John_Printemps

With the collective merger of the greatest minds to see the "City of" Universe at the full disposal to the entire playerbase, I figured it was time to get a real Roll Call going so we're all nice and familiar with any potentialities out there. I know that US Side has its list of "unique terms", and I became curious what we may be gaining out of being combined with the EU side as well.

Everyone will, of course, be responsible for defining their own origin terms, as such off the top of my head like Wernerscore, Arcanatime, The Bill Z School of Fighting. But what else is everyone known for? Granted some EU'ers (despite inability to post) have lurked US Side, and I'm sure vice versa, but not everyone.

May seem a bit second grade, but I got stuck doing this even at a Job Intro/Training Night with people from 18 to 55, so no one is able to avoid the dreaded "Tell us a little about yourself, we'll go around the room and introduce everyone! ~clap excitedly~"

...I'm more just curious.

(For the Record: Obsessive Build Analyzer, Responsible for the most expensive high end Shield Builds to date, Shield and Spines/DA Guides and random analytical dumps aside the amused random comments of scrapper glory. I am a Believer of Scrapperdom.)

With the Advent of the New Forums upon us and the stream of new features, special clicky buttons and a bunch of junk that no one's figured out yet, I've stumbled across something. This depends entirely on the cooperation of fellow artists and their willingness to be subjected to brute rays (wait...what?) until they become monstrosities like no other to produce thousands of pieces of art for simple fees until the world is suffused with arty-goodness.

Take that as you will, I'm basically referring to these "Social Groups" since apparently we're all supposed to start "networking" and become more "social" with our "peers". Why else would the Devs have dropped this strange and unique creature upon us for no other reason to toss it into the creative imagination of its players and see what crazy social cliques we develop.

So to all your artists out there, commissionable (or otherwise if you choose), I call you out to join Artist Ally with me and bring together our collective talents for the mass market. With the merger of our friends from across the pond the pool of resources has grown (immensely?) and this may be a potential boon for everyone. Thor's Assassin has worked through many sleepless nights to provide a vast array of available artists through DeviantArt, but why not have an array for homebrew CoX too? No garuntees of success, but the idea of having an available source for all the talented players, why not?

So, if you're interested (and I'd hope all of artists both EU and US alike would be up for it), jump into the Social Web and join Artist Ally

Wait.

We can haz Sigs? And BB Code?!

I regrettably never copied the original post, but I did make a copy of the "original build" based on that post. So for anyone who may not have seen it and is curious, this was toggle man (with, of course, IO slotting to make him as efficient as possible). And this is to the book as he was described, each power accountable.

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[ QUOTE ]
Wow, I had a bit of a doozy

I was paired up with John Printemps, and he gave me his character Gebeb.

I apologize John but your bio was a little mysterious, not trying to knock you but I couldn't get a great idea on who your person was. So I'll do my best to rehash my interpretation of it.

Bio: Gebeb was up until recently rotting in the ground. An ancient egyptian mummy that had had it's soul pass on into the afterlife. That however changed not too long ago. His soul and mind was somehow transferred into a robotic body. Not sure how to feel about what had happened, Gebeb has decided to go out into the world and make the best of what happened to him.

Gebeb Before

Now our theme was modern, so somehow I had to create a modern era robot. I got the idea to somehow go after prosthetic limbs and potentially cutting edge bionics. I strived to maintain a modern sense by leaving many of the parts of the robot that didn't need to have coverings as minimalist as possible, very skeletal and exposed. I took four screenshots of them and compiled them into a photobucket album. Let's hope ya like it.

Gebeb After

[/ QUOTE ]

Don't worry, you got it Gebeb was an Egyptian ruler slash ascended god figure back in third dynasty Egypt (3,200ish BC). I was having immense fun with Wikipedia on the day of his conception into CoX But I didn't want it to be so straight forward, that's why his bio is as strange and vague (yet just detailed enough) as it is, and you caught it! I should post the original but it'd have to wait until I log in again to copy it off of him.

Drum rolls play over the loud speakers as a light peppy melody any two year could enjoy and any fifty year old could be annoyed by over comes it. Lights flash across the standard hollywood stage and the crowd in risers behind the camera applaud. A man hops from a back door into the streaming hues meant to dazzle the viewers while raising his hands.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! Last week we saw an unprecedented event as Luara Crawford took home ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!"

The crowd cheered as a sign above head flashed [Go Nuts].

