goldbricker

Ok, so what kind of emotion detail are you going for here?

The handler is pointing at the viewer, the wolf is snarling. Maybe you want the viewer to feel like this is the last moment in time before a scary fleshripping-death attack order is sprung on him?

How scary though? The wolf, though quite imposing anatomically, seems relaxed in body, kind of like an orangutan almost. In the face, the eyes seem to be human-conscionable, almost considerate in the way they're posed. The snarl, while large, seems to be well within his mouth limits. It all comes together to suggest he's generally comfortable in his current position, if a bit annoyed the viewer is in proximity, like perhaps he's exhibiting more of a balanced-maternal-protection reflex with the handler. In that sense, the handler comes across more like a little boy complaining (or making up a story) about the viewer as a bully.

Some techniques that can add more fear to the scene might include redrawing the wolf's eyes so that they're less human and more demonic or soulless, rework the fur to be more standing on end instead of casually tousled where it may, and/or tensing up the musculature or adding a sense of restraints that the wolf has almost purely-muscled out of, (like reworking the snarl in such a way to suggest he's unnaturally pushing his teeth out far beyond the normal limits of what a mouth can handle, all just to get an inch closer to the viewer).

A physical restraint isn't necessarily required, especially if the handler can be reworked a bit to suggest a psychological restraint. His off hand can be gently but dedicatedly pinching the beast's ear (or some other minor vulnerable spot) for example. Or maybe the off hand can be grasping a wolf whistle near his lips, and his mouth is smirkily open and his lungs are near a healthy capacity of inhalement.

That's only one emotional approach though. You could go many different ways with this. What are you trying/hoping for?

He's a 100-foot tall titan? I didn't really get that from my first look at the piece. My first look was instead all over trying to gleefully figure out what kind of cool gloppy force was trying to ensnake and ensnare his arm.

It's a great piece, but from reading more of his background, it seems like you're not well expressing in the piece the actual character you have in mind for him. Perhaps more thought is needed? He's quite a difficult character to express for sure.

I'm a fan of your staging, with unusually-angled camera positions, nice font work, subtle texturing, dynamic poses, and dynamic yet minimalistic supporting elements like the stylish crescent backing Hexus Vex. You're getting the effect of a full and complete representation and focus on the primary subject with layers of meaning yet without any distractions. That's one of my favorite types of art pieces.

Been on Pinnacle since Pinnacle was the beta server back in the day.

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I think this turned out pretty well though.


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...blink...blink...

Awesome...

It's unfortunate that you had problems motivating yourself to get this piece done. I guess you're starting to mature a bit, and a bit away from comic-book fantasy, huh Juggy? It happens.

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As long as it's not a space port, and by extention, there's no moon zone, I'm fine with it just sitting there.


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There already are several spaceports, just hidden somewhere. Moonbase Alpha is already up and running, Mr. and Mrs. Manticore have been there. And there's still that old report of weird things happening on the moon but I suspect the Phalanx haven't needed any help keeping it contained to date. I'm sure they'll call on the rest of us to come help if anything escalates.

And the War Walls were underway for dismantling, but the renewed Rikti invasions and the continued Rikti civil wars have postponed those plans. Hopefully though the recent breakthroughs in finding a cure for the Lost can lead to a more direct resolution of the crisis.

If you really want to find out what's going on with all the half-finished construction projects, I suggest you seek out the Red King. I get the feeling he's deep into his latest plans, and he usually likes to leave a clue or two to taunt Paragon City at that point.

Random Crash

Server: Pinnacle
Zone: In Mission (Grandville)
Character name: Jambone
Time: Dec 4, 8am-ish Central Time
Location: In Mission
Mission: Grandville paper escort mission vs. Carnies
Mission Contact: Grandville paper
Bug Description: A new spam email had come in at some time previous. I clicked on the Email word on my chat window header, the email window (pinned to the chat window) animated its expansion partway (about half the size of my expected email window size), then the game crashed.
Link to Forum Discussions: N/A

Very interesting.

You definitely have the comic book hero pose down. Wide powerful stance, defiant expression, overmuscular limbs and lithe torso. At first I thought the subjects were being oversimplified in broad strokes but after zooming in I was surprised by how well little details were rendered, like the nose.

