just perfect--was it an out-of-the-blue shot, or did you actually try to set this up?



Let the mother burn.

Still holding out for Pistol Blasters.

This is what happens when you play with fire too much, kids. (NSFW, language)

I remember back when I7 was on Test, and the new /em alakazamreact emote was the best ever. Then they went and nerfed it. I hate you, devs. I hate you so hard.

[/ QUOTE ]

It was just pure luck. I went to rest, and I found there was a skull on my shoulder!

Thanks Soultrain! I completley overlooked that aspect of costume design (mostly because I'm not a big designer of female characters).

And yes, there are a TON of alternatives to black, guys. Colors like... Dark red, Dark blue, and Dark purple... Dark grey...

'Tis a crosspost. Why? Because in truth, the thread would prolly fit better here.

The Chisoku Costume Documents

[ QUOTE ]
I'm wondering if this should be in the Guides section....

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhhhh....... Maybe it should. Anyway, I might crosspost this.

But now, onto the next part:

---
Part 3:
As we know, our heroes are always inspired by something, wether it be other heroes, or simply elements and items in our lives. The way of turning these elements into proper costumes however is easier said than done. There's plenty of different styles to accomplish your costume design, and all have clear rules as to how you should go by the style.

And now, here begin the different styles of costume:

Golden Age: Everybody knows what kind of superheroes embody this style: Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman... The oldest and most memorable of all the heroes. As very cleverly stated by Aerones, he observed from... Some... Source, that the coloring scheme of golden age heroes is based on Heraldry Tinctures, involving use of seven different colors; two metals, yellow and white, and five colors; red, blue, green, purple, and black. Two colors and one metal would be used in tincture, thus allowing the colors of an outfit to be chosen. With that said, you can get an idea of how the colors in a Golden Age hero works.

Also, as observed above, the tincture system isn't exactly solid. Simply put, a three color costume with two major colors and a minor color work well.

As for the actual costume parts, the basis is simple: Tights, boots, and a belt. Gloves aren't a necessity. In fact, some golden age heroes didn't even have gloves on! Neither Captain marvel or Superman have gloves; Captain marvel only having bracers. It's also quite common for a golden age hero to have a cape, and some sort of mask never hurts.

Silver Age: As time went on, styles of costume creating began to loosen up a bit, and basically the whole Tincture thing was lost along the way. In many aspects the style between Golden and Silver age heroes remained intact in many ways. Heroes such as the Flash and Spiderman still retained a color scheme of at least two colors.

Now that style is loostening up a bit, a few more parts can possibly be used; by now, full faced masks are beginning to show up, and even some simplistic full-body armor in some cases. In general, the Silver Age hero is a golden age hero, with some added frills here, and odds and ends there. Gloves are also a bit more common.

Sentai: Ah, sentai. The Japanese Fighting-Force superhero genre. The thing about sentai is simply this: A sentai hero is never alone, he must always work with at least two other people for it to pretty much be a full sentai team.

As you might know from the power rangers, color scheme is of utmost importance here. Sentai teams traditionally have five different base colors for their members:

Red, the leader in most cases.
Blue, usually a second in command.
Yellow, Sometimes a female, and other times not.
Green, often the tough guy of the group.
Pink, always a female.

There have been instances of Black, White, Metallic, and even color-unrelated Sentai members in these. As stated before, only three of five colors are required for a sentai team to really be what it is. Though, with that in mind, it should be remembered that the Red and Blue sentai rangers are always preserved. Yellow is common in a three-member Sentai team, as is pink. The most common four-person combonation of a sentai team is Red, Blue, Yellow, and Pink.

Aaanyway, onto the actual suit of your supposed team. It is crucial that the base helmet and the entire detail of the body outfit is uniform in design among all members, with the same tights, gloves, boots, and patterns. It's actually somewhat uncommon for Sentai teams to have a chest emblem, and if there is infact some sort of color-unrelated member of the team, he or she can easily break the uniform code of dress in the team, so long as the member at least bears a visible semblance to the rest of the team. Typically, the uniform color for the team is the assigned color, coupled up with white, and possibly another color uniform among the team, such as gold or black.

Sentai teams NEVER wear open-faced helmets. Now, I'm not telling you to use the full faced helmet setting in CoX for these guys, oh no. A rather effective full-faced helmet can be achieved in CoX by using a Half-Helmet with a mask on the face. There's also always visors present on the helmets of the team, which can vary in shape from one member to the next, but don't have to.

