Techwright

I'm puzzled. I could have sworn the costume creator had a bisected option (that is color 1 on right side, color 2 on left side) for at least chest and legs, but I've been unable to find it anywhere when I went to redesign a characters costume. (Qualifier: I'm aware there is a mask-type option for the face.) Have we never had it? Was it an option that was removed? This feels like it should be a costume element 101 kind of thing.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to switch to decaf.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder how restrictive that might be for making continuity for the rest of the MCU. EDIT: By that I mean, The Bat film was permitted for tax purposes because they agreed to never let anything of it see the light of day. Would that be the same for CA: BNW, and would it paint the MCU in a corner, being unable to use certain characters, story elements, etc. I'm guessing the insane reshoots and price tag are seen as necessary because this movie might be perceived as a tentpole for the lore for all the future MCU stories. Sort of the way Age of Ultron directly affected the stories of Captain America: Civil War and Thor: Ragnarok, and through those Ant-man and the Wasp, Infinity War, and Endgame. (Maybe a couple of others.)

Anything to liven up the Tiki Club would be appreciated. Even the band just seems to be going through the motions now.

Haven't seen those reports yet, but you'd think after decades of expensive messes that Hollywood would realize that the first test group should be the same-sized group of viewers to read the script and give feedback. Until you hit 80% likes or higher, don't go into production mode. That, or give it to a literate 5-year-old child. That's just basic Evil Overlord List #12: One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

Thirty years is usually when the "everything old is cool again" kicks in. Just look at the wave of 1980s nostalgia that kicked in about a decade ago. We're just holding down the fort until the new generation joins us at age 16.

Make it a good-quality bratwurst or knockwurst and I'm game for it! (No catsup, but yes to a good stone-ground mustard.)

Did you have more in your collection than the 14 that Baum wrote? I did much the same as you, but at age 10. I went on to read some of the books written by others and considered canon by fans. Unlike you, I didn't own the books, I had to check them out from the library, so I sometimes had to wait until another kid finished a book, but it was worth it. I was utterly amazed when the movie Return to Oz came out, combining elements of books 2 and 3. The Wheelers, Tick-Tock and Jack Pumpkinhead were just like I'd imagined them. Disney, at least in the 1980s and 1990s had the rights to produce all the Oz books, or at least Baum's 14, and I was baffled that they didn't do so in the wake of the Harry Potter movies, when several other movie series attempted their own book runs. The Oz books are far darker at times than the Judy Garland musical would suggest, and IMHO, would have made excellent movies for the generation brought up on Harry Potter.

It's a good look for something deceptively simple in its composition. Use of the ankh symbol was surprising, until I realized there are no zodiac signs in the costume creator, a remarkable oversight for images with a lot of potential. (Maybe that can be added, devs?) Have you yet run into anyone in-game who doesn't get the name reference? I've been running the Aged of Aquarius for a while now and have been surprised multiple times by those who've no idea what he's referencing. Makes me feel...well...aged.

Side note: you just reminded me of one of the more interesting player-driven aspects of the old MMO Tabula Rasa. They had Friday Night Fights, where players would square off using that game's equivalent of brawl and try to defeat their opponent using only it, and some fancy dodging footwork. I found it surprisingly entertaining. Let's just say they now go by the name "One Punch Man".

"How you can see those characters relate to each other just with position, expressions and costume coding." Not to mention lines. My two years of being an art minor in college long, long ago have mostly atrophied, but I still retain enough of my art composition training to realize this still could be used to teach the next generation of young artists. Every line in this either points to the central two characters (even the "line" created by the storm troopers' helmets), or frames in the two characters by narrowing the broader space, much like rings on an archery target. In this case it is the diagonal lines started by the support beam in the upper right corner, the single rafters' beam to the left of Mon Mothma, the light/dark divide on the floor, and the diagonals behind the troopers. With a paining or a relief, I'd expect this kind of structure. The artist, as Bob Ross used to say, has complete control of the composition, but I'm always amazed at the movie camera achieving it, as there are creations not made by the photographer, namely the building in this case.