It's hard though to tell how far your skills extend from just 2 pieces (which basically reuse a single layout). Can you render other poses, other bodyshapes, other subjects, other settings, more/less action?

Keep at it, you've got some good stuff going there.

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Additionally, I've heard a number of players refer to the Merit Reward System as a reduction to rewards. I'd like to remind players that only a handful of tasks in the game had their rewards reduced, however the majority of tasks in the game have had their rewards significantly increased and that now story arcs give players a chance at earning rewards that might otherwise be unattainable.


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I might humbly suggest your view on this point does not match the players view, and thus your argument is unfortunately mostly inapplicable to the players' concern here.

People are complaining of an overall rewards reduction because the small amount of tasks that will be subject to a merit reduction currently represents an overwhelming majority of player-invested time, while the large amount of tasks that will be subject to a merit increase currently represents a whoppingly-tiny amount of player invested time.

For the moment assume that the merit changes will not cause any change in players' pattern of time-investment. It is therefore expectable that the rewards decrease for player's investments with i13 will be not just significant, but large. That forms the core of the players' complaints.

Make no mistake, the success of the devs' merit system hinges completely on players actually breaking out of their current time-investment patterns and actually switching to more diverse content. My personal guess so far is that not enough people will break their patterns in this way, but there's still a chance it could work out ok.

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Poster: EvilGeko
Q: What about the market? Do you care about the players who enjoy that aspect of the game? Do you have any plans for how to address the supply issues in the market that this system will cause for Pool C and D drops?

A: We feel that players will take that chance on the random roll tables for that chance at the reward they want. There will always be that temptation to roll on the Pool C rewards 12 times instead of buying that one shiny IO. If a player doesn't get what they want, they can post these items on the markets. Also consider that before only players running Task Forces and Strike Forces were contributing Pool C and D items to the market, now even solo/casual players will be able to do so.


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Ok, that's certainly your plan A. Geko's question was more about if you have a plan B if plan A doesn't come to be as you expect.

I can't necessarily speak for anyone else, but I don't see how the system as described will entice me to spend merits on random drops. I get too much random drop garbage as it is now, and I only post less than 10% of that on the market (most of the time I just delete it, sometimes I sell to stores if there's one nearby). The process with i13 to invoke a random drop will be enough of a significant inconvenience that I might as well just let the merits build up. Except likely I'll still be just doing ITFs most of the time so I won't likely be building merits with any speed, so basically I don't see how I'm going to get much out of the system overall.

I don't expect most people to share my circumstances, but it does seem reasonable that if for any reason players don't diversify their time investments in the way devs are expecting, the market for C&D drops will dry up very quickly. Are the devs ready to react to a breaking market situation? That seems a fair question.

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Poster: TheWeaver
Q: That leads to my primary concern. If it turns out that what players do with their merits is save them so that they can buy exactly what they want, what will happen to the market for Pool C and Pool D recipes?

A: You can earn an infinite number of merits through Ouroboros by running your favorite story arcs over again. I don't suspect you'd be able to purchase all of those IOs by simply running through all the story arcs once. However, you might be able to spend some of those merits on random rolls and simply selling what you don't need on the market.


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To make the point again... Players might go for random rolls, which then probably (but perhaps not) would generate undesired recipes, which then the player might go through the hassle to post on the market, but there's no guarantee these items will get to market.

Are the devs ready to react if the worst-case scenario starts breaking the market? Because if not the players are going to be stuck in a poor position for at least a while, even if it is of their own making. If the players stubbornly refuse to play ball the way devs think they should, are the devs ready to deal with that?

Just a few comments to make...

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Poster: MadScientist
Q: Pool C and D are no longer dropped anywhere in-game. To my knowledge, those will be the only items purchased from stores that never drop in the wild. My question is: What are your goals in making that design move? What do you expect that unique situation to achieve?

A: In the past, completing a Task Force gave you the option to choose a random IO recipe. This rolled on a reward table. All we’ve done is remove where you roll on the reward table. Instead of it being upon completion of a Task Force, now it’s purchased from a vendor.


