goldbricker

Count me in with the 'further dev-tailored threads are pointless if past threads have been ignored' crowd. Even though Castle suggested he needs these threads, in essence he only said he needs only the one thread that exists at the specific time he develops the rare, random need for it, and all other threads are pointless to him. And that's a pointless scenario under which posters must decide whether to participate.

But, in any case, I suppose I could for fun reiterate one of my various ideas posted in the past.

Leave the powers as they are. Instead increase the fun/value of knock mechanics in the global environment.

My favorite example involves the new Faultline zone. If I'm fighting some bad guys on one of the construction grounds scattered throughout the northern area, and I knock a bad guy near one of those cement mixer drums, it would be fun and cool to see the game have him get his upper torso stuck in the drum, legs dangling as the drum turns a revolution before spitting him out again with a bit of a goopy coating.

Adding contextually-sensitive elements to environments that activate for various effects under various conditions (such as intersecting with a knock-state mob) inherently increases the value of powers that can leverage those elements (such as knockback-heavy powers like those FF wields).

And the devs have already done a few environmental elements that sort of count as contextually-sensitive. CoT crystals, Trolls shlepping barrels of dynamite around, fire-ignitable oil slicks. They could add electrical power boxes that add electricity damage to mobs slammed against it. Exotic plants that explosively expand like a blowfish to deal lethal damage to mobs slammed against it. If these elements are common enough, knockback powers could start being a tactically-useful dps augmentation.

This should be doable without touching the FF set or even the entire power system. Certainly there would be a lot of work required in other areas, but the potential value of such additions would go far beyond just the FF set. A lethal-damage attack against a cryo-freezing tanker truck could impale a hole that spews out a cold-based hold attack against nearby mobs for example.

PvE and PvP would be made much richer with such an approach. And it can even be rigged to align spawning so that when the game triggers a new spawn for you, the contextually-sensitive elements that spawn are attuned for your powers. Even if your build is not something a potential team leader is looking for, he can at least be assured that the game will spawn something you can leverage for team success.

So... was that pointless?

Very very nice...

Heh, that one hero on the right in the white costume with charcoal gloves makes me laugh a bit. While all the other heroes in the panel are going 'RAWR' she's more like, 'I'm SO gonna wag my finger in his face.'

Yay! Art!

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Comrade is a great design. It makes excellent use of the costume options.

Comrade ftw.

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I vote Comrade for same reasons.

Not every project gets to be 'finished' in a short amount of time. Star Wars went twenty years in an 'unfinished' state according to Mr. Lucas, and when he got around to updating it it arguably was worse off in some ways. What you have going right now is really good.

I've got a work in progress for over 2 years now, imagined over 3 years ago, and I never work on it because it's just not high enough on my priority list (things like Ouroboros, Mass Effect, Rock Band, Angband are higher). I need to figure out what Hellion clothing actually looks like, and I have to finish off all the celtic patterning, and I have to fill in the details of the brick alley setting, and I dislike how I've drawn the hair. And I need to figure out what I want to do for a scanner if just photos aren't enough. And I need to figure out what I want to do for image hosting if my website is gone as I suspect it is. It's all so annoying to deal with.

It's kinda blocking my queue (if one other piece for Speedy can constitute a queue).

Alicynn is skilled.

My life is better off for seeing her work.

Regardless of all the other things that complicate and intimidate people's lives, those two truths will persevere.

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For things like Cross-server PVP, listing this at this point where there is no technology to support


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What?

Current tech can support this. Just create a second test server. This test server shares all the characters from the main test server (as well as sharing test server character wipes), but maintains the game version of the live servers. This test server is then understood to be mainly used for cross-server pvp (or even non-pvp) events.

It's obviously not perfect, but it's stuff that cryptic has previously shown they can support, and it's enough for the players to make due.

Not bad, not bad at all.

I'd suggest continuing to work on details like the shoulder placement (how far they're protruding out from the upper ribs and torso is a bit extreme for the proportions suggested by the head/neck and pecs), and perhaps being more subtle and less literal with the lines being used to define the contours of the pecs and abs (you've got good shading in there, there's less need for including the complete contour lines in the finished product). Some preliminary study of depth tricks and creative posing to give more a sense of full 3d rather than settling for a flat, face-on composition seems like a worthy next step for your progression.

