I really like the lace collar and the idea of a coffee mug for a modern affectation. Maybe the occasional lace parasol to keep it period. For the scary face, I like the unhinged jaw look from the banshee scream image.
Here is a new image I found. It is actually a wall decal.
author: Margie K.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5631267
Had some ideas on Otto, so I figured I’d sketch out some of my ideas.
On the right, we’ve got combined Otto and Link (perhaps a Linked Otto?). I have a fun little transformation sequence in mind for this. Figured this was the toughest of the combinations, so I made it much more squat and bulky than Otto’s normal got-to-go-far form, but also less nimble (those fists are made for punching and grappling, not being gentle). Equal parts the Big O (of course) and the Atlas mechs from Mass Effect here. As for purpose for the tires on the wrists? Oddly enough, Power Rangers inspired a fairly devastating attack (it’s essentially just having a belt sander held onto you).
author: Mike
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5667896
Otto can be configured for a rocket punch, of course. He has jets and Leo’s skyhooks drag the arm back into place.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Time for that Mercury love. A more details design for the face (nothing says teenager quite like patchy, wispy whiskers) and three possible designs for under the jacket. I don’t really like any of them, but I do need to fish for ideas here. I don’t know if it is really that important though with it mostly hidden under the jacket. I’ll likely do a second pass over the weekend (if any input I get before then).
As for the symbol, I started playing around with a lot of designs but I think a more boxy design like the middle one below will look best on the jacket chest. I like there being a bit of a story behind the symbol. I need to check Kathrine’s backstory again to make sure my details are right, but I know that Harry’s (at least) a third generation superhero. Don’t know if any of his aunts and uncles are also superheroes (other than non-relative Uncle Chase), as they would make up the pips on the wings.
author: Mike
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5668441
It makes me wonder if this costume is a fusion of Streak and Tempest’s colors and symbols and so on. I can imagine it being a birthday present or other type of gift.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Bill G. said:
It makes me wonder if this costume is a fusion of Streak and Tempest’s colors and symbols and so on. I can imagine it being a birthday present or other type of gift.
Now I’m imagining his various super-speeding relatives giving him new costumes for his birthday and Christmas while he’s growing up, each of them modeled on their own individual design, color choices, logo preferences, etc. And since they’re all that Unstable Molecules stuff, they all fit for far too long so he doesn’t have an excuse to get rid of them. And if he’s going on a mission with his uncle Tom Swifty, he has to frantically dig out the costume that his uncle gave him two years ago. And …
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Asked a funny question: “Why does Otto need a humanoid body shape? What if it was more tauric in his transformed state?” Decided to sketch it out to see how it looked.
Think I could refine it more into a better (simpler) shape, but wanted to see what others thought.
author: Mike
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Mike said:
Asked a funny question: “Why does Otto need a humanoid body shape? What if it was more tauric in his transformed state?”
I can actually answer that! Otto walks and moves like a humanoid because he’s been doing it all his life. Even when he becomes a car, there’s an adaption that takes place.
Otto is his own personality and person, but when he was growing up, he learned to walk with Leo’s legs, to talk with Leo’s vocal cords, to coordinate with Leo’s body. His own memories are like that of a nameless playmate and best friend, growing up with Leo. When Leo installed him in the first car chassis, it was like being locked into a motionless body that felt like nothing he’d had before. Leo had to furiously write software that adapted Otto’s brain, and his humanoid reflexes, to the car’s natural form. The result was like a kid sitting in the fastest, most maneuverable wheelchair in the world.
The adaption has become infinitely better since then. Otto got a total physical rebuild, the software improved, and now he could be configured like that. The question is what would motivate the pair to do it? If Otto needed the speed and mobility of wheels, but still needed arms and hands at the same time, it’d be an obvious choice. The “GERWALK” mode of the Macross Valkyrie is basically this sort of compromise, but it gave Valks a VTOL mode that they lacked before - a true new capability, rather than just a blend of existing modes.
If Otto were ever actually armed (and that’s a hard sell for Leo anyway), that form, or something like it, could make for a Tachikoma-style tank body, with wheeled legs.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Okay, makes sense. I actually like getting story answers like that because art should help tell the story, not be completely out of left field. Baymax from Big Hero 6 looks like something that should be comforting and friendly because that’s what he’s designed to do. Likewise for Otto, he should look like what he’s designed to be, which is a person (if an artificially created one). That’ll help with my design work.
Speaking of design work, I guess it is time to unveil my ultimate… product? Outcome? The thing I’m going to use all these designs to create.
I love the image of the Masks iconic heroes (as viewable on the Masks G+ group) so I wanted to make something similar, but not the exact same sort of image. I really think a missed opportunity in that image is to use the back panels to not just show a different image of the hero, but to show their loved ones/secondary characters. I know it’s probably just conservation of design, but I figured if I was going to make something similar I’d might as well make the most of the opportunity.