In general, there's just a lot of rules in creating a proper looking Sentai team outfit. If creating an entire team is not your slice of cake, or you don't want to listen to me ramble on for hours about the wonderful rules of Sentai costuming, but still are interested in trying out a Japanese-Styled superhero, then direct your attention to the next part:

Henshin: Henshin; a term which literally means 'Transformation' in japanese, is used to refer to the lone hero who works in a very similar style as the American Superhero would. Of course, there's lots of different things about the two, or otherwise I wouldn't list this section here. Henshin Heroes often use certain bracelets, belts, and other accessories to quickly enable transformation sequences into their outfits, as opposed to the common Superman shirt-rip we often see in American comics. There's other differences, but I'm not going to go into big detail about it, because we've got tailoring to do.

Much like the Sentai genre, Henshin Heroes almost never wear open-faced helmets. In many ways, the two are similar, but there are differences; Henshin heroes are not restricted to a uniform color. They often have a lot more variety in color than their american counterparts. For example, Kamen Rider has four colors on his outfit: Black, Green, Silver, and White. Another trait of Henshin Heroes are elaborite helmets. Usually, the helmet of a Henshin hero is well-decorated, commonly not without a crest or frill at the forehead.

In addition, to resemble the capes that American superheroes wear, Henshin heroes often could be found wearing scarves, but in general, the difference between Henshin and American heroes include a lot more metal, less revealing costumes, and in many cases, a bit more logic in costume design.

In truth, there is a TON to cover in this section. If any of you other people have tips for various genres of hero which we can cover, feel free to post your guide here.
---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Here you go!

[/ QUOTE ]

That's pretty good except for one problem. You can't get that particular chest wear on new characters.....

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm pretty sure a white robe can suffice for a placeholder of the toga. I've seen it done on plenty of other characters, and it works well to say the least.

I'm not a great photo taker, but here's a few pictures of stuff.

'Evil lurks at night... Thankfully, so do I.'

Green Regis: Saluting the Rising sun in Peregrine Isle, taken shortly after hitting 50.

'Heheheh... No one will ever think of looking up here.'

'Someday, this land shall belong to me.'

Infiltrating Grandville

'I don't care about the crimes you committed; you have something I want, and you're getting out of here alive, wether you like it or not.'

You. You are back. Welcome.

[ QUOTE ]
Last night I did a demo-recording of the new I10 Stealth outfit that was only available on Test (until today's pre-download). I had Zloth's demoplayer set for the regular CoH client, which resulted in this interesting-looking character.

[/ QUOTE ]

Robo-snowman!

Hmm, yes. Hero archetype tips. I think that'd work well!

And when I say archetype, I don't mean like tanker and that stuff. I mean like... concept archetypes.

---
Part 2: Bodies.

Bodies and faces; a pain to change in the midst of game, due to high price and inconsistency among different costumes. How do you solve the dilemma of a fine costume ruined by an ugly body? Simple: Design the body correctly in the first place.

Thanks to the efforts of Cryptic, we have easy access to sliders which affect all sorts of different variables of character size and proportion. Our heroes' bodies can be molded into all kinds of shapes, and with the right experience, you can use these sliders to make the perfect build for your character.

But enough about potential, let's get to the meat on the bones:

Presets: Obviously, for those out there who just don't know what the hell to do with all these sliders, there's always presets for our characters. We have 3 basic body types, and each has four different presets: Athletic, Average, Heavy, and Slim. All have a unique configuration of sliders, and are easy options for any sort of character you might want to make... Though, admittedly, they're all quite basic.

Slim: Slim is minimal body mass. Almost all sliders are on the left side of the bar, and the body is of course very lightweight looking. Better for young characters and swift, spiderman-esque characters.

Average: The average joes body. With a thicker waist, smaller chest, and shorter legs than an athletic body, it serves as a nice basis for any sort of normal, non-superpowered hero you plan to make.

Atheltic: The paragon's body. All sliders are at the middle of the bar, offering the default appearance of a hero. This is best for those classic, golden-age heroes which we all know and love.

Heavy: Want to give your character a nice, stocky appearance? This setting is for you. Quite a few of the sliders are opted toward the right, giving characters broad chests, wide waists, and bulky physique. If you're looking for BIG power armor, this can help you give the illusion of extra armor mass.

So that's the presets of the bodies. Now onto the heads!

Chiselled: The chiselled head shape is only offered for Male and Huge bodytypes, but regardless, it's the default shape of their head. All sliders are at the center, and in general, the face has a nice, broad, but not overly so, look to it. Great for some golden-age paragons.

Average 1: Default for females, but nonetheless available for all different bodies. Slimmer than a chiselled face, and not nearly as well defined, this serves well for any sort of character that might not be as... Say, confident or potent in his or her strength.