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Please note that this change is not as innocuous as the 'All we've done...' tone implies. This change effectively increases the grind a player must trudge through to realize a reward he has arguably earned. This grind increase is not insignificant and will occasionally cause players problems.

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Poster: EvilGeko
Q: Why not fix Katie and Eden instead of taking away their rewards?

A: We don’t always have time between issues to make changes like this.


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This is one side of the paradox of "what are the devs supposed to be relative to players" that's whammying the players. The devs are supposed to be the ultimate experts and authorities over the coh gamespace, so in that vein it's proper for players to expect flawlessness from the devs' performance in that role. On the other hand, the devs are human, and the coh gamespace is proving to be a difficulty far beyond they're combined capability, and punishing them for that does no one any good.

So what are the players supposed to do? Hold the devs to an impossibly high standard? Or forgive them for stuff that makes the game really hard to deal with? Fixing Katie is the right answer but the devs can't do it. How are the players supposed to know what's the right way to address the devs over that?

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Poster: _Synchotron_
Q: Why are merits untradable/unsellable? All the rewards they're replacing had no such restrictions, why these? If they have to be untradable/unsellable, why aren't they account-based, rather than character-based? If you run more than a couple characters at a time, this will fragment your merit pools and dramatically reduce the value of the merits you earn. If its a reward for time played, why should the particular hero I play matter?

A: Merits were designed to represent an individual character’s accomplishments and time invested doing missions. Thus, untradeable and unsellable.


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I might humbly suggest this is an error in design. Merits actually represent the essence of loot, not the essence of accomplishment. It behaves as a currency, and it is almost exactly like influence/infamy. It does not behave as badges or souvenirs, which themselves more properly represent essences of accomplishment.

The current structure of untradeability, combined with the not-insignificant grind time being added to the reward-realization process, is very poor and basically represents a negative to people who play in a multi-alt style. Ultimately, this choice effectively discourages tf play for everyone except dedicated lvl 50 players.

I imagine datamining should show bits of this trend over time. The suggestion that merits be account based instead of character based is very reasonable and enabling and I would humbly prompt you to reconsider that.

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Poster: Healing_Phoenix
Q: Why is it that the Villain side SF payout is way less than Hero side TF payout? I feel that as a villain I'm being punished.

A: On average Villain Strike Forces take significantly less time to complete when compared to Hero Task Forces. Since time is the major factor when determining the number of Merits a task gives upon completion Villains on average receive less Merits per task, but roughly the same Merits per hour.


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Villain strike forces were designed to take less time in reaction to the fact that datamining hero tfs proved they were 'bad' in part due to their length. Essentially, when CoV was being designed, devs consciously forced the villain side to not have any 'bad' tfs, which the merit system is now effectively claiming are no longer 'bad'. The cumulative effect is that this aspect of the merit system is exactly a punishment of villains.

The correct answer is to go back and fix the villain sf design so that it has access to 'no longer bad' sfs with good rewards. But as seen previously in Synapse's post, the devs are likely not in a position to do this.

How should players then react to this paradox? Well, basically, the more that individual players can just absorb the hit with grace and dignity in the spirit of cooperation, the better the future experience for all parties should be. But it will certainly be human nature for individuals to reach their limits of absorption at some point and break down. Do the best that can be done I guess.

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I'd like to conclude this first Merit Rewards System Q&A by repeating that the existing Merit Reward System is by no means the final version you'll ever see of it. Just like every system we've implemented into City of Heroes, we're always looking at ways of improving them and making them more fun for a larger group of players.


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Indeed. I have faith that the devs are intending on making the game better. Even if they get confused and carried away sometimes.

Ok, time for me to jump in and criticize.

goldbricker looks at awesome picture

That's the best he can do? His crosshatching is terrible! Everyone knows you don't crosshatch at pure 90-degree angles. phail

goldbricker shakes head sheepishly at obvious and lame attempt to save his critic rep

Ok... fine. It's a good piece.

Love it.

In the fifth panel, it seems a little weird that no power emanation is escaping out of the mouth (or possibly ears) given how powerfully light is escaping out of the eyes. But that's a very trivial concern.

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only thing i noticed off was that his nose looks quite petite


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Indeed it does seem like the facial features are being swallowed by the large head. The goggles seem especially small for the proportions you're establishing in the general anatomy. A bit of enlargement on those details may serve the piece.