Oh, nice! Between Peter Sallis' death, and the burning down of Aardman Studios building (and the loss of all designs and props) I'd been resigned to thinking we'd never have another W&G. Happy to see I was wrong.

Considering one of the dragons sketched in the guide Hiccup read in the first HTTYD looked to be heavily influenced by the triffid on the cover art for the book "Day of the Triffids", I'd say a feathered dragon would not be the most outlandish creature in the HTTYD legendarium.

A Thunderbird actually makes sense. Some of the descriptions sound more reptilian than avian, which would pair nicely with a previously undocumented dragon type. Despite the mythical world of HTTYD, if they're going with Viking era, the population they should encounter would be the Mississippian culture, the predecessors of known modern tribes.

It's been a while, but at some past point I mentioned in the forums that possibly creating 7th slots for a limited number of powers as a reward for new, higher ranked Incarnate stuff would have been of interest to me. As to how it would be used, specific to energy blasters, I'd be able to compensate, on one power at least, for having to sacrifice one of my six enhancement slots for a "Knock Back to Knock Down" added enhancement.

That was the core problem of The Hobbit trilogy. New Line Cinema insisted on 3 films (seeing money signs, of course), and Peter Jackson (who replaced the former director at the last minute) and crew were forced into the unenviable position as to how to do that. They first went to the appendices and Tolkien's notes and scrap notes (Tolkien had been constantly rewriting The Hobbit to bring it more in line with The Lord of the Rings). That gave them the events of the Necromancer at Dol Goldur, but even exhausting these resources they had 2 large movies, or 2.5 regular movies. They should have stuck with that, but NLC was not satisfied, so then they invented material "whole cloth", and those were the big mistakes. With that we got the utter rubbish that was the character Alfred, and the ridiculous romance triangle (in lightning time, no less) of a dwarf and a she-elf and an opposing elf. Actually, the idea of a she-elf captain of the wood elves was not a bad creation and might have worked quite well, if focused solely on that. Trying to create any romance triangle with her was, however. There was also the in-mountain combat between the dwarves and the dragon. It's rather silly and just a time filler. It never happened in the books. Curiously, some of what was in the books was not in the film. It should have been. That is the birds of the Lonely Mountain. The thrush breaking nuts on the rocks in the book is key to finding the missing keyhole in the books. In addition, the dwarves for generations were allied with sentient, talking ravens (or was it crows?) much like the sentient great eagles. It was the ravens, at the request of Thorin Oakenshield, who alerted Dain and the Iron Hill dwarves to what was happening in the Lonely Mountain. I'm told someone had edited out most of the fluff, creating something much more like the books. To see it, one has to provide proof of purchase of a video of the Hobbit trilogy, though.

Despite the ending of HTTYD 3, I find great potential in the franchise still. Consider that it is a fantasy geography in the films, not a parallel "real" Earth. That lends itself to exploration, something Vikings do very well. Next consider that Viking lands were not the only ones fixated on dragons. So what's to stop the people of Berk from discovering Germanic, British (well, English or Welsh, since Burk seems to be hybrid Viking-Scottish), or even Asian dragons? Perhaps the "Germanic" dragons actually are the vicious types, leading to a need for the return of Toothless and Co. . Frankly, I'd love them to take a page from the Dragonheart franchise and have the Berkians discover Asian dragons. There's so much potential with that. In other words, there's no reason to rehash on an established masterpiece, and enough reasons to move forward with fresh material within that creative universe.

