Geek_Boy

I really do wonder sometimes if the only people who have ideas on how to "fix" MA have also suffered serious head trauma. The vast majority of their ideas are straight up terrible.

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I think I know why. I mean it was done well and the creator made sure there were little mistakes. But mistakes there were.

Also the game is Teen rated but the Arc doesn't really follow "City of Heroes" Lore persee. It alludes to some adult subjects (( the one character is outright bisexual and another is a plant who is probably illegal just by himself.)) Also it breaks the fourth wall. ((Dark Shadow. ))

The arc is fun but I don't think it would really "fit in" as a regular arc if it were in the CoH universe so I don't really think it should be Hall of Fame.

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Then don't vote it a 5. God knows not everyone who has played it has. Every time I play it, I will give it a 5 because I absolutely love it.

I'm obviously not alone in this and you're obviously in the minority. Lots and lots of other people enjoy it, which has nothing to do with your delicate sensibilities.

Gonna go with TrickyTacky here. It's the only image that really stuck with me after walking away and coming back to this thread a few hours later.

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Typography is the Debbil!!!

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You aint kidding. My wife's typography teacher at CCAD had never seen Star Wars and didn't know what a Rubick's Cube was. He was a piece of work.

Beautiful, perfect lettering of course. But I can do the same thing in about 3 minutes with a $30 printer that he'd spend hours pouring over.

The people most in need of taking typography are web designers, honestly. Sooooooo many sites out there with fonts that should never be on the same page as each other. SOME FONTS DON'T MIX DON'T YOU KNOW THE RULES OH GOD MY EYES!

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Well part of the problem with any course is that every instructor believes their class is the most important / the only thing that their students either are or should be concentrating on. It's like that for ANY course, maths, sciences, literature, whatever.

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Well, except for the typography teacher I had who told us on the first day that this was all worthless other than honing technical drawing skills since it could all be done with a computer MUCH easier. And this was in 1996. Hate to think what he's telling kids now.

When I was in art school, it seemed their goal was to convince us we were all terrible and that we all had to start completely from scratch. So the idea of an art teacher who is supportive in something other than the medium they're teaching is kind of odd to me anyway. The closest I got was the oil painting class where the guy just wanted us all to find our own voice with the medium at hand.

Awesome guy, but he made me a bit paranoid about working with oils since he never smoked a day in his life and died of lung cancer before the age of 45. Kinda neither here nor there, so sorry for derailing.

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it does bother me though that art teachers will not take it to account a student's medium and see for themselves what the final creation is. yes tradition must be maintained, allowed to fruition, but ignoring the digital medium because THEY have no concern or concept... that is aggravating.

You're supposed to be teachers, open minded. Students are looking for answers not door closings.

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The problem is that they hear this in a oil painting class or something specific like that. They really don't care that you can recreate the effect of oils in photoshop (which I don't buy since it's a tactile medium, but that's just my enjoyment of practically sculpting with the paint when I have the rare chance to play with them) because the assignment is to paint using x medium.

If I'm taking a watercolor course, they're also not going to care that I'm great with pastels. This is a watercolor course. Use the medium assigned.

I see a lot of people using photoshop as a crutch where they try to hide the things that are wrong with their work, which for me just makes them more obvious. Now imagine that you've been teaching for 30 years, looking for those same mistakes. Now you've got a student who won't listen to you when you point out said mistake because he can apply a filter that "fixes" it.

I don't agree with them being closed-minded, but I get where they're coming from.

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Back to the discussion of comic art once again, does anyone else find it interesting that Asian comic books aren't colored? I see how it cuts down both cost and time, but I wonder if there are other reasons? Maybe it is seen as sort of a continued tradition of eastern watercolor/ink paintings? Also the subject matter can be anything really, and usually NOT about superheroes in tights.

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That's almost entirely a cost thing and remember that a lot of stuff that might be colored when it's published elsewhere can end up being black and white when it's published here to save on the new company's time/investment. My Dad has worked in the printing industry for about 40 years now, and the cost between color and black and white is immense.