Also, I tend to find the rough-tone costume details (the head spikes, the bicep chains, the shoulder hooks) to be inconsistent with the softer flourishy tone of the pose of the hands and the sparky flick they're performing. Both elements look good by themselves, but together they don't quite fit as well as one might expect. I might suggest going the rougher tone side, trying to repose the hands into something more angry, like clenched fists, and upping the wattage of the arc between the two.

But overall I like where you're going with it, especially how successfully you're transferring your layout from the source material.

Could you post a bit more info about Mike? So that I can better associate the artwork with the artist. (Or maybe to make it easier to pester him to do stuff for me too )

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I just wanted to drop by and say hello. This was without a doubt the best of the boards in a great community to begin with and I truly have missed you guys.


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Indeed! You guys really are the best anywhere.

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So annyywaaayyy. I wanted to share his new look and name with you guys. A long time ago I rolled a hero named Godbreaker and while I never really grew attached to MA/Reg so much, I loved the name. I went ahead and renamed Hammerforge and redisgned his look and really like it!


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Hmmm... 'Godbreaker' hmmm.... Yeah, there's something about that name that just sounds right to me.

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Now I just need to come up with a new Origin story. He looks a bit Celestial-ish.

Any ideas? I would love to hear them =)


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That nifty hammer's looking a bit Soul Edge ish. Perhaps you don't have to give up the name Hammerforge, at least in spirit.

Perhaps the hammer is semi-sentient, and is a weapon so ancient, and has passed through so many ages and civilizations that it's true origins was lost. In every setting it appears, it is a harbinger of great conflict and war, and it seeks out a steward both well meaned to untether its power and well placed to leverage against the final crux. In the remnants of which, the hammer disappears again.

Perhaps, one day while Hammerforge was walking home from a D&D 4.0 campaign session, Godbreaker appeared to him, and he took up the challenge. He's only scratched the surface so far of what he and the hammer can do, but he's trying to learn quickly (and the hammer is trying to influence him) to best prepare for the great revolution undoubtedly coming...

Something like that maybe

Interesting, his style is sort of in-between Juggertha and Celtic Bolt. Not that I like the general tendency to categorize everybody oversimply...

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This is one of my latest pieces for my DC portfolio. Trying for something a little different, and paying an homage to Michael Turner's version of the 'Girl Of Steel';

DAUGHTER OF KRYPTON - Poster of Supergirl

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Ok, here goes my critique...

The first thing I was drawn to was the attention to consistency in the lighting highlights. I like very much how the glow of the fire on the engines makes its mark on Kara's skin and clothes on her right side. I'd point out how her skirt is casting a shadow on the side of her upper right thigh as an excellent example of consistent lighting.

Obviously there's more lighting in the piece than just a source near the engine. And that seems to lead into a problem with Supergirl's face. The shadow between the engine's light source and the sun's light source is causing an awkward frame of her face. You almost can't get any expressiveness out of her mouth pose because the shadow is engulfing it. I suspect this is the main cause of the difficulty people have been commenting in this thread about reading her expression.

In looking very closely at her face, trying to ignore the shadow, I might conclude that you have a good expression going as is. Thus probably all you need to do is play a bit more with repositioning the sun's light source, (and/or with ambient lighting levels), to achieve a better framing that should reveal the whole of the look. In my personal bias I would prefer a twinge more of a smile in her expression, to inject a bit more of a girlish joy into what's a purely workmanlike scrutiny, but that's something I leave totally to the artist to decide.

The second thing that drew my eye was the great hair depiction. It's got a nice balance between lovely and sexy, and enhances the action quite well too. A great fit for the character and the scene. The cape also has that same action-enhancing role but unfortunately seems a bit too crumpled and detracts a bit I think. But the cape is a much less important element to the scene (compared to the hair for example) so any weaknesses in its contributions to the scene are not really a big deal.

The background is great, even though the color palette is a touch unrealistic. One thing that comes to mind that you might consider adding is a heat shimmer effect behind the engine that distorts the background, especially around the contours of the engine.

