SlickRiptide

Some artists will specify that they retain copyright on commissioned pieces. Assuming you agree to that, then the artist has the right to complain if you post it in places that s/he disapproves of, since you theoretically shouldn't be posting it anywhere without the artist's permission.

I'm not a lawyer; I can't say who owns copyright if no specific agreements exist. First thing I'd check do is check that you didn't already agree inadvertently to granting all copyright to the artist. If that's the case, then you can do what you want but s/he can cause you legal trouble (even though s/he probably won't unless it's just for the principle of the thing).

If you didn't enter into any such agreement then I'd tell 'em tough titties until they prove to me that they own the copyright, but I'm ornery that way.

Ordinary users aren't allowed to attach pictures. Put the picture in a publically accessible place (photobucket.com is popular) and use the URL tag to link to it.

*eyeroll* It's an example. It's not my problem that the guy who made it doesn't care about non-IE browsers. He chose simplicity over complexity. For 90% of the world, it'll work fine. The point was not "this is a wonderful example of coding", it was "this illustrates that you don't need Flash to just move some costume bits around on the screen".

Yes, a "real" Rowr Doll should support Firefox and adhere to modern standards. (There's a reason the star trek page references IE 5 as a requirement. The page is OLD.) Forgive me if I laugh at the conceit that Safari matters enough for anyone to LOL at phailing on it.

Anyway - It's Rowr(sie)'s choice and she likes Flash. There ya go. It'll be fun to see what she ends up with.

In the meantime, I think I'll do some playing around with the CoH colorfoms idea that popped out of my imagination thanks to this whole business. *heh*

An example of a simple, yet effective DHTML "paper doll" -- Star Trek Miniature Maker.

The website linked above is web app whose purpose is to build, from costume bits, a Star Trek character from any generation of the show. Ultimately, it's intended for PnP role-playing - You screen-cap the final picture, crop it, print it, cut it out and fold it and you end up with a paper miniature to use in your Star Trek RPG sessions.

Pick a season of the show, then "view source" on that page. You'll see that there's very little in the way of code going on. Most of the page is just the img tags that load the costume bits. Basically, anyone with a text editor and the technical savvy to cut and paste could maintain this and add to it.

Groovy. The only real problem I can see is that Rowr's right hand is touching her leg. That'll take some creative coding for outfits that cover her legs, though I suppose you can take the easy way out and attach the hand to the pant leg in that case.

I don't mean to sound like I'm talking down to you - I'm a technician, not an artist, so I see problems in terms of technical requirements, and I deal every day with people who know just enough about tools to be dangerous. *heh*

Well, I'd do this with DHTML myself, but if you want Flash and you don't have the software, I'd bet you can find an open source equivalent.

Just because you said something about "image flipping", I'd emphasize that modern web browsers are perfectly capable of displaying a bunch of images on their own layers and moving them around. It wouldn't be some kind of image swap pretending to be a paper doll.

Okay, what about the "pieces"? Daggerpoint probably created the originals in photoshop and layered the clothing bits. Can he supply you with the "paper doll" and the clothing bits separated into individual images? The alternative is to hand edit the pics to extract the clothes, which will look dodgy around the edges if it's anti-aliased, which it almost certainly is. Additionally, you need "naked" Rowr to layer the clothes onto on your web app.

To see what I mean, compare the covered areas and uncovered areas between the three bikini tops. They're not identical. It means that you can't just make a bikini-sized hole and expect a slave girl top to fit over it. You need the base naked Rowr that Daggerpoint is using to layer the clothes over in his images.

You also need his clothing bits in a photoshop file as a layer with transparency or at least as an image with an alpha channel. It amounts to the same thing. (Not really, but in practice it's the same as long as the person manipulating the images is also using Photoshop.)

Finally, the classroom picture implies that he's got "paper doll Rowr" saved as a separate image that he can layer on any background. That means that he should be able to supply the Rowr background and the classroom background along with whatever custom backgrounds you choose in the future.