The host smiled a thousand dollar grin of white as he turned to his contestant, "And back again, risking it all, she's come to double or nothing against two new opponents looking for their chance at big influence in the city of her---"

And explosion rips through the back wall of the sound stage and sends the three contestants flying through the air. The host falls to his face as a toxin pours through the hole and begins overwhelming the audience. A second explosion tears down more of the ceiling and the studio begins collapsing. Outside swarms of council hover bots stream through hallways looking for their target. In the near distance the sounds of council boots storm the building...

Arthur Jefferson rolled in his bed and slipped his feet off the side as he sat up. It'd been a year since the incident happened that changed his life forever, and took innocent people that would never come back. He'd moved to a mirror, running a hand through the blue locks that now sprouted and the dark skin that covered his body. Buried deep within him existed an ongoing rage that was fueling new powers he'd been given that day.

Pink sparks lit across his eyes pouring unrelenting energy when the last piece of his uniform came into place; a hat snugly fit to his head and a jester's mask to hide his identity. Cracking a knuckle he was ready for the next wave against the Council. General Knowledge was coming to bring a new lesson to the streets.

ZOMG!

This is what G.K. sent me originally:

Bio: Arthur Jefferson was an ordinary game show host until the day the council set off a biolgical bomb in his studio killing almost everyone except him and several superheroes present. Arthur's life however was changed. His family was dead and he had been mutated. His skin was turned burgundy, his hair blue, and his ears pointed. He somehow still kept some humor though vowed to stop people from suffering as he did. He then set forth on a superhero quest as General Knowledge.

Original

Well if Foo is going to get in on this art business I can't help but even the odds and join too!

Well, that and I didn't want to steal the thunder from the only leading artist in the running but Foo did that so woo!

...and...and...too late to jump in?

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Glad someone linked that because I was about to say "uh...did you even look?"

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Nice guide. Uhm... yes, I actually did look. I actually looked right here in the official Scrapper Guides and FAQs thread. With Ex and Lighthouse both gone though I'm guessing that it's no longer being maintained as your guide isn't in that list.

Thanks for linking John_Printemps's guide here BrokenPrey. I'll be writing the Fire/Shield guide, and I'll probably advise the reader to look at your guide too John_Printemp.

[/ QUOTE ]

The front page of that hasn't been updated since Oct 2008, but if you go to the end/last page there's an updated list by someone who skims the posts as they come up and quote-fixes them in every so often. Suppose that's not very clear for that section, although I think in the guides-guides section somewhere it may be updated correctly. Searching for "Shield Guide" should've brought it up to, either way,

My Main? Main...Main... ~websters~

Oh! Well that would be...

Main? ~websters, altoholicism seems to be side tracking thought patterns~

...But seriously? I am, well, John, me, the name, character, would technically be the first character I made many moons ago although I realistically don't consider him that. John would be a notwolverineClaws/Regen Scrapper. Although I consider my "Main" to be a Fire/FF/Fire Troller, John stays as who I am.

...8 Man teams, 6 Man Failures...

You're all making this sound so...so...difficult.

Hoping Thursday or Friday night to Duo this (DM/SD Scrapper and a Fire/Therm Troller) just because there's five AV's in the end of the whole thing and me and a friend have been enjoying my insatiable ability to login to any random combination of level 50 and we go tear through AV's.

Difficult We'll see.

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[ QUOTE ]
Then I realized that there aren't guides for Shield Defense at all.

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Shield Defense Guide

Go and write a guide if you want. There are not a lot of guides for Scrapper right now, so the more the better.

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Glad someone linked that because I was about to say "uh...did you even look?"

While it doesn't go into specifics for Fire Melee, there's actually a couple builds in there for Mids using that Primary to show examples. Just to say.

Might I throw this out for the chopping block as this format is something that is done on Deviant Art quite a bit (well, enough that I know about it without being a DA...er..."one who sells their soul for the extensive rights to hound, surf, and overtly enjoy in excess" type of person).

Take all entrants that are willing to participate and divide them randomly against each other so everyone is paired equally (unfortunately has to be an even number of contestants). Each contestant in the first round creates a battle between their character and their opponents character, the outcome of that artists battle entirely up to them. If they feel they would be able to defeat/win in the fight, that is how they draw it out. They must take into account the other character's abilities against their own and be fair in how the fight would play out however. Then, after a given period of time to develop their pieces, each artist would post their "fight" against their opponent and then a panel of judges (or an open vote) would determine which of the two fights feels best represented between Art, Story Telling, and Fairness to the Characters. The contestant who wins between each pairing moves (with their character) on to the next round until there is only one final winner.