FD, you've read a lot of things I haven't said out of things I've said. You seem to have cooled down, so I'm just going to drop it. Plenty of others have pointed out where you were wrong and you've backed down a bit so we'll just leave it at that. The "undergrad rage" thing is hilarious, though.

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Actually, the OP asked a question about how people felt about inking and I was voicing my opinion.

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You also went out of your way to make some pretty erroneous comments about what comics are and are not. I'm not the only one to correct you.

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A lot of this discussion hinges on semantics and personal opinions.

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Uh, yes and no. As your definition doesn't match that of anyone else here or any of us that have pulled some art history into it, I'd say your status as an extreme minority (opinion-wise) becomes easier and easier to categorize you as being incorrect.

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So if you think I'm ignorant for viewing comic book art is a subset of illustration, when it is clearly this mutant golden child that stands apart from other things, that's cool.

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Oh, good grief. I proved you wrong about something. Comics are putting one image after another to tell a story or create an action/express a thought. It isn't limited to a rendering style or even a medium.

Line drawings of fantastical settings date back to cavemen. CAVEMEN. Are you saying cavemen were the first comic artists?

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I view your assertion that, what 80%(?) of comics are bad because STORYTELLING IS HARD as pretty laugh out loud stupid.

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That isn't what I said and you're being obtuse.

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That's friggin hilarious! If nothing else, this thread has provided a new type of internet tough guy: The "dont go there because I was a few classes short of an art history minor but i'm thinking of going back to do it" variety. If you go pick up some film classes too, you need it.

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That's friggin hilarious! If nothing else, this thread has provided a new type of internet tough guy: The "don't go there because I was will accuse you of being an internet tough guy in an attempt to hide my aggressive and bad posting" variety. If you go pick up some conversational skills too, you need it.

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I use cold-press watercolor paper. It is not cheap, but you get excellent and sturdy results; I am painting on top of the inks, and so I need a paper that is going to stand up to that. If you're not painting, it may not be for you. But I like it.

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That's pretty much what I go back and forth with. Get my best results from something similar.

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As for Sharpies.... truly, one would be justified in saying "LOLSharpies." The problem when using these things for inking is that you are not going to get the extreme clarity of detail that you would get with a traditional ink pen [or those mournfully expensive and quick-to-dry-up Rapidographs], because of the felt tip. The ink is about half as black as India ink, they are just substandard all 'round.

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I swear to God the quality used to be better because there were Sharpies everywhere when I was at CCAD, which is where I picked up the habit. Screw those cheap things now, though.

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I had an interesting experience in PI last night on broadcast. The four players in-zone (myself included) had a conversation containing complete sentences, some observations, and several LOLs. Not once was "LF anchors" or "PL meh pls" heard.

Please understand, I am not promoting this as the "way things should be", but passing it along as an anecdotal contrast to the "way things have been." "LFT" and "anchor" spam in broadcast doesn't really bother me, I tune it right out.

Casual PUGs outside of the AE, the mainstay of my multiplayer exposure in COH, have vanished into the aether; although I did receive one invite to an ITF last night (unfortunately just prior to bedtime!). Outside of that, the last month or two has been soloing in the vast regions of silence which lay beyond the walls of Atlas Park.

AE would have worked at lot better if it at minimum required travel beyond a single AE location to pick up each mission of a story arc in sequence.

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I completely disagree with you and think everything you're describing sounds like heaven. I play with a big group of people (when I have time to play) and haven't had the misfortune of playing with a stranger in a long, long time. Not everyone has that built-in team raring to go, but PUGs embody everything I dislike about MMO's and I just say no to them in the first place.

MA 4 lyfe!

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I am currently weaning myself off of my beloved Rapidograph pens [no longer avaliable in my area + extremely expensive]....

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You aint kidding on either count. I used to love those things but mine have long since run out of ink or dried out without being replaced. I ordered some "wonderful" brush pen only made in Japan that was supposed to be the cat's meow, but I hated it. Wish I could remember what it was called.