It also helps make some interesting design choices. I could almost see Mercury’s backpanel being a Gale family promotional image and with his pose it feels like that legacy is bearing down on him. Similarly, we’ve got everyone important in Jason’s backstory (minus Hannah and Barbara, but I feel like those two are the “always talked about but never seen” characters) in his, but they’re portrayed in such a way that you can tell that Byron, Rusty, and Achilles are no longer in the picture. Or the Amari’s family photo (which I imagine Adam just wasn’t around for).
The only one I don’t have a good feeling on this for is Ghost Girl. I could just use some of her friends from the images Margie put together, but I don’t feel like any of them have been important to the story except for Power Pony. I thought about adding Ghostheart, but I don’t know if he’s left a big impact. Then again, this could just be me not having a good feel for that side of the story and I missed something. Might need to go through the recaps again and refresh my memory, I could just be forgetting someone important.
author: Mike
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5688008
Mike said:
The only one I don’t have a good feeling on this for is Ghost Girl. I could just use some of her friends from the images Margie put together, but I don’t feel like any of them have been important to the story except for Power Pony. I thought about adding Ghostheart, but I don’t know if he’s left a big impact. Then again, this could just be me not having a good feel for that side of the story and I missed something. Might need to go through the recaps again and refresh my memory, I could just be forgetting someone important.
I dunno what Margie has in mind, but for Ghost Girl, it feels to me like one living and one dead acquaintance - with GG literally and metaphorically in the middle, bridging the two - is as good a symbol for her as a character as anything else.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Bill G. said:
I dunno what Margie has in mind, but for Ghost Girl, it feels to me like one living and one dead acquaintance - with GG literally and metaphorically in the middle, bridging the two - is as good a symbol for her as a character as anything else.
Oh, I like that one. And I’ve got an idea in mind for it already.
author: Mike
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
I will give the Ghostess with the Mostess a nudge at this thread to get her feedback.
I do know that she has documented quite a number of acquaintances, living and dead, that can serve as artistic fodder. I love the idea of PowerPony being in there (since she’s a secondary character for a number of us). Maybe rather than just two characters, a melange of both the living and the dead, of all shapes, sizes, and spectral aspects, would be doable.
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5688180
I like the idea of PP since everyone is so taken by her. The other side my take iconagraphy from the graveyard, like her gravestone. I worry that it will take some effort to make sure the dead friend looks dead but not creepy.
author: Margie K.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5688231
Now I’m picturing a Caspar-esque “white sheet” type ghost forming out of the steam from a coffee mug.
author: Bill G.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5688264
As for my feedback, I think this is awesome.
The background cast for each character seriously pulls out what Masks is all about – teens trying to create themselves as adults through interactions with others. The power-slinging is secondary.
For Jason, the four background head selections are perfect (the only other one I could think of at this point is Amir, but we haven’t really brought him into the game (as of yet)); I agree that Barbara and Hannah don’t fit here (so far as we know) as important characters (Rusty’s importance, to date, has been more background assumption than anything else. I need to write up a flashback for that.).
Assuming you’re thinking a cross between the “Bohemian Rhapsody” single cover and (in alignment) “Hot Space” (hopefully not a “News of the World,” though that’s appropriately comic-booky, or at least pulp). Having the first three in more death mask (or just eyes closed) / shadowed, but Alycia giving me the eye (accusingly? angrily? uncertainly? yes!) is nice.
Part of me thinks Alycia should be upper right; I understand wanting to juxtapose Byron and Achilles across the top, but Alycia being on the bottom row seems to underplay her.
(Alternately, as I’ve written the above, maybe go for the BR album cover “diamond” – Alycia at the top, Byron and Achilles viewer left and right, Rusty (if there’s space to fit him) bottom.)
You may already be there, but I see Jason in slightly slouchy (teenager!) post, hands either in front pockets, hitched there, maybe on his waist, but not the proud Super-Guy pose. It would be interesting if the black of his shirt / nanobots somehow created the shadows in which the four heads floated, but that might make things more complex than they need to be.
In the legend at the bottom, I’d recommend having the initial (left-hand) “A” be either lower case (if the font supports it) or superscripted, so that it’s not “A Masks: A New Generation Game” which didn’t parse well when I first looked at it. Alternately, if there’s some way to shift the color between “A … Game” and “Masks: A New Generation,” that might help (or italics/oblique type, or underling, or something). Does that make sense?
Okay, that’s enough unsolicited advice. Again triffic stuff here, eager to see it develop.
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Bill G. said:
Now I’m picturing a Caspar-esque “white sheet” type ghost forming out of the steam from a coffee mug.
There will certainly be GG t-shirts showing up in Halcyon with that motif. Hmmmm … maybe she needs a cartoon series.
Charlotte, the Coffee Ghost!
The Coffeeist Ghost you know!
For a treat or trick,
She’ll catch villains quick,
But she likes her brew dripped slow!
She always says, “Ah’m charmed,”
'Cause it’s so polite to greet ya,
By bullets she’s not harmed,
She’s a java-jivin’ creature feature.
Grown-ups don’t understand
Why teens all love her the most,
'Cause she hangs around
Where brew’s fresh-ground,
Charlotte the Coffee Ghost!
author: *** Dave H.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
She puts the hostess in ghostess.