This is why I say you need Daggerpoint's cooperation. You can't do it with just the images he's given you unless you just don't care about the quality. You really need access to his original photoshop files or at least some of those images saved as individual bits.

*EDIT* Ah, yes, read the tutorial that Hericane linked to. Showing things visually is much better than trying to explain them without a reference.

1) Is Daggerpoint "down" with the idea of messing with his images? I notice he's got watermarks and copyrights all over at least two of the images.

2) Do you have access to the individual elements? That is, can/will Daggerpoint supply you with a base "naked/underwear Rowr" and images of the clothing elements separated from Rowr's image? The clothing can be photoshopped out but the base image of Rowr really needs to come from Daggerpoint for it to look right. Daggerpoint's original costume elements will be much nicer to use than being forced to extract them via Gimp/Photoshop. If you have his cooperation, then you could also get hold of the belly shirt an shorts that seems to be Rowr's signature look. (That image is one of them that is covered in a big ol' watermark.)

3) Are you married to the idea of using Flash? You can do this with HTML and CSS these days, making it rather easier to update with new outfits when you receive them. You could update it yourself using some basic instructions instead of depending on people with special expertise and/or software.

4) Do you have someplace to host it? I'm sure lots of us here have places it could be developed but for permanent hosting, you'd want your own website. Your commercial ISP probably supplies you with some personal web space that ought to be sufficient for something like this, providing you can easily update the files.

I notice that Mynx's Story does not have a *Complete* stamp next to it. Does that mean that more is coming?

Does DeviantArt let you apply your own CSS to the pages?

When I saw the work in progress with no other context, I'd assumed it was some kind of tentacle hentai.

It makes a lot more sense now.

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this is what I get for being in Witness Relocation!

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That's either too much information or not nearly enough!

No offense, Kyo, but you're approaching this as if you were shopping at a mall. Artists (the ones I've known, anyway) don't work like that. What's more, the really good ones already have queues of work waiting to be done. They aren't going to jump and sketch up an idea for you on the chance that you MIGHT want to then pay them for a full-blown illustration.

Heck, most artists will charge a few bucks just for a basic sketch.

If you really want to make this happen, then you are going to end up investing a fair amount of energy just into researching it and deciding what it is that you want to see and what styles you like. Follow LadyJudgement's advice - Check the network thread, browse some samples of artists' work, see if any styles click. Then pick the one you like and approach that artist with your project. Then be pepared for it to take some time, at least if you expect quality for your money. There are some talented folks here who might be tempted to do a rush job for you if you waved enough greenbacks at them, but ten days is approaching the "never gonna happen" area, IMO.

*heh* That totally changes the pic. Much better. The claw smudges on the chalkboard are genius.

Catgirls are not normally my thing but I might buy that paper doll. For my daughter. Yeah.

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I paid for 120 deviations on a page, and I'm back to 5???

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In the lower right-hand corner of the Search Results panel, there's a layout chooser labeled 24, 60, and 120. I'm not a subscriber and so can't test it, but I assume that will do what you're talking about. Sounds like it's maybe just been put in a different place than it used to be.

It's very Web 2.0ish, but as a casual browser of DA I'm finding it to be alright. The customizing your toolbar thing is a neat gimmick for a couple of minutes. The search seems to be reasonably accurate and fast. I made the bottom panel disappear first thing because it was big and distracting.

FYI, there's a poll on that bottom panel where you can give multiple-choice feedback about the new system.

Nice work on that one. I like the style you chose to show the two sides of the relationship.

Cute!

THAT video was full of win!

That's so far above what I generally think of as machinima that I'm not sure just what to call it.

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Will those pre-order helmets only apply to Villains? Because otherwise Hero players essentially get very little on their 51st month. (I know, it's odd to see Villains get favored, or Arachnos running around Paragon, but hey.)