More and more I'm just giving up on any kind of device that I don't have to dip in ink to use. The lines just aren't as crisp and it always looks terrible when it's scanned. Used to love my Sharpies too, but I just can't use them anymore. The results just aren't up to the standard I want to set for myself.

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. . . I cant afford to drop $500 on Photoshop just now.

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That would put you in the probably 1% of Photoshop users who paid for it.

I also want to give a shout out to good paper, because I really struggle with finding the right tooth for proper pencilling and inking. I like a fairly soft tooth for a pencil drawing surface, which is always disastrous when it's time to ink. I'm working on forcing myself to get used to some softer leads, but a lifetime of using nothing darker than a 2B (unless I'm doing a full-on rendering with shading and all) ever is hard to leave behind.

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Ignoring the cheap shots to well established and respected ex-employees...

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Since there are some folks who disliked the guy enough to get banned talking about him, I'd say that's debatable.

Reliving all the drama Hami Raids caused via old PM's is good times, though.

You're not participating in a discussion so much as telling us how much cooler you are than we are. Us comics fans and aspirants should really go into oil painting/watercolor/whatever you've got a thing for if we want to be real artistes amirite?

I notice that when I've dipped into art history (and I'm not the only one to do it) you haven't responded to those portions of the posts.

The fact that storytelling is hard and is completely different than film is not an indication of lowering standards within the industry (heck, thing's are getting better all the time really), it's an indication that it is hard.

A film editor deals with one shot at a time. Sure, there's an element of composition during the actual shooting of the scene, but that isn't the editor's focus. They're taking beats and assembling them into a story.

An artist doing a comic is doing the directing, the acting, the cinematograhy, the lighting, the sound editing, and number of other functions. That page has to contain images that move the story forward while also being sure they are visually pleasing, and in the case of the best of them, fits an overall design for the page that makes it eye-catching as a whole as well as in it's parts.

How many panels should there be? Should there be any panels at all? What shape should those panels take? How much of the story do I tell on this page? Do I make it a two-page spread? Am I adding too much or too little background, messing with the flow of the story?

You're simply wrong about a great many things here. Making good comics and making pretty pictures are two different things.

Comics are rendered in pencil, then inked, then colored (usually by 3 different people) because it's the fastest way for these specialists to churn the stuff out. The fact that you go from Golden Age rush to modern polish is a statement to artists taking their medium more seriously. Look at Will Eisner's work in the 40's when the only (and I mean only) concern was getting things out as quickly as possible at a minimum level of quality compared to the work he did before he died where he was doing ink-washes and constantly experimenting with layouts and style.

I bring him up because there's certainly a place for work that isn't essentially a slick black and white image with computer colors slapped over it, but we're not discussing painted comics or 3D rendered comics or photo-comics. We're talking about the traditional way most people make them.

Crapping on the idea of black and white images showing fantastical scenes is to insult art going back all the way to when we were slapping berry pulp on cave walls. Don't go there.

PS: I was only a few classes from being eligible for an art history minor and have thought about going back to school with that as my focus, so you really don't want to go there.

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Is this good professional comic book art?

http://www.alexrossart.com/wallpapers/jla1_800.jpg

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Notice that I didn't list Ross as a great storyteller. Also, this is a cover. It is an illustration.

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I like to do comic art art though, ie art with some sort of superhero or fantasy theme you might find in a comic book.

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I'm thinking our definitions don't jive . . .

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Comic book art is a subset of the illustration field.

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aaaand there we have it.

Illustration denotes a single image telling a story. Using multiple images to tell a story is in no way a "sub-set" of anything. Comics (with a capital "C") are two or more images placed sequentially to tell a story or portray an action. It has nothing to do with style or even rendering medium (two photographs next to each other can make a comic, for instance).

You can illustrate something in a comic book style I guess, but that's not really what anyone else here seems to be talking (at least not to me).

You are comparing apples and oranges. We're assuming digital inking within the confines of creating a comic book. You're using an overly broad definition of a loosely defined style. Under your definition all of Frank Frazetta's work could be deemed "comic book" when it's really just illustration with a fantasy theme. Your definition would even lump in some of Mucha's work if you're not careful.