The teaser dropped for the live action version of "How To Train Your Dragon". Thoughts: 1. Good to have Gerard Butler back in the role of Stoic the Vast. I do wonder though about Gerard's, well, vastness. Had he lived, Ray Stevenson might have made an excellent choice for Stoic's physical presence, and Ray would have had the acting chops to pull it off. Still, Gerard's the man. 2. I'm a little concerned about some of the other casting choices, but not Nick Frost. The man will make an excellent Gobber. 3. CGI looks reasonable, but for a title of this magnitude, I feel it needs more polish. Also, interesting choice making Toothless' eyes a darker green than in the animation. I'm not personally sure if I like the change or not. I'll probably just go with it. I didn't see any moment at which the pupils moved to their signature squarish look. Toothless has very expressive pupils: round, cat-slits, square, and subtle variations on those. 4. And for my controversial point: Why? Why do we need a live action version, which really is a CGI animation version with live actors shoehorned in, I mean even the backgrounds appear to have at least some CGI,...(breathe)... so, why? The original film was a masterpiece. If we needed another run of it, polish the 3D animation using the latest techniques. Each successive 3D animated film in the series was visually better than the former ones. Bringing them to a new very-fine and final standardization, then re-releasing would have been fine for me.

I'm curious: did either or both of you have a youth steeped in the stories and writings from the Medieval and or Renaissance Ages? As the son of a bookstore manager, my life experiences were different than most, and Dad made certain I was exposed to many different historical works, making me perhaps more comfortable reading something stylized like Tolkien's writings, because I'd read works from the past. I'm probably off on that. I kind of understand because I have a love/hate relationship with Louis L'amour's works. He often writes, deliberately, in the style of a bard of oral history, and I find the pattern sometimes sets my teeth on edge, though the stories are very good. I also have a problem with the style of James Fenimore Cooper, but then, most people do as well, I suspect. Mark Twain wrote a scathing, satirical essay about Fenimore Cooper's works. To quote but a sample: "Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'Deerslayer,' and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record. " That said, I do love the stories. I once considered sitting down and re-writing them for my nieces, to clean up the issues, and give them a chance to enjoy the stories, but alas, that would have been a huge project.

I've never really thought of myself as a "worst side effect". Interesting. I do consider myself a mutant (the whole MC1R mutation), and as soon as we gingers learn to weaponize our ability to resist anesthesia, Pinky, we're going to take over the world! Just kidding, I'm more likely a candidate for the sidekick program at Sky High. I'm all for sending people to Mars, however, I'm not for making the trip permanent. I've seen some concepts for how we can create a stable base, or even a small colony, and I think there's merit to it, but a permanent population should be considered very, very carefully. Like, 150 to 200 years carefully. The more we consider all variables and test them, the more we create and develop, the better a chance any future permanent colony will have. The rise in good A.I. and probably combined with good robotics, should make construction and maintenance easier in the decades to come, not to mention discovery of new building materials. I mean, just consider that we now have graphene and carbon nanotubes, things not known when Armstrong walked on the moon. I'm also of the opinion that we need to be considering some sort of mid-point station, or perhaps stations, that can react in emergencies faster than a trip from Earth could, and could act as a layover point to give weary travelers a bit of a change of pace. What that mid-point station(s) would look like, I'm not certain. The design would have to take the movement of the planets into account, since Mars moves away from the Earth at times, unlike the Moon.

Iron Man 3 is set around Christmas, though its more a background to the film, except for a few big gifts at the end. The scene that introduces Killian to the audience is a flashback to a New Year's party. Whether the movie is "good" or not depends on what you feel about the Mandarin.

While I was indeed poking fun at Namor and the whole concept of "natural" or "mutant" tiny ankle wings being able to not only lift but deliver super speed, I could see Hermes footwear as a magic-based travel form. While on the topic of magic, I wouldn't mind a re-skin of the jump boots to resemble the magical Seven-League Boots.

I don't want to change how I think about Rogue One. It's my favorite of the movies. That said, I'm guessing Diego is referring to how jaded and morally gutted Cassian is at the start of Rogue One. Jyn's influence brings some balance back into his thinking. Perhaps the actor is implying that we'll understand better, maybe even sympathize a little, with his character's moral flatline in Rogue One by the end of Andor season 2. If it enhances the movie, then yes, I'm interested.

Little white wings on the ankles to fly you at supersonic speeds... 😉