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Heroes can wear the pre-order helms. I'll post a screenshot here in a bit.

Screenies - The Scarlet Sting The Wierdling

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can someone explain to me...I cant have the Sands Of Mu AND the Blackwand at any given time?

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It's not about Sands and Blackwand - it's about Blackwand and Nemesis Staff or Sands and Undead Axe.

My conclusion is that the vet reward resources are limited. 45 was essentially nothing at all, zero hours of dev time spent, so that 48 could be something brand new - a combat pet.

51 has been requested since vet rewards began and it synergizes with VEATS. The devs get a "pass" on that one, I think, despite the fact that it really doesn't require much in the way of new development. Badges already unlock costume bits. This is just a badge that unlocks multiple costume bits.

54 is "new" on the back end instead of the front end. It implements a new choosing mechanism instead of any actual new vet reward. There may be benefits to other parts of the game from this, but as far as a player receiving the reward, it looks like another case of spend the minimal amount of effort possible.

I've already speculated elsewhere that this suggests that 57-months will be another zero-effort respec-only badge, with those resources devoted to making 60-months into something new. I hope that's not the case, but that's how it looks from where I'm standing.

I'm a vet with a few months missing - took two 3-month breaks - and I got the pre-order helm. The 51 month doesn't bother me in the least. In fact, I'm happy to get it, primarily because of the way they've dressed them up. I never, ever used my red wolf helmet because it looked silly and wasn't colorable. I pulled it out recently for grins and discovered that the upgrades they'd done had filtered to the pre-order helmets.

The red wolf helm has these funky glowy lights on the side now and the color is just nicer than it was. Toss in the "new" (meaning new since the helm first appeared but I don't really know when it was added because I never noticed it) paneled pattern and you've got a hero uniform that works with the spider helm.

More helms means more costume opportunities. Sounds like a win to me, especially if all of the spider helms are gussied up with special effects.

54-month, not so impressive though I won't turn down another perm power. Gimme the Rune of Warding - Now THAT would be a vet power!

I'd recommend checking the guides forum for the macro/bind guide.

Today, you could do it without any special programming, as long as it was 90 phrases or less, by putting each line on its own macro and filling up all nine toolbars.

My guess is that Ascendant used a macro that played a /say, then loaded a new macro file with a different /say on the same macro, and a different filename on the load macro. That's just a guess - I've never tried that sort of thing.

Just keep 'em real, is all. Six-gun-girl is ample, yet natural. There's a line between sexy and ludicrous. A woman with basketballs embedded in her chest (or hanging off her chest in a way that defies gravity) is like Wile E Coyote drinking a bottle of tobasco and shooting fire out of his mouth.

The question, in the end, is do you want the viewer to say "That's Hawt! I'd like to rub my face in that!" or "Nice! I wonder what her story is?"

Red Sonja is an interesting suggestion, given that the BEST pictures of her depict her as a normally endowed woman. The depictions of her with large to huge breast and/or in sexually suggestive positions are the ones that leave my imagination saying "Swordsman? Yeah, right!" Your mileage may vary, of course, but you can see for yourself. You don't have to look like a blow-up doll to bring the sexy.

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The link's not working properly.

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seems to be working for me

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That probably means that you're logged in or have a cookie set that allows you to see it. That would explain why it's a .php link.

If you can see the picture, try right-clicking it. The properties will show the full URL to the picture. See if that works better as a link to it.

*Edit* Just tried it and the link is working now. *shrug*

I like this, except the war was only six years ago; less time than George W. has been the President, just to put it in perspective. Grannie makes it sound like it was forty years ago and all the old vets have been put out to pasture. *heh*

Actually, the whole business of the LACK of any real impact from the War on modern Paragon City is one of the reasons I suggested to Hero 1 that there should be a holiday memorializing Alpha/Omega Day. Seems to me that the world would be going out of their way to remember those people, and that we should see it affect the game somehow, even if it's just a Paragon Times article.