Average 2: With a broad nose and chin, this face is... A little ugly, but most likely intended to be that way. Female Average 2 is a bit different, being a sorta squished looking face. Again, sorta ugly. The face can work well for thugs.

Average 3: A round face for the males; this face actually works alright for oriental people, though it's not ideal for dashing looking ones. The female average 3 is actually somewhat comparable to the male description of Average 2: Broad nosed and broad chinned. In truth, it doesn't actually look half bad.

Average 4: Taking their vengeance over the males for their lack of a Chiselled face, Females get a fourth average preset face. This face is the female equivalent to Average 3, having a rounded shape and thin jaw.

Youthful: As you might expect, this face is for little kid characters; Big forehead, small jaw, high set eyebrows... That's the gist of it. Good for any hero under the age of... 12 in my opinion.

Strong: As an alternative to the males' chiselled face, Strong offers a face with a wide jaw, protrding cheekbones, and overall a very strong structure. This face shape can basically be applied to the same things Chiselled can, meaning Golden-age paragon heroes.

Brute: This head shape is exempt from the females' head shape preset menu. Basically, take the strong face, and hit it in the head with a big log several times. Viola; the brute face. Basically, the cranium of the brute head is rediculously small, suggesting a hero whose intellegence is... Somewhere in the <80 IQ range. Works well for... Uh, brutes, I guess.

Intellecutal: A big cranium head, possibly honing an equally big brain. Intellecutal looks somewhat like the Youthful face, but lacks the sort of innocent feel the Youthful face has, due to lower set eyebrows, and a mischeviously long nose. Works well for smart, unathletic trickster characters who use their wits over their body.

Thin: The thin head is basically a very slim head. Everything about it is very slim; nose, jaw, shape, cranium... It's also quite tall. In my opinion, it looks a little weird at default, but it can be modified into something good, as can all the other head shapes.

Square: A weird, square shaped head. Maybe not as dim-witted looking as the brute head, but still quite dumb. Serves as a good substitute for the brute head, which was lost on the female body type.

So, that's the head shape presets. In fact, that's all the presets offered by this game. Not satisfied with them, are you? No problem. Next up, we're gonna take these presets, and turn them into what we really want them to be!

Sliders: Body.

Now that we know what's up with the bodies, we can delve into the sliders and see what they do. For most of the part, it should be obvious; it's just a matter of what can be done with each:

Height: The only slider that can't really be moved later on in the game within an Icon store; Height is the base height of your character, and is the leading factor of a characters... Well, height. An average citizen of Paragon City measures in at exactly 6 feet, with heights usually circulating around that centerpoint. The default height of a hero is about 6'6 on males and huge, and 5'8 on females. The maximum height of any hero is 8'1, and the minimum being 3'10. Females are, sad to say, almost always shorter than males in most circuimstances. Neeedless to say, choose your height with caution; you don't want to be stuck as a midget, or a giant.

Physique: This slider affects the body mass of your character in general. A higher physique will put more meat on your character, while a lower physique will take away that mass. This is the tertiary decider of your characters' height; any physique under the halfway point of the slider will make the hero shorter.

Shoulders: Determines the distance between the two shoulders. A wider set of shoulders makes the chest look broader, but doesn't make it stick out.

Chest: On males, this makes the size of the upper torso either increase or decrease, without affecting surrounding parts. On females, it changes the size of the... Erm.. Assets, we'll say. For most of the part, on females, it's better to have a chest setting of under the halfway point.

Waist: Determines the thickness of the waist, making your character either fatter or thinner. In most cases, a thicker waist helps make a more real looking body.

Hips: This determines how far apart the legs are, or the size of the hips. Either way, it definitely does both.

Legs: This makes the legs shorter and longer. Because of this, this is the secondary determining factor of a characters height. Obviously, longer legs will play in favor of your characters height. It should also be noted, that as a characters' legs get shorter, their arms, comparitively, get longer. This can be used to your advantage, so if you want to make a hero with really long arms, then throw down the leg slider and throw up the height to compensate.

So that's the body sliders. Finally, I'll leave you with a cool trick I figured out while messing around with bodies:

The inbetween trick: To do this, choose one preset you want your character to have, and then modify it appropriately. When you're done, click on another body preset to morph the body into the new preset, but BEFORE THE MORPH IS DONE, Click the next button. The result should be a perfect halfway point between two different preset builds. Be wary though, going back to the build determining screen will finish the morphing process, turning the body into the previously specified build.

Sliders:Face

Now onto the sliders of the face. There are 7 rows of face settings, each representing an aspect of the face, and there are 3 columns, each representing a dimension, being X, Y, and Z respectively. X Makes things wider, Y makes things taller, and Z makes things longer.