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
Bill G. said:
I dunno what Margie has in mind, but for Ghost Girl, it feels to me like one living and one dead acquaintance - with GG literally and metaphorically in the middle, bridging the two - is as good a symbol for her as a character as anything else.
I really liked that idea, so I drew out a rough to see how it’d work. I’m going to need to play with the shape, duality, seperation and the color values (basically everything, but I didn’t expect much out of “see what you come up with in fifteen minutes”), but I still like it. BTW, I have no idea who the guy on the bottom is, I just was using him as a stand in for a ghostly figure. My second thought is to have a ghostly/lively procession following behind the main figures, but we’ll have to see how that’ll look with the narrow size constraints.
Margie K. said:
I like the idea of PP since everyone is so taken by her. The other side my take iconagraphy from the graveyard, like her gravestone. I worry that it will take some effort to make sure the dead friend looks dead but not creepy
I could try an object instead of a person as the main figure on the bottom… I’m going to want to play around with that idea too. Ugh, I really need to tear through all of your image threads again for ideas.
*** Dave H. said:
For Jason, the four background head selections are perfect (the only other one I could think of at this point is Amir, but we haven’t really brought him into the game (as of yet)); I agree that Barbara and Hannah don’t fit here (so far as we know) as important characters (Rusty’s importance, to date, has been more background assumption than anything else. I need to write up a flashback for that.).
Assuming you’re thinking a cross between the “Bohemian Rhapsody” single cover and (in alignment) “Hot Space” (hopefully not a “News of the World,” though that’s appropriately comic-booky, or at least pulp). Having the first three in more death mask (or just eyes closed) / shadowed, but Alycia giving me the eye (accusingly? angrily? uncertainly? yes!) is nice.
Part of me thinks Alycia should be upper right; I understand wanting to juxtapose Byron and Achilles across the top, but Alycia being on the bottom row seems to underplay her.
(Alternately, as I’ve written the above, maybe go for the BR album cover “diamond” – Alycia at the top, Byron and Achilles viewer left and right, Rusty (if there’s space to fit him) bottom.)
I really like the BR diamond, but there’s a small issue… Jason’s body is going to block someone. It’s kind of an issue with everyone that I’m going to try and work around. My initial thought is have the diamond be Alycia on top, Rusty and Byron in the middle, and Dr. Chin on the bottom, and then position Jason’s pose so it mostly obscures Rusty, but it isn’t going to be a perfect solution since he’ll also obscure the Chins. I think I’m just going to need to do some tests and see how they come out. The back panels are definitely not supposed to be the focus, so I guess I shouldn’t worry about them too much. More to come on that front.
*** Dave H. said:
In the legend at the bottom, I’d recommend having the initial (left-hand) “A” be either lower case (if the font supports it) or superscripted, so that it’s not “A Masks: A New Generation Game” which didn’t parse well when I first looked at it. Alternately, if there’s some way to shift the color between “A … Game” and “Masks: A New Generation,” that might help (or italics/oblique type, or underling, or something). Does that make sense?
I really didn’t like it when I wrote it for all of the reasons you mentioned, but I couldn’t think of a good way to deal with it. I’ll see if the font I used has an italicized version (I know it doesn’t have low-case script). I might just switch to another font that does if I can’t think of something better (I’m iffy about trying the color shift. It’ll draw the viewer’s eye unless it is subtle and that isn’t really the intent.)
*** Dave H. said:
Okay, that’s enough unsolicited advice. Again triffic stuff here, eager to see it develop.
No, no. Totally solicited. Continue advice as it comes to you.
author: Mike
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5689116
I’m iffy about trying the color shift. It’ll draw the viewer’s eye unless it is subtle and that isn’t really the intent.
Light gray for the intiial “A” and “Game” might work – the “Masks: A New Generation” will be the same color as the “The Menagerie” above it. I don’t think it will draw the user’s eye much.
On the Queen diamond – Dad on the top (even if partly obscured, it will be discernable who he is), Dr Chin on the viewer left, Alycia on the viewer right (looking to her right at Jason to draw the focus back), Rusty on the bottom (even if almost entirely obscured, if there’s a head here folk will have some idea who it is). I agree that experimentation is important here.
author: *** Dave H.
url: https://app.roll20.net/forum/permalink/5689568
Alycia doesn’t have to be secondary just because she’s below her father. I also think you have a great opportunity for negative space here.
Perspective is 3D, rather than a 2D shape. Byron Quill left, facing right. Dr. Chin right, facing left - top row, furthest away from us. The two parental figures, facing each other in eternal opposition. Below Dr. Chin, partially obscuring him, is Alycia. She’s nearer/larger/closer. Her head is facing to match her father’s.
What would be her counterpart on Byron Quill’s side isn’t there. Instead, Jason is facing the camera, partially blocking either his father or both parents. He isn’t following their path, but making his own. Alycia was facing where he stood, but her eyes and hence attention are chasing him.
It doesn’t feel like Rusty, Amir, or the assistants have a lot to contribute to the graphic, even if they’re individually important in Jason’s life?
author: Bill G.
url: Community Forums: Art Thread | Roll20: Online virtual tabletop