Keep it up.

lol, it's a good thing you didn't ask him about web-swinging travel powers. that would've put him over the edge by the looks of it.

You should have seen what the Nem Staff did before they nerfed it. Smaller end cost, higher damage, faster recharge, full aoe, man.... I miss those days.

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This is gold dude, keep up the great work... roll with your inspirations!

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Correction! This is the gold dude. And Juggy's work makes the gold dude smile.

Great piece.

Question: how much do you want your subject to stand out from the background? It seems like the guy is smushed in with the glass and the foreground railing is smushed into them both. It's hard for the viewer to get a full grasp of the guy's positioning.

Perhaps try deemphasizing the background from being as intricately lined as the guy? Blur a little, possibly especially parts of the background that are right up next to the guy's lines. And perhaps shade the foreground railing a lot so it loses a lot of details that aren't really worth drawing the eye away from the guy.

Something like that.

Hmm... What would Malaise want to see on his sidekick...

The part of the article that got me was this quote:

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“We must continue to be vigilante,” Coyote said

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Last I heard, Kiyotee was not a vigilante. The conspiracy theory that this leads me to conclude is not so much that maybe new tutorial zones are coming or anything like that, but instead that something evil has taken over or is taking hold of Arctic Sun.

Try to fight it, AS. Help should be coming soon.

Mine has some similarities to your BAS. I detached the team window from the chat window, and moved the team window to the upper right corner, and then put the pets window along the right side slightly above the midway point.

The mission window I put in the upper left corner, (so that when I open the map or other subwindows from it, they appear pinned to the left side away from the central viewing area), then I slightly overlap it with the status bars and slightly overlap that with the target window.

In the lower right corner I've detached the enhancements tray from the power trays, raised the power trays a bit, and put the enhancements tray underneath. Very handy for quickly deleting junk enhancements when needed or switching to the full enhancements gui.

I always show the full 3 trays and always show the inspirations tray. I always only have one tab on my lower chat window with the basic social channels (local, team, sg, coalition, tell), and have a half-dozen or so tabs in the upper chat window with more abstract stuff (combat tab, rewards tab, raid tab, badges tab, npc tab, and so on).

That's a pretty incredible piece. The only thing that I can pick on is the inconsistent shading pattern on the silhouette, but that's extremely trivial. I love the subtle color play between the smoke wisps and the background. Especially how clean the wisps behind the hat brim but in front of the silhouette of the map brim have been rendered.

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Basically the best way I could put War Patriot to ya is Captain America crossed with Iron Man.

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Does your vision relate at all to Juggertha's Cap/Iron crossbreed?

It seems to me that the first thing to respect is basically free speech. Although that's tweaked a little bit as the forum is privately owned and operated, so the moderators' influences on speech should be mixed into this respect a bit. Other than that, if someone feels the need to speak, even with content unappealing to the majority, respect for that speech shouldn't be thrown away.

After that, it seems reasonable to approach the community in specifically the screenshots and fan art forum more the way they'd want to be approached, rather than being abrasive and/or abusive. I gotta believe the opportunities to synergize yourself here are really great with all the talent focused here. These opportunities tend to dry up if that talent is forced to own up to the obligation of respecting particularly abrasive free speech.

Now, since I'm a very very critical guy, (you should see how I beat myself up over trivial details of my own art), I've occasionally felt the need to criticize negatively on certain pieces presented in the forum. And I'm motivated on trying to work with the community than just barking at them, so my approach tends to be:

1) Is the thread good for criticism? This usually is satisfied if the OP directly asked for criticism, and has enough of a rep of maturity to be able to handle criticisms with grace. It's even better if the thread already features several posts where people have offered critiques and the OP providing well-balanced responses. If there's any doubt that the thread isn't good (not just average) for criticism, then I would choose not to reply in the thread, but instead respond in a PM.