Now, onto the rows:

Head: The basic size of the head. Use it to basically reproportionize the head to the body.

Brow: The eyebrow ridge of the head. The Y setting of this row can adjust how large the eyes look; You can achieve a very wide-eyed look to a face by making the Y value of the brow really high, and inversely make the character have a squinty look if the brow is really low in Y.

Cheek: This row affects not the cheeks themselves, but the cheekbones. The Z setting of this row looks like it does almost nothing, besides nudging the cheekbones slightly foward and back. The effects of this slider are best seen when looking at the face from an angle.

Chin: Determines the size of the chin. A chin with a bigger X can make the mouth of a character look big and wide.

Cranium: Determines the size of the upper half of the head. This can make your character have either a small or large forehead, but can also make your character look like their head was shrunken.

Jaw: Determines the size of the jaw. The Z setting for this row, at least for males, seems to do absolutley nothing. The effect is visible on females, though.

Nose: Determines the size of the nose. Modifying the Y setting can change the look of the mouth, making it seem taller or shorter. As a central part of the face, the nose shape can really shape how the face around it looks.

That's it for the faces sliders. I'm afraid doing the whole midway thing with the face is not quite as easy as it is with the body, due to the next screen after the face modification screen is where you enter your name, and thus can't get a really good look at your characters' head shape.

Next up: I have no damn idea!
---

Yeah. I might elaborate on this document at a later time, but for now, this is the second document!

Well, I'm not a huge comic buff, so I don't really take notice of random facts like this, but still, that's a very good find Aero!

Holy... You did an AWESOME coloring job. Skin looks like skin, and hair looks like hair, which is a really hard thing to accomplish in computer art.

My only qualm would be his right cheek, which is really weirdly shaped, but other than that, this is a really good picture!

But yeah. The picture is fine.

Damn... Is all you need to do to get some art is ask, or is this guy just lucky?

Another fine piece, though it looks slightly funky in some areas. The fingers look really short, though after a while I assumed that was because his fists were clenched. The face also, but in the end, the picture just works well.

Lucky you. Lucky. You.

Anyway, that's an extremely nice picture, Wombat. Love the fire on that cape!

WoooOOOoooOOah.. Nice picture, even without color!

Last night, I began to think... There was no real sort of ideology for designing costumes of a hero. No kind of guidelines that really make a costume in COH good or anything.

Not that I'm going to change that dramatically, but then last night, I wrote up the first part of a set of documents I can only call the Costume Documents. In no way do you have to agree with me on these points. If set rules and deep observations into simple things aren't your piece of pie, then you can just stop reading this thread now.

But anyway, onto the actual document:

---

Color: It seems today, there's been a bit of trouble with people choosing colors for their heroes. People just slap on bright, clashing colors and put it out there, and then there they have it; a golden-age hero.

That's definitely not the case. While I'd definitely say that Superman's colors don't really blend well, they definitely don't clash incredibly badly. It's actually more in color variety in a sort of sense, and just simply where each individual color stands. Superman is a hero who has a three color outfit: A background color of blue, which is his tights, a secondary color of red, which includes his boots, briefs (heheheheheeee), part of his emblem, and his cape. The highlight color of his outfit is yellow, which is also on his emblem, and is also the color of his belt. Now, let's examine each of these colors in depth...

The blue: The blue is a nice, calm, and overall not piercing color at all. Blue is blue, everyones favorite color. In fact, the blue on Superman's tights isn't even all that bright!

Red: His red stands out as a medium color, but generally isn't that wild. It's just a good red.

Yellow: Now, the yellow, while sparse on his outfit, stands out as nearly a neon color. It's like MS Paint yellow. However, it's used in such a little quantity that it's not that distracting to the eye.

Notice something? As colors go from primary to secondary and tertiary, they get brighter. Smaller quantities of a certain color call for brighter, more colorful ones. Just to make sure my philosophy was right, I went and examined a few other heroes...

Captain Marvel:
Primary: Red. Kind of deep red, by the way, and is largely dominant on his outfit.
Secondary: Gold. His boots, armbands, and emblem are all gold. They stand out from the red as a brighter color.
Tertiary: White. His cape is white, though lined with a bit of gold. Lighter than all the other colors, and is the only monochrome color of the three.

Kamen Rider:
Primary: Black. His jumpsuit is black, and is the background to all his lighter colors.
Secondary: Green. His breastplate and helmet are green, mostly. The green is quite faded in comparison to some of the other colors.
Tertiary: Silver. Silver stripes run across the jumpsuit, and are also on the helmet and belt. A bright, shiny color that stands atop the other previous ones.
Fourth (I dunno what it's called.): Red. The eyes of the helmet, the scarf, boots, gloves, and belt have red, which is bright and stands out in relative brightness.