AE records are pubic, so people can watch you make your way through the virtual environment in question. BAM! You gain influence. "Problem" solved.

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Composition for sequential art is much much more difficult than composition for a single image.

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In some ways composition for sequential art is easier, because you'r dealing with a lot of reaction shots, establishing shots, etc.

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While some of your other views are interesting, this is demonstrably false. If you want proof, pick up probably 70% or so of the comics on the market right now (probably 90+% during the peak of the 1990's X-TREME movement). Sure, the individual drawings aren't always that difficult, but putting those into a readable story is fricking hard and even the majority of the folks out there professionally doing comics still aren't all that good at it.

For me, the story comes before any artistic considerations. So while I think it's fair to say that Adam Hughes is a fantastic draftsman, he isn't a spectacular comic book artist. Kirby, Ditko, Crumb, Spiegelman, Eisner, Miller? These are amazing comic book artists (meaning storytellers in the sequential art medium). Hughes can out-render all of them, but that doesn't make him a better comic book artist.

When I digitally ink something it's because it's convenient and I plan on sharing it online. I still love getting out the brushes and the dip-pens, but I can't exactly do that all the time. I need to spend time getting better at both and I think both have their strengths (digital inking's ability to just hit "undo" being it's biggest one).

In many ways digital coloring is one of the worst things to happen to comic book art. Most of the time it looks best over terrible drawings that have no real detail of their own, allowing the colorist to go nuts. You take something like a Neal Adams page and throw all those lens flares and all that nonsense in there and it's just a mess even though the drawing underneath is fantastic. So few colorists seem to have learned the term "subtle," especially among fans out there doing less than professional work.

I have a whole exchange with Lighthouse about how terrible he was at his job and all the reasons why. Then he stopped replying or even reading my PM's. Wonder why?

I might have to archive those locally because they still make me chuckle.

You're thinking too hard.

MA is fun and I really don't care how it "fits in."

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I don't think I'll ever, ever play one unless I personally know the author. Ever.

Most of the stories are paper-thin to begin with, so when they stretch them out over 15 missions? No thanks.

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did you read anything except the op? I'm not talking about 15-mission epics.

Eco

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I breezed through it, but you're not going to change my mind by saying "multi-arc stories under these circumstances."

Heck, I barely play arcs by people I don't know as it is (though this is partially because it's nice outside and I have too much to do outside of playing video games at the moment).

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so we don't get noob 50 players who dont know what the heck they are doing

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In my experience, at least 3/4 of the players in this game fit this mold (my wife included). They played that character honestly all the way to 50, but they still have no idea which way is up half the time. They depend on team leaders to guide them and such (or in her case, me sitting next to her reminding her how to get to PI again).

They're called "casual players." Their lives don't revolve around MMO's and they do this for fun. They don't memorize Orenbaga maps and they don't have your plan for blitzing the Positron TF in 30 minutes tattooed on their forearms, either.

They exist in every game. They always have. They always will. Pretending the MA suddenly created bad players who happen to have a 50 is ludicrous. As if getting a 50 takes anything other than just logging in a lot anyway.

I don't think I'll ever, ever play one unless I personally know the author. Ever.

Most of the stories are paper-thin to begin with, so when they stretch them out over 15 missions? No thanks.

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Whenver I've posted this idea it never gets any notice.

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That's because it's a terrible idea.

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Geek - "Blight" is my arc. You're thinking "Uncreation"

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DOH!

This is what I get for posting at work. Too bad it's currently unplayable.

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Uncreation or Blight? Blight is perfectly playable, it's my arc "Closer to the Heart" that's broken at the moment.

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Uncreation. What sucks is that Muu can't fix it because he can only edit his arcs when Footsteps Initiative is in the Hall of Fame. As far as I know it hasn't popped back into that status in weeks.

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Geek - "Blight" is my arc. You're thinking "Uncreation"

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DOH!

This is what I get for posting at work. Too bad it's currently unplayable.