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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 16:11:48 GMT -9
;D Vermin King, there is one "bubbahotep" as forum member, who has birthday today ! Watched the YouTube-trailer. OK, that's what American cinema is very good at: self-reflecting irony .
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 15:55:03 GMT -9
I am also one that will accept things on a humor level. There are some really awful movies out there that I enjoy because they are quite funny, if you ignore the poor acting, lousy effects and terrible plot. Anyone seen Bubba Hotep? I think the Holo Dancer is something that would be found in a Sci Fi universe. I think it would really get a lot of 'What the...' responses in a game to break through a bulkhead and find a room that contains only the Holo Dancer. I imagine that a sci fi bar would have one in every corner and a featured Holo in the center of the room. Nick removed it, which is his right, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be available anywhere. I think it is very creative. I never thought of it. I think it fits a futuristic theme. Once I saw it, my first thought was 'What mining colony in the asteroid belt wouldn't have this?' I frankly don't think it is all that much of an issue. But I don't have the reputation of my forum at stake. "Bubba Hotep" !? Mummy Splatter ? Don't get me wrong, guys, I know the temptations of cruelty, horror and porn, I know my dark fantasies very well, and I've talked about the violence-problem in gaming not excluding myself. So, no holiness for me. I only wanted to hint at the endlessly discussed ethical double-standard of erotica versus gore. Vermin King, well, THAT rest of your text makes me HAPPY . That's all I want. Being accepted as a contributor to further storytelling. I am feeling MUCH better now. I agree with you, verminking, cowboyleland and parduz, that my holo dancer caused very subjective emotions and opinions. That's why okumarts and me are irritated by the reaction of Nik, cause we seem to live in a very different visual/political/ethical cosmos. I've tested the forum rules with previews of my artwork. There was no intervention, just encouragement. So I've finished my work, which was rejected. What should I say ? But with the story-scenes of verminking ... everything is forgotten ;D. Nik is the boss, no doubt about that. But you, parduz and cowboy, should also say, what YOU want. Don't hide behind Nik's power of rule enforcement.
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 13:59:57 GMT -9
I don't count go go dancers or midriffs as nudity. Nope. I don't. If it is offensive to some, well, bring on the debate. Talking about our bodies and nudity is healthy. Violence on the other hand, I do have a problem with. My words, okumarts. I should also say: Talking about our violence is healthy. Vermin King, I stir the Nudity Pot, because my artwork was censored. And not because of "nudity", but because of "sexually suggestive" material. I think, the only material which qualified as sexually suggestive was the imagination and association of the censor himself. I've sent my holo dancer to you by your request, verminking. Do you want dancing girls and zombie-killing nurses only on secret channels !? Call me too sensible, but I don't like to be censored. And I think, that you got the point, that there are very close relationships between hardcore porn, splatter, gore and overall excessive violence. It's the dark side of our "hobby", let's face it. Nothing of that was shown by my holo dancer.
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 12:23:30 GMT -9
Dead horse alife again ;D. Well, Jose. Those legal regulations of media allowance by age are different from country to country. Here in Germany it's 6/12/16/18/21/illegal. Decapacitation Decapitation of Uruk-Hai in LOTR no problem for officials: 12 years allowance. The cinemas need income, the towns taxes . At what age of your students would you visit a masters/classic painters exhibition of your local art museum ? Let's say a Peter Paul Rubens special exhibition ?
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 10:45:54 GMT -9
[quote/]I'm always curious at the fact that some gamers still really look down on them. Many are surprisingly well written and superbly illustrated. I rarely see them in bookshops in the Midlands, Uk although the new ones are out there. I second that ! FF chapters could be training material for wanna-be game masters and authors. Quite dense and atmospheric. And those McCaig illus, holy doody ... . I think, the original puffin edition is somewhat a collector's item. People who own those books want to be buried with them. Cool links, Billiam, thanks !
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 10:25:30 GMT -9
The originals are jpegs ? Load them into GIMP, work with them as described and save them as PNG compression level 9. The order doesn't matter. PNG is a high quality, lossless format with good compression. It's better than jpeg.
