Attache

Taghuso really liked Liberta so he gifted me this piece of her after I'd been in the All-Star Sentinels of America for a while. It was always an amazing surprise to get the gift of art. Disclaimer: I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

I remember! Satin Doll and Neowolf! I was slowly working towards this one! 🙂 Good to see you here, man!

That is an awesome piece of work! Very cool!

Thank you!

A lot of my early commissions came from taghuso thanks to things like friend prices and outright freebies. He did this one in a little more of a cartoon-style. The Chrono King is Doctor Epoch's arch-nemesis. He also *is* Doctor Epoch from about 10 years in the future when personal tragedy turned him into a villain. When I re-rolled Doctor Epoch and the Chrono King after Time Manipulation was introduced to the game, I lost the ability to Level Pact them (they were on separate accounts) so getting them back to 50 was pretty tedious. Disclaimer: I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

Thank you very much!

Commissioning art kind of faded from my interests but the first piece I got commissioned was kind of a lark. By 2010, I was earning a ton of overtime each week so I budgeted out of that excess and reached my pinnacle of getting work done through most of that year into a bit of 2011. As I recall, around that time I had some artists ghost after payment without producing the work and a couple of commission I was not pleased with so I bowed out.

The next piece was also courtesy of taghuso and came with a little bit of backstory. A few people in our SG - the All-Star Sentinels of America - had been talking about getting a commission from an artist named Douglas Shuler who was mostly known in the CoH community at the time for producing these digital pieces that bordered on the photoreal. He was kind of expensive and getting people to organized for a team commission was a little like herding cats so by the time I got everyone on the same page, Doug had stopped responding and it fell apart, I felt kind of bad for the diehards who had committed early so I took what I would have spent on that commission and asked Tag to whip up this homage cover to the first appearance of the Justice League as a kind of thank you to the folks who has been in early and made things painless.. None of these characters are mine but they are, clockwise from the top, Astromarvel, Doctor Gorilla, Maiden Glory, Spirit Panther, and Lord Liberty. Thread Disclaimer: I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

Part of what got me into commissioning art is that the SG I joined via Liberta (see above) had its own resident artist. I had already reached out to taghuso for a commission of my first alt in the group, the mysterious time-traveling Doctor Epoch - Grav / Kin Controller well before we had any of the Time powers. Originally, Doc had a gold cape with green lining (see right) but shortly after this commission was delivered, Tag had included Doctor Epoch on one of the SG's faux comic covers and had mistakenly colored it solid green. It looked much better so he was kind enough to do a quick re-coloring for me (see left), cementing his look until the end of the game. Taghuso came back for a bit on Everlasting but didn't stick around. He still seems to be taking commissions pretty regularly and back in these days he was fast as lightning. I once commissioned a character from him and it was done in two hours. Ah, the benefits of being pals! Thread Disclaimer: I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

My first commission came courtesy of Randy Kintz or rantz as he was known on Deviant Art. The character is Liberta, my Broadsword / Invulnerability Scrapper back in OG CoH. Today she is a Staff Fighting / Invulnerability Brute, hoping beyond hope that a proper Greco-Roman spear gets introduced into the set. Liberta was never this busty but it was kind of Randy's style at the time. I recall I provided him a reference on a Roman Belt as the none of the belts in the game in 2007 worked very well. The bracers and arm bands were his interpretation. I'd love to have some neck jewelry like this in the game. Thread Disclaimer: I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

I am not an artist. However, I did briefly get into commissioning art from about 2007 to 2011. While I look back at it now and feel, yeah, I certainly could have used that money for other things I really have no regrets. The commissioning community back then was pretty awesome and I met a lot of cool people. I hooked up with most artists through Deviant Art so where those accounts are still active, I will link to them. Thread Disclaimer: Again, I am not the artist of any of these works. In most instances (though not all) I merely created the characters in City of Heroes. Sometimes, I directed the artist with lots of notes and other times I let them do their thing. The late 00's were a different time and not all design choices then would be the same today.

I have a decent number of characters that get random compliments as I run through Paragon City but the Actioneer™ is never one of them. It's a shame really because I've always loved his look.

Groundhog the Dev? The one who always repeats themselves?

Never has someone so appropriately named so appropriately commented. And, hey, I'm with you - it always seemed a bit weird for something named the Spring Fling to be over by March 2nd but given that it centers around Valentine's Day, they are locked into having it on or around February 14th, no?

Should we all be Flinging some Spring right about now? Did I miss an announcement?

I touched upon that in the bottom portion but if you are going to keep animal ears with ears, there may be some folks who want both. I have a huge muscle-bound character who dons what are supposed to be plastic bunny ears from time to time so it makes sense that he would still have regular ears too. I'm sure it would make people unhappy but considering their location and with limited attachment points, they fit better in Detail 1.

Oh, wow! Only a few people know this fun fact but the Blue Weasel does occasionally work with Hero Corps! 2022 Blue Weasel B.costume

I renamed my Level 50 character Asia and released it into the wild. It was a cool name and mythologically accurate for an Oceanid but I wanted one not so linked to a continent and found something that sits a little better. Have fun!