Snow,

Awesome design/concept going on there, but there's a few things that stick out, somewhat in a fine-tuning sense and you did say you were still working on parts (just unsure which parts, so I'll point these out anyway). While the gilded/gold work is good, they all have a rough edge to them that is distracting and gives them an impression of being stamped out of paper. Smoothing out those hard edges will give them a more ingrained feeling that would make them appear pressed and raised from the wooden surface and remove the "fake" feeling. Also with the wood work, the main plank for the site looks good, but the checkerboard background pulls away from the central focus. I'd suggest either lowering the intensity of the background by fading it, replacing it with a flat light tan, or sticking to a solid horizontal light wood grain to oppose the vertical grain of the dark wood to help the eye float down the page without being pulled away of confused.

The title bar/plate at the top of the page, the areas on the edge that you can see through to the wood below you can also see your link bars beneath it while they drop out. You might consider hiding that beneath the wood work or using flash to cut so the animation flows out from beneath the "Halcyon Graphics" plate and not post from behind hit so that its not visible while it drops down. In general though that part is pretty smooth, and, just because it'd be pretty cool with the steam punk feel you have, if when the links drop down a puff of steam were to animate from somewhere would be a nice touch further on down the road (just as an aside idea )

The left and right arrows on the side (I assume for some form of navigation?) their bars feel disjointed when they meet the edges of the frame. They don't feel connected to anything, or that they should be bolted at the edges maybe. Also, at the bottom of the page where the gears are-the color of the gears blends to fluidly with the gold work and makes it hard to discern where one begins and the other ends. Darkening the gears a bit and or "dirtying" them up a bit would help both add to the realism of the system, give it some depth, and help seperate the pieces better.

As for the white a few people have mentioned. It is a bit over bearing and toning it down to an ivory or off-white might help a bit, or a light cream to keep the theme and still give you a flat clean backing for your text/content.

Something else I wanted to say was that you have a pretty sleek logo with the geared 'HG' and that you should give it some more use, but then again I couldn't say how or where because it's already in some pretty good places, just that with the "Halcyon" plate it almost doesn't seem that the logo is important in comparison.

Who said you had to sacrifice Anything? In fact...let me do the hard part:

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See, nice and easy. Specially since I did that difficult process back when I wrote this.

Since it hasn't been brought up and we (using the term loosely in all cases following since "we" doesn't necessarily define everyone here) all know why this discussion is being brought up yet everyone is kind of pigeon toeing around the topic as a whole.

Rules are Rules, granted the FArt Championship here is intended for wholesome fun and creativity, that shouldn't create a partisan example that "well, since you're my friend I'll let it slide" kind of thing. Some involved may follow things exactly while one or two entrants may skirt under the radar a bit and do something that may not be considered "okay" if we were enforcing rules as rules.

I've seen plenty of times for many different things that "Well, we just see them more as guidelines really..." and that's when someone pushes the boundary and eventually, by the end of it, everyone has "stretched the guidelines" and no one is honestly producing legit stuff compared to in the beginning. It is still a contest regardless of its intentions and should be treated in that same fashion. There should (of course) be a higher level of sportsmanship since we're not vying for a shiny belt/trophy/prize, but that doesn't change that we should have some form of defined, and enforced, regulations.

Going back to what I vaguely brought up from the beginning: Some have--over the course of this most recent event--included aspects into their pieces that have not entirely been their own creations in entirety and this has left an undesirably taste in the mouths of others (and not necessarily in the fellow contestants more than those who choose to vote). While this may not have been clear in the rules, the good faith of others may have left it on the table as a rule that shouldn't need to be defined but was obtusely broken. Should contestants be allowed to A.) Matte Paint, B.) Copy in non-created pieces with no additional manipulation or creative use, C.) Directly copy a pre existing work into a piece that was still created by hand but is definitely under someone elses design and rights (ie: objects like logos). These three things are one of the largest concerns brought up in the last several months and (as I see it) the entirety of why this discussion is being ...well, discussed.

My Opinion: Should we be allowed to matte paint (digital work over a pre existing image either to include a large or small addition to the piece, often example would be a landscape and painting in a village or city scape being destroyed by a large monster, etc)? If the use of a background is limited and or entirely recreated by the artist, I see no complain in this. However, if an entire piece is a screen shot with only a single aspect included or changed, this defeats the purpose of the competition.

Should we be allowed to include pieces into the work that were created by another individual/artist? No, explicitly no. Directly including aspects of another artists work into the piece (ie: copied from another source, spliced, or otherwise, and added into your own) is not only infringing on the original artist and liable, it's just unfair in general. Cited Source or Not.