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 10:16:05 GMT -9
That being said, if anyone does find erotic material on the forums, please report it and we (the moderators) will try to fix the situation. I think the forum members do a good job being judicious and I have not run across anything that I feel needs attention (and nor do I hope to). I've discovered this dead horse thread yesterday. Quite explaining. I should have read it, before I invested some time to deliver a holovisual table dancer for the SciFi-civilian Monthly Hoard of February. Maybe I am the first contributor to this forum, who was ordered to delete his contribution. I did it immediately. As someone who was censored this way, I have the right to kick a sleeping dog, I think ... so. My female human holo dancer was bikini/boots/lingerie-type dressed (a question of fashion). Her booty a bit exposed by her pose. No hard nipples. Her stomach shadowed by her arm. Why did I paint her ? Well, as an artist it's always a skill test to paint the (HALF-)NAKED human form. And if it has to show some subtle gentleness/sweetness, then that's harder to achieve than you might think. It's much harder than drawing a rotten, gory body. Some call sweetness "erotica" (which has a very long tradition in art, surviving all attacks of less free minded people, especially of Christian Church people, who had their own ways to deal with the "evil" of the human body - by self-flagellation or torturing/burning others, mostly females )). It's definitely not pornography, which exposes the human body in uncovered sexual action. And even in pornography there are many situations, which are qualifying as "erotica", kisses for example. I think, in this sense, my holo dancer qualified as sweet "erotica". It was intended to be that - and more. Second, there was a demand for spacebar decoration and background NPCs. I had the concept of an unreachable, safe performer in my mind. A female, who works in the planetary holovisual entertainment industry, her data sold to customers, who on their own live in a very harsh male-dominated environment, maybe on a military or prison planet. That's why I put some blaster shot marks on the surface of the dancing table. It shows some psychological connection between male frustration/aggression/fighting/war and the missing of real gentleness/love. I think, that's realistic for a Dark Future setting. It's a projection of current trends into the future. And I like realistic SciFi (with a Stanislaw Lem/Traveller RPG-background). Some people cannot stand realism. And I am the last, who would say, that children should see reality unfiltered. But as a grown-up I wonder, how some people want to filter reality instead of thinking about it. Of course, reality is painful. Always has been. That's why we are playing wargames and roleplay torturing Sith Lords to deal with our most painful, darkest corners of our souls and the dreadful collective memories of neverending wars and violence. We might think: "I just want to have fun in tabletop gaming", but on a deeper level we are acting out strong, archetypal, primal, sometimes spiritual (you clerics/priests/shamans out there !) emotions and thoughts, which might harm or heal us. This type of gaming is called Psychodrama in psychology. It's more powerful than you might think. That's why some roleplayers better stop or deal with their negative energies the gaming reveals. Like those torturing Sith Lords, Satrek mentioned. Do you know Overlord of Game Design Greg Costikyan's brilliantly written, cynical RPG "Violence" (1999)? Google it, you might find a PDF-copy. It's his ironical view of a degraded, sick game industry born in a degraded, sick reality. If you ever want a definition of "gore", then just read the rules. So, "gore" is fine, the forum rules say. "Erotic material" is not fine, you say, @nik. I would accept "porn is not fine", at least not here. But good old god Eros is banned ? Eros, the god of love, is the power behind all sensual AND sensible art. It's the lifeforce of art, you want to exclude from an artists' forum. It's pretty sure for me, that people banning Eros, are also banning Succubi (dark side) and love affairs of Sith Lords (lighter side, though dark enough) from their games. It's the "no-sex-in-LOTR"-problem. Dry, unnatural game worlds with tons of flesh, rotten flesh of the dead. I can imagine, that it was the declaration of my Holo dancer as a POLE DANCER, which disqualified her. That's a political issue, if pole dancers are performance artists or just stuff you aren't talking about. Which is sad, because for me, (good) pole dancers are performance artists. I thought, it would be wise to exchange her for a more alien natural form ... and voila, no problem. That's the Lovecraftian, puritanical way of solving the "sin"-problem - more tentacles. They show up again in extremely filthy Japanese "alien/SciFi/Manga"-porn. The circle is closed. Welcome to the world of game psychology.