Maybe I was an otolaryngologist in a previous life but I've been semi-passionate about the way ears are dealt with in this game going back to Live and I felt and feel like I'm alone in the wilderness. Just seeing if anyone else cares or agrees with me would be lovely at this point and would do wonders for my self-esteem. My job is ending in April and I need a boost of confidence to go sell my tired, old surly ass in a succession of job interviews. Pet Peeve. I really NEVER liked the perfect little vacuum-sealed ear shape you get when using the Full or Standard mask options. See example: I know that since our masks are a simple recoloring of certain parts of the face with no real texture and that adding texture is probably nearly impossible given the game's age and graphic limitations. This is why I think taking the covered ear look from Spectrum or Ninja or Bonehead and adding a colorable Covered option to Ears would go a long way towards selling our masks as an actual piece of cloth pulled over our heads. Forgive the rough photoshop example: So much better and since a full graphics upgrade is something out-of-reach for the game, this goes a long way towards updating the look. That all being said, inexplicably exposed ears also have a rich tradition in comics so there should be a Skin sub-option on the Human ear. Since we have skin options for the other Ear types, I'm assuming this is doable with having to reinvent the wheel. Again, forgive my hasty photoshopping. Am I a huge fan of this look? No, not really but I can see it working with many of the mask options very well. Again, it is something that that gives a boost to the character design without tearing everything down to rebuild it. A patch, yes, but a doable one. ((My other thoughts are probably more controversial so maybe I will do a Part 2 but let's start here and get some feedback. We can talk later about how the various Animal Ears should really be in Detail 1, about how there should also be a None option for Ears so that people wanting to use the various head-mounted Animal Ears as their actual ears shouldn't require them to pick a face without ears or pick a hairstyle that covers them. And I'm sure I'll hear from someone who thinks clipping their Imp ears through their Ear Muffs is the best thing ever but I believe you get more cool design choices moving all ear-covering pieces into Ears than you do keeping a character from having both Eye and Ear pieces at the same time. ))

Spear. I just need a basic, Greco-Roman spear and while the staff animations don't really represent traditional spear fighting, at least the poke moves favor the same end and you can make that the pointy one. It'll do. I'm always loathe to criticize the volunteers that operate the game because it is such a thankless task and I am infinitely happy that they are doing it but if you forced me to make a critique it would be that there isn't just a ton of new costume and weapon options dropping in the issues. The one thing this game proves 18 years out of that the die-hards don't seem to much mind doing the same 5 things to level ad nauseam and while new content gets some initial interest, it fades soon enough before we are back on our MSR, ITFs, and PI teams. More costume and weapon options expands themes and more themes mean more alts and if you can fire my imagination to make more characters, I'm going to be here for a very long time.

Hey folks! Happy New Year to you all! When I first got on the game way back when, one of the things I really dug is when you would be hanging out in Atlas, some citizen passing by would casually mention one of the heroes present and their latest mission. It was such a small, simple thing but it made you feel part of the world and its ongoing story. Sadly, since so few of us are running the story arcs (save through Ouroboros), you don't hear it much anymore. I'd love to see some more immersive moments added that aren't dependent on how you are playing the game. I'll start: It may be the silliest thing ever but whenever I see the NPC crowds in Atlas cycling in the waiting animation while a police office addresses them, I think something can be done here. You know the scene I mean: Now, what if they went into their active animations whenever a hero went and stood next to the cop for a few seconds. What if they shouted a few questions? I'm guessing proximity must work to trip these kind of comments since NPCs would do it unprovoked as they passed by - I just don't know if it is possible to have it delay some few seconds so it seems the various reporters are acting with intent, rather than just mindless looping. That way, every passing hero won't get this reaction - they need to stand there a moment - but that said it may be cool to have the occasional reporter call out "Oh, hey! It's Runaway! Runaway, do you have any thoughts on what happened in Galaxy City?" What immersive moments do you like in game? Or would like to see added?

Now I'm thinking of that one sad dinosaur who was looking forward to the end of things just standing there with his absurdly large body and a banner that says "Go Meteor!" in his tiny hand. Looking up hopefully and just waiting.

KB kind of blows when you are not the one doing the KB, then it is pretty fun. I'm not necessarily a fan - there is a reason my Energy Blaster doesn't get a lot of play - but given how prevalent it is in the source material that CoH should be emulating, I embrace it. So it takes another few minutes to clear the map - why do I care? Do I have a wife waiting for me to come to bed? Kids waiting for me to help them with their home work? A rewarding career I need to get my rest for? /e grief KB led to one of my favorite moments since I've been back! I had fired up Wormhole on a mob for the stun just as a teammate hit nova and sent them all flying and I sucked all the survivors back into a tight little stunned knot. Everyone thought it was an fun moment and planned but it was just happenstance. I've tried to recreate it with some success but never with such precision as the happy accident.

I dig it! Opens up a some cool thematic options!

My original version of my character Crackdown on Live had a mace that he obtained while helping some Warriors do a heist as part of his initiation but when I did the re-roll for Everlasting, Street Justice felt like it would fit the overall concept better.