But yeah, the background is quite good. In fact you might want to consider just blocking off some time and generate a bunch of different kinds of backgrounds, and then selling/sharing those backgrounds to other artists who have a hard time cranking them out themselves.

One other thing I see concerns the way you're implementing the suggestion of speed, with the smears of blue trailing her left forearm and her skirt, and the red smear trailing her boot, and the peach smear trailing her right knee. I might humbly suggest you rethink this trick from scratch, as I don't believe it's working. Yes it gives a bit of a sense of speed and direction, but it has a lot of problems fitting in with the entirety of the piece. Especially where it trails the skirt. The skirt is posed as fluttering freely, where the smear is trying to suggest super streamlined speed which should be completely flattening flutterable fabric. In the end, the smears are suggesting ink bleed of the piece more than suggesting the subject moving with speed.

I don't have an alternative technique to suggest off the top of my head, but I do feel like this color-trail technique common to penciled comic books requires serious rethinking for the 3d realm. Perhaps you should try an investigation into some physics engines, (perhaps something like endorphin), get a simple skeleton with skirt-shaped and cape-shaped fabrics built up, throw it around a bit, and observe how they move frame by frame. Perhaps that analysis might inspire a possible technique. Hard to say.

Oh, and I also liked the lettering on the plane. Nice touch and also very fitting. The individual panel work on the hull texture could possibly have been very time consuming. The windows are about the right size compared to Supergirl too. Nice consistency there.

As always, you do great work. Keep it up.

My first, cautious, impression is that the thing on the right side is detracting from the overall piece. I assume it's a cape at the mercy of an extreme wind, (this hypothesis would seem to be consistent with the depiction of the hair). But it's very difficult to understand what it is in just pencils form.

I might suggest just deleting that element entirely. Yes the lack of an obvious cape might be confusing considering the cape clasps on the collarbone, but I'd think the piece overall would benefit more from such a change.

Or if you can find a different depiction of the cape that makes it instantly recognizable yet not distracting from the main focus that's even better. Maybe something more like this windy superman cape.

I really, really want to see more of Statesman's history that clearly depicts him in a true hero groove. The comic books always depicted him as this paradox of a massive jerk whom all the city citizens thought was the greatest hero ever. That depiction really frustrated me. Why is Statesman so revered despite his mostly-consistent inability to get anything done or treat anyone with respect?

I also want to see more of Synapse's backstory. In the comics he got more panels flirting with girls than he did on his (supposedly-angsty) origin. He never really got much in the way of creative depiction of his powers, most of his power use was off panel. That's a shame as superspeed powers lend themselves to the most exciting and creative uses of any superpower, (well, other than shapeshifting I guess).

Finally, I want to see more of War Witch and Apex. They're not really premium heroes but their story developed a unique spark in their characters that was endearing and deserves more life.

Oh, and I want to see the moon base in action. But obviously that's coming already.

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I've noticed though that some other people seem to have different reasons for posting here.

I'm curious about yours.


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Mostly I seem to post in this forum because I keep seeing art and reading opinions that inspire/motivate me to say something. I mean, generally you guys are too good for my defenses.

Possibly also I desire lots of cool art for my characters but am too hamstrung on various ocd quirks to muster the courage to ask. So instead I might be just motivated to try to keep my name out there in case some nearby artist randomly picks up on it and runs with it. (It did work once anyway...)

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Doc Aether is one serious magic user.

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Great piece Juggy!

There is one thing that makes me go Hmmm... I get the feeling that this is a bit of new territory for you? Specifically departing from natural color schemes, sort of experimenting in extreme monochroma. (Well, the piece itself isn't purely monochromatic, but how it differs is even itself interesting too.) I'm getting the feeling over your recent pieces you've been sort of focused on trying to get more out of your backgrounds in some way other than actually having to deal with the mundane part of filling in background detail. It's kind of an Andy Warhol direction overall.

Forgive me Juggy, but I've been quite interested in watching specifically how your art style may evolve over time. It just seems like you can make anything look good, so it's interesting to see where you choose to go with it.

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http://cryptcrawler.deviantart.com/a...sword-92333558

As always - thanks for all the support, you guys rule.

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Love it.