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 5:53:23 GMT -9
Exactly that, Reivaj ! Most famous series of the early 80ties till mid 90ties. They are rising from the dead again, I think. Some new books in the making and several reprints (I believe, nearly 60 titles so far). When I was a teen, I painted maps of dungeons and land trips, reading, gaming, tossing the dice like . What a solo fun with minimal rules and "hardware" (paper) !
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Post by paladin on Mar 9, 2011 5:03:34 GMT -9
I don't know flickr. Seems to be limited in file/resolution size. But I've made a very pleasing test with the highest available resolutions of your ghouls and Indians on flickr. I scaled the Indians to 6x7.1 inches and the ghouls to 7x10 inches. Both blown up to 300 dpi and sharpened with Unsharp Mask (0.1, 5, 0), then saved as PNG with highest compression (level 9). You will get file sizes of about 3 to 4 MB, so they are too large to attach them here. They start to pixelate a bit at this resolution, but you will not notice when printed. Instead you see in GIMP how well they are crafted. Subtle coloring. And they are sharp. Don't worry.
The trick: use a 1 inch grid in GIMP to scale them properly. At 30 mm eyeline height a human mini should be 1 inch in height FROM FEET TO CHIN if legs and spine are straight, less if they are bend.
Hope this helps. If the scales are too different, you have to rescale them using a grid, but you can use your flickr pics. They are large enough.
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Post by paladin on Mar 8, 2011 13:39:13 GMT -9
My heart is sobbing whenever I read the words "Fighting Fantasy". Lately I stumbled upon this free 80 Mb work of lifetime love: "The Atlas of Titan" by Simon Osborne and others. A collection of all published FF maps. If you like old school watercolor/ink art (and you do, Billiam ), you should pick up this tome of inspiration: outspaced.fightingfantasy.org/ (choose "Gamebooks" on the left menu, scroll down and download
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Post by paladin on Mar 8, 2011 10:18:10 GMT -9
I need to ask what the purpose of putting things in the hoard is. It's a theme-oriented, community-building tradition. I think it's dying . Your work would fill the void. Beside that Monthly Hoard maybe impractical.
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Post by paladin on Mar 8, 2011 9:50:23 GMT -9
There is still a tremendous amount of potential for growth. Maybe we should look at some numbers, which are actually not scientifically confirmed. WotC's first market research (year 2000) estimated 2,5 million ACTIVE pen&paper roleplayers in the US alone. 1,5 million would play OD&D/AD&D, they said. 2008, after the success of D&D 3rd Ed. and before the release of D&D 4th Ed., WotC mentioned the number of 6 million ACTIVE gamers of D&D in all its variants WORLDWIDE. This could have been a marketing trick to boost 4th Ed. sales. Maybe you can add 2 million more players of different pen&paper systems worldwide. So for WotC there was a growing and prosperous market for pen&paper in the last decade, despite (or because of ?) the impact of escalating computer game tec. D&D 3rd Ed. enforced the use of minis and battlemats, 4th Ed. made them a prerequisite, following the trend of the mid-90 to HELP gameplay of complex rules by ACCESSOIRES like minis, maps and cards. I think this trend will be a standard in the future, because players of pen&paper get used to all those nice high-tec helpers like "MapTool", "Masterplan" and others. So for serious pen&paper players there will be demand for computer assisted gfx and gameplay and/or nice material to push around the real game table. There was a poll at games.groups.yahoo.com/group/dungeon_tiles/. I noted the numbers: out of 2500 answering members of this yahoo-group 74% wanted more gaming material 85% used 2D-material for online/offline PC based gaming 30% used it together with minis on a real table 18% used Print&Play 3D-models So what's the conclusion ? There COULD be some 8 million pen&paper gamers around the world. Up to 30% of them COULD be interested in generic Print&Play game enhancing/helping material - with a main focus on D&D culture (and Warhammer culture for wargamers). That's 2,4 million people. Interesting number. Beside those general assumptions you can estimate nothing for niche products. There are over 1000 different pen&paper systems out there. D&D is still the market leader since 1974. It will be always very hard to bundle minis, maps and rules and sell them as your own system, because you are competing against all those systems and boardgames already out there. I hope there will be a good balance between PC based and tabletop gaming in the future. Sometimes you can read posts of happy parents introducing their LOTR- and HarryPotter/FinalFantasy socialized kids into P&P-roleplaying. And those kids are astonished that skeletons can actually handle the dungeon door - that's way more fun than tricking dumb computer monsters. That's part of the future, I hope.