Should we be allowed to work in pre existing but still fabricated parts to the pieces created? This one is a toss up. Should we be allowed to create a copy of a logo and toss it into a piece? That would be left on a judging stand point. Personally, if its not the main focus or entirety of the piece, than I see no harm. On the other hand, if we're including an entire work as the main body and adding or adjusting small details to make it our own, I see discrepancy in that. Any work performed (if based on someone else's work) should be a homage, not a duplication. Granted one of the themes from this year stretched that a bit, for the most part I believe that treating things as a homage was what occurred in most cases.

All comes down to enforcing and creating Rules. How can there be fair assessment if there are only Guidelines that may be smudged?

Now, I know everyone in the community would (on a whole) like to keep the fair and balanced aspect to this part of the forum. Avoid Flamage and keep the Peace, but that doesn't mean certain things--such as a contest--can't be judged fairly but with the expectancy that the comments that follow may be heavy handed. We may just need to hear it like it is. "I'm sorry, you didn't follow the rules, change it or you will be disqualified".

[ QUOTE ]
Any thoughts on how well a Shield/Fire tank would do? Seems like the AOE damage would be pretty darn good between Combustion, FSC &amp; Shield Charge, while still having some excellent single target damage with Incinerate &amp; Greater Fire Sword.

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Teamed with an SD/Fire while playing a DM/SD Scrapper and he kept pace pretty well, if not ahead of the game in some scenarios since he started IO'ing his build before me and had more available AoE. In a single target field the Scrapper definitely held an advantage, but for the rest of the play it was solid.

Two things:

Digital Art Versus Traditional? Anyone who would advise someone against jumping digital before a traditional background I would wholly have to disagree with them. I picked up roughly ten issues of ImagineFX (just cost wise hard to keep up with it since it ends up a lot more expensive here than it does in Europe with freight and such since its based there), where they feature a lot of artists between the covers and nearly 50% of the artists that show up on a regular basis learned everything digitally and can't hold a grain of paint worth doodling a sun. Not to say that they don't understand or otherwise couldn't, but their abilities lay totally digitally; and for some that is the only way they truly can express themselves since the cost of traditional materials can become excessive.

Digital opens the chance for experimentation, duplication, and eraser of your mistakes to the point where you can back peddle infinitely on a single piece without ruining your goal while still learning how to do it better in the future.

I'm not saying traditional is bad or unwise to learn, but with the abilities digital brings to the table to simulate traditional tools, some will choose 500GB of Drawing space versus 90 pages in a sketch book. Granted there's differences in the freedom of the artist versus being tethered to a machine...but still.

Asian "Comics"?
Some of them I must say, part of it is reproduction/ability to constantly push pages and story out in repetition, others is that some styles just come across better in black and white (not to mention, as it was mentioned, it can be a lot cheaper to get it overseas when the cost to print is lowered). Plus, standard US comics take a month an issue, Asian books that release in things like Shonen Jump print 18 pages a week. Color becomes less and less ...what's the word...reliable? Compared to just sticking with a B&amp;W format.

Personally, I'm a "Priest" fan, a Korean book that stopped shipping to the states :/ But it is one of the few where I believe its black and white style wouldn't be possible in a color form without loosing a lot of the gritty feel that is delivered by the artist.

[ QUOTE ]
Some of the latest posts (special thanks to LJ, John, and Zekiran) answered a lot of questions I had.

[/ QUOTE ]


Glad that's settled

So, who's buying the Pizza?

Okay, so I haven't otherwise really said anything in this thread despite skimming through it as things were ... "discussed". So, LD, given your last few questions I thought I might step in with a different perspective. Although the general consensus about "Digital Inking" is pretty covered, I think it might be worth the effort to point back some in the idea of Comic Art and point to a more historical guide.

Understanding more the principle of were "Comic Art" comes from is something that helped me better understand it when I was attempting to figure it out myself. With a basis of simple sequential pieces that were best conveyed in a medium that could be cleanly reproduced. This is were inking comes into play on a broad spectrum. Inks allowed the artist to keep a clean crisp line that could be taken to print and mass produced without concern for the art. So cover the last few hundred years to were modern comics stand both in newsprint and novel form. Inks still stand as the stage that defines the clean, crisp and precise point of the drawing and, in most cases, stand above the color.

Now, technically what defines Comic Art is (in some fashion) sequential pieces with clean crisp lines, in its truest form. This does not necessarily mean that is all Comic Art can be, just what it most consistently is associated with since it can be easily reproduced and processed by an artist in short periods of time. To cut some time aspects down some artists even split the work between pencils to ink to color to improve the speed (which shows that the pencil stages can take just as long as the ink stages do and the color stages do). Doing this improves the reliability of keeping a schedule and how much work each individual has to perform.