2) Disclaim, disclaim, disclaim. Criticism can easily lead to embarrassment, (even if the target is mature), so I try not to carelessly eliminate ways the artist might want to use to save face from my well-intentioned assaults. After all, I'm no art authority, I just have my own personal but very ignorable opinion. (Also, if you're generally a great fan of their art, then don't hide that fact! Just be brief about it.)

3) Focus the arguments. Try to quickly hone in on the individual elements you want to criticize and don't embellish if possible. Above all make sure you suggest alternatives, or even better, reference similar works of art that can demonstrate the differences better. If all you're interested in saying is: 'I don't like the blue you used,' well, there's probably no need to go beyond your own personal space to express that.

4) Be brief. Criticism taxes patience. And we all have too many taxes to pay these days. Express yourself then get out of the artist's space so he can be more relaxed when thinking about it.

In the end, art is in the eye of the beholder, as cliche as that sounds. Every piece that every artist makes is pretty much up for extremely intensely judgemental review by the community. But the people in this forum are pretty nice overall, and I for one hope that continues.

I like it, although there are a few things that don't seem quite right.

The part I zero in on is the relation between the sides of the pecs and the shoulders. The shoulder usually falls more alongside the pec, instead of the pec undercutting the shoulder as is depicted here, (an exception would be if the subject is doing an exaggerated shrugging pose with the shoulders, as in a lazy "I dunno").

As you know, the hands also need some work, but I'm not so worried about them because you have the right idea in terms of general shape. They just need to be a bit bigger (a hand should be big enough to put a claw hold over most of the face), and other than that just keep looking at your own hands and improve your feel for the muscles (especially the chunky connecting the palm to the thumb) and joints.

Another solid piece juggy. Dude has thick thumbs, he must have some heavy power punch action going.

What's with the runes on the guantlet? They mean anything special? Or just random decoration?

lol! Is that an npc hanging from the chandelier?

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My first suggestion is to make the hips bigger. Round them out. Then thin the biceps. I don't draw any bulges in my women's arms. Maybe try ending the ribcage just below the boobs.


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Yep I agree totally with the hips. A bit less of a waist and a bit more of a round hip should really cement it.

You got the nice graceful chin in there too which helps bring out the feminine contrast to the male chin on the left.

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Then pick me up on your way to DJ's studio.

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Road Trip! I can't stand Taco Bell myself but if you have a Dark Jedi BBQ I can bring the beef.

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I'll tell you what I do to draw the sexes different.

First, women get no definition. Just think, skinnier. Unless you want a bigger woman. There are major differences in body structure though, get Maxim or sports illustrated and look at the waist, hips... uh chest and so on as you draw those parts.

The face is probably the most important. Couple of key differences between women and men...

Women's foreheads are more vertical.

Nose and ears more subtle, or elegant.

Jawline is rounder and subtle/elegant. Chin is rounded more and smaller.

The upper eyelid from the eyelashes to the crease is bigger on women. Makes a big difference.

The brow is flatter on women. Where it meets the temples it almost never sticks out. Its rounded flat.

For men it's the opposite. Try that stuff next time.

After I discovered those I realized how beautiful ALL women are. They are all works of art. I don't know how they tolerate us men.

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For just starting out, I would condense this advice into two bits: hips and jaws. Comic-book women tend to have emphasis on a rounder hip (usually with tinier waists to aid the illusion) than men, and in their faces women tend to have softer, more triangular chins and jawlines whereas the powerful men have bluntly-jutting, square jaws and chins.

With women you emphasize roundness (mostly in the hips), and litheness (mostly in the arms and face). With men, you emphasize squareness pretty much all over.

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As I said on DA. Not too happy about how the colours turned out


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Darn you're picky! I think it looks great!

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He's right though.

Still, first of all, there's a lot of goodness in that pic. It's a bit tragic to gloss by all of that so quickly just to focus on the picky stuff.

But, yes, there is room for improvement on layout and colors to clear up a bit of the confusion on the subject. Trial and error is a good learning tool and this was a good trial. I'm glad you shared the pic wolfy.

Yes your vanguard piece made it in DarkJedi.