It's pretty much everything I want out of an art piece. On one level it's this great dramatic moment in an interesting fantasy setting. So much emotion and plot conveyed in little details like the brave angle of the raised sword, the twisting of the cloak as the skeleton-faced prey (belatedly?) turns.

On another level it's a high quality of complex artistic layout, with layers of details organized into levels of importance via subtle techniques. The sort of volcano shape of the middle chunk, rising up to the moon-framed face immediately draws the eye to the highly important face detail. The gleam on the sword. And then on a muted importance level, there's the misty glow on the ruined architecture in the background, the subtle curve on the line of rocks along the ground. Even the least important stuff like the punctuation of the flowers and the clasp on the leather scabbard contribute positively to the overall piece.

I mean it really is stellar. You can take in the full surface of the fantasy and enjoy that, and then you can get past that and dive in even further to pull out interesting little details all over the place. Thank you for posting it.

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It looks worse than what I am describing.


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Is this perhaps more a case of you being pushed outside your comfort zone rather than him being unreasonably provocative? Obviously it's hard to navigate a situation that doesn't play to your strengths, but that doesn't mean you aren't capable of the actions that can lead to a good result.

In this case your challenge is to apply your creative artistry towards a subject your instincts treat as aesthetically repulsive. In fact, this seems like a great opportunity to strengthen your skillset since it will require improving on an instinct that is limiting your versatility.

How about this: do some research on all sorts of laughably horrible costume pieces. Then set your piece in a costume shop that specializes in all of these wacky nightmares. Like an off-off-broadway Icon as run by the Addams Family. The toon in question can then be comedically added to the setting, excited as a birthday kid at all the 'great' choices for his new costume.

That seems like a piece that you can have fun with, that challenges and expands on your skills, that adapts around your obstructive instincts, and that probably will be entertaining to both your customer and the general audience.

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We tried to shame him into changing it but now he keeps it for shock value


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Heh. Guilting on people is a pretty powerful tool, but tends to turn into a big downer for everyone, usually because one or more people on either side of the guilting starts getting fed up with the lack of progress and suddenly starts to tempt escalating the methods. In my experience I find it's smoother overall to guilt as little as possible, but try to work with everyone's natural talents and tendencies as far as I can, and then withdraw once it gets too much for me (I'm only human after all).

lol

Love the attitude in the facial expression.

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Anyway... here it is - and open for critique - Little Zoe in line art.


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Even as a sketch, thats great details on the eyes.


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Hmm... Spidey-sense tingling...

First of all, it is a nice piece. Sort of an anime daintiness that's quite appealing.

But... Something's confusing me...

I get the feeling I'm being deceived a bit here. Or maybe I'm just being overly paranoid.

Question: are you really a newbie artist? Your preamble sort of makes it easy to jump to the conclusion that you're just starting out. But maybe you only mean you're new to posting here, and really you have significant practice with art. The quality of the anatomical proportions and the pen strokes in the piece definitely suggests you've got a leg up on drawing.

Question: are you really trying for an anime style? The eye is huge in proportion to most other anatomical details (especially the mouth). That's common to anime pieces but maybe you are a newbie artist and weren't sure what you were doing.

Question: was this done with a freehand technique, or were you tracing over top of another piece? (First it's important to say that tracing is good practice for an artist for many reasons.) Much of the quirks of the outer lines (like the v-shaped points at the bottom of the cape) almost look like they're compensating for details that would have conveniently fit within the boundaries (like flowing cape folds). It seems strange that there's so much nice detail work in the eye but the technical detail in everything else is almost nonexistent. If I were to unrestrain my natural paranoia, it might suggest an explanation that the general body was done in one very-simplistic style (such as an outline trace) and the eye was done separately and with a very different technique, (possibly even a graphic editor copy-paste from another piece). Being good with multiple diverse techniques like this is another point that runs counter to the idea that the artist is new to this kind of art.

Ok, by now I'm scared I might have given too much of an impression that I'm being accusatory of something untoward. Hopefully I'm trying to only say that I'm confused about what you're trying to achieve with this piece, and thus I don't know how to judge what you put into this piece.

And my wild theorizing could be entirely wrong, in which case I apologize.

But, if I don't let myself think about it too much, it is indeed a nice piece.