If one was to take the medium used and turn it towards paint, for example, it takes the entirety of responsibility for the work and leaves it all on one person and dramatically increases the time frame required to complete something, especially for 32 pages of sequential art. So to say a painting isn't comic art would be false, it's just a different medium.

As far as color is concerned in modern books and the question about "do they preserve the line work when working over the liens?" It would be the other way around almost. In most scenarios the line work doesn't change past the ink stage and once a colorist is using it they'll (in a digital sense) drop it above the color and lay it over everything else so that they're actually working under the lines, preserving the work done before.

In nearly all cases the inked lines must be capable of standing on their own as a unique piece. Granted some artists use color as an aspect of their pieces and integrate it, but for most classic senses of the idea, color is an after thought to improve the piece, not to complete it or to say it didn't work without them. Moving back a bit, does Inking take pencil work into a masterpiece? Depends on the Pencils. Some set pencils so that the majority of what would become the ink work has already been laid out, and sometimes even already shaded in with lead. Some artists just do flat lines so that a piece must have the inks in order to bring out the lines and complete the piece and deem the inks as a necessary stage. Even fewer are the artists who work with a sketch and use the ink stage as the final drafting process without a complete pencil so again inking becomes a requirement of the "master piece".

With all that in consideration and the revolution of digital art the processes to complete a piece can be altered indefinitely. Penciling stages and Inking stages can and are essentially the same depending on how comfortable you are with your art. It is possible to go straight into an "inked stage" since you can do it all with clean black lines anyway, and erasing is simple and smudge less and clean.

If I understood in one of your posts that the character is already 40, then build up at 38 is fine, especially if you have no expectations for it exemped at any point along the line. Otherwise, if you're still leveling, 28 might be more reasonable so that you have it available for Throw Spines when it comes up, and, in the event you exemp for any reason below 38, you'll have some extra burst to make up for anything you loose 30-38 if you go below that range. I took Build Up at (amusingly) 28 myself years ago for my Spindle back in I8.

I love the whole "Purple Fire Imps" turning into "New APP For Scrapper?"

There is Zero connectivity between those two points.

...on the other hand the idea of a Pink Cloud of Doom */DA Scrapper...yes, I find myself amused by this.

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I'm curious on something, kind of in the same thought process as LJ in a sense. What do you do when an artist doesn't have those processes?

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Really, it's not a big deal. As I mentioned, it's for your benefit as well as mine. The point of asking for the different stages is so I can sign off on things like details and colors, so an artist doesn't have to redo things. If, when I say, "I like to see a copy of the sketch, ink, and flats," you say "I don't really have those stages," we could still work something out. Either we can go from sketch to finish, or you can just offer regular updates when you want to make sure things are okay from one point to another. Whatever it is, we can work something out.


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I suppose, after thinking about it, in the long run, I really don't mind that at any stage along the way I can easily drop a "digital white-out" over an area to fix a concern or add a different detail without really facing too much effort Can even say that to some degree that's the glory of digital. I can add and remove sections of a piece at will, separate it into a new layer for safe keeping or alter a new piece over, whatever the case may be. The Bonus of Ctrl+Shift+C and never merging a file! Might hog my hard drive, but at least the .jpg is comparably small!

I'm curious on something, kind of in the same thought process as LJ in a sense. What do you do when an artist doesn't have those processes? Using the piece I did for Gray Huntress recently as an example, I sent off six mini pose sketches (which is actually in my scraps on DA) since I was being left with some freedom in that respect. Once a pose was selected it goes straight into a "final production" for black and whites; which I suppose you might consider an inked stage, but in a digital sense the sketches I do are merely little thumb nails and don't actually have any true bearing on the pieces I do.

I can assume that an artists general working process can weigh heavily on how they produce each piece and what not, but "sketch" is almost no longer in my process method since it kind of goes straight into a developed piece. Think like an animator almost. An animator draws something so often and is so familiar with it that they can virtually draw a perfect rendition in any pose straight up. Not saying I'm drawing perfect renditions with an exact art, but I know what my style is well enough.

In comparison down to colors, depending on the level of complexity, expectations, etc, in a piece, color may be a straight forward process that, some parts may have flats and others not or that the flats process may be so off from a final piece that it can't really be used as fair judgment.

In short, if the artist, on principle of their working habits, doesn't even offer those proof stages, what then? Just a curiosity, as seeing I too, like many a...well, not so starving but as being a parent am stereotypically broke, offer commission work (DA through the link in the sig).

Hmm, only one artist has stepped up to the bar? Strange that, those are some impressive odds XD