Spiderman:
Primary: Blue. Once again, the background color of this outfit is dark blue, much like Superman.
Secondary: Red. Red stands atop the blue on parts of his outfit.
Tertiary: Might not really count, but his eyes are white.

So, yeah. A pattern can clearly be seen among all sorts of different heroes. Of course, it's not entirely a written rule or a proven fact that this helps how heroes look or the like. Heck, my heroes' outfits don't even follow the philosophy!

Number of colors: Generally, it's a horrible idea to have more than four colors on your character. You can make it happen if your character happens to be wearing... I don't know, leather, metal armor, and cloth all at the same time, but at the moment, it's impossible to make a character that wears that sort of stuff. At the same time, a hero almost never has only two colors. If they do, there almost always is a third color that just should naturally sneak in. For example, the first incarnation of Green Regis' outfit was simply a gray and green robot outfit, complete with a helmet. The helmet had a visor on it, which was colored yellow, making him have the signature three colors. The magic number of outfit colors seems to be between two and four. Almost always no less, and no more.

Color synopsis: Alright. We've gone over color theory, but now, we need to take a good look at the colors that are offered to us in game. There are 10 columns of colors, and 16 rows. The rows each representing a different color, and the columns each a different level of brightness and contrast. We'll just quickly sweep across each of these different colors:

Row 1: Monochrome. Black and white, and everything inbetween. A valuable resource for any heroes outfit. Black can serve as a fine primary, background color, as can white in some cases. Lighter shades of gray serve as great colors for silver and other polished metals.
Row 2: Reds. Red, honestly, has a very good range of color, and is also a great choice for any sort of purpose. To clarify, columns 8 and 9 of red are pink in my book, and they're honestly much better than the ugly pink colors towards the lower rows.
Row 3: Orange. I always have seen orange as sort of an odd color, but it can work well. Especially for materials; column 10 is the PERFECT color for natural leather, and columns 1-4 also suffice well for any sort of brown you'll need, wether it be wood or stones.
Row 4: Gold. Yes, gold. This row of color is awesome. Seriously; almost all my heroes use one of the colors in this row. It's just that good. Well, at least in my opinion. It's bright enough, but not too bright. Use it for anything you plan on painting gold, wether it be valuable amulets or enchanted bracers.
Row 5: Yellow. Oh god... If you use this color for anything that's intended to be gold, I just have to shoot you in the head, right now. This is a HORRIBLE color for anything that you plan to make gold. I mean, it's fine for a plastic yellow item, maybe like a retro utility belt or something of the like, but for actual gold? No, just no. This is a neon color, and as such, serves as a worthy minor color.
Row 6: Grass Green. I don't see why people say this row looks like barf-color. It's a fairly handsome shade of green, being well and grass colored. It has a nice, natural look to it, though I can understand slightly why people might not like it. Still, I really don't think it's close enough to yellow to be considered something like pea-green.
Row 7: Plain plain green. This row has pure green in it. As a neon color, it's a worthy, but overall sort of iffy choice for a minor color. I almost never use this row.
Row 8: Teal. Teal's just a weird color. It stands out well, but it's just so freaking weird. Can work for a minor color.
Row 9: Cyan. Another neon color. Unlike teal, which is just weird, Cyan is a piercing color, and is very unnatural and not too good for antyhing that might be seen in everyday life. Again, this makes for a fine minor color.
Row 10: Ocean something blue. This is a serene shade of blue. One of my favorites. In fact, all the shades of blue offered here and in the following rows are very nice.
Row 11: Toned blue. Another really handsome shade of blue. Looks good both dark and bright.
Row 12: Pure blue. Pure blue is also good to the eyes, at least at darker shades. The brighter shades of this row are quite piercing to the eye, and as such, serve better as one of the secondary colors.
Row 13: Lavender, I think. This purple is prolly the least... Pink of the purples. It's mystical, it's unusual, and it looks okay in most circuimstances.
Row 14: Violet... Maybe... I'm not really all that sure. Here's where the bad pinks begin to emerge. The brighter columns of this set really are eye-catching, best saved for smaller parts.
Row 15: Fuschia.. Fushicia... Fuschicicihihia thing. More ridiculous pinks. I really don't have much tips for this color because I just don't use it that much.
Row 16: Weird. I give up on formal names. Anyway, we're coming right back to red! In truth, this one is not as piercing as the other two pinks above.

The different colors of the palate.

So, that's all the rows of color offered in COH. Look at them, use them well.


---

Next up: Body proportioning!