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Post by paladin on Mar 8, 2011 7:46:51 GMT -9
Oh, I didn't want to throw stones at you, cowboyleland. I just asked myself, if it would be ok to publish your work as Monthly Hoard. It always depends on the original creators legal point of view, if they wanted their material for free and private use only, allowed to be modified, republished, transfered to another license (e.g. Creative Commons 3.0) etc. Every contributor (like you, cowboyleland) is a copyright holder by law, if he sells his work or give it away for free doesn't matter. I am always very cautious in regard to copyright questions. I've also noticed, that Patrick was online here. I am very sure, he visited this thread. No comment from him. I've found no copyright/license information on his mentioned "gwindel"-site. So it's an open question what Patrick wants for his frontside minis.
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Post by paladin on Mar 7, 2011 14:07:01 GMT -9
The whole space combat series is really , Tommygun. The soft monochrome shadowing turns out well. And those glass helmets ! Almost photorealistic, like NASA pics.
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Post by paladin on Mar 7, 2011 13:54:22 GMT -9
Holy cow ! You are cranking out minis' backs faster than a Gatling gun cranks out bullets ... . Monthly Hoard of March should be saved by your diligent work, cowboyleland. Or are there any credits/copyright issues !?
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Post by paladin on Mar 3, 2011 4:53:53 GMT -9
Thanks, cowboyleland. It will do its job - as an overnight in-a-hurry.
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Post by paladin on Mar 3, 2011 4:36:14 GMT -9
Yeah ! The last one is also VERY dynamic. I should experiment more with Inkscape-vectors ;D ... this must be a great timesaver !?
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Post by paladin on Mar 3, 2011 4:26:59 GMT -9
Yip. Perfect shading as revgunn said. I think, it's also a very good balance between detail level and clearness/readability.
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Post by paladin on Mar 3, 2011 4:16:02 GMT -9
Hmm ... interesting ! Definitely cool header and font logo. Also the presentation pics are well chosen. And, damn , those player cards are neat ! I will have a look at this whole system.
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 17:21:17 GMT -9
Yes, I know, sorry, it would be more kid-friendly ... . Well, that ... (cough) ... LIFEFORM is still a table dancer. It has won several prizes of underground contests I do not dare to mention here in public ... .
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 16:48:57 GMT -9
I hate wasting time and stuff ;D. Once again ... . I think, this is more theme-agnostic.
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 15:39:48 GMT -9
She would have her purse inbuild - somehow ;D. Alien mother !? Would have been a temptation (and epic fail) too .
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 13:02:56 GMT -9
... or holovisual pole dancers
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 12:23:09 GMT -9
Next time I will listen to you, verminking ! You can send me your email-address in a private message on this forum, if you want. I'll send the PNG to you then. I would be glad, if someone puts this off-topic mini to good use in a game ... ;D.
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 11:19:52 GMT -9
Holovisual Projection Unit STARRIDER HPU-6 It can display remote life performance (miles away) in nearly realtime or replay any readymade data. Limited audio feedback. This unit is somewhat mistreated, but still a workhorse. A frustrated customer shot it with a blaster, because response time of data was slow. The unit shows performance data of Miss Mansatha Vox, popular dancer in the entertainment districts of this prison planet. [ DELETE DATA ] I can imagine sexually more suggestive stuff than a 30 mm dancer holding an invisible pole, though I am not very proud of Miss Vox's broken spine. I should have tried the old alien shopper lady instead ;D, chosen a more symbolic approach like Tommygun (big wrench) or a blood-sucking/spitting alien (it's kid friendly ).
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Post by paladin on Mar 2, 2011 3:35:39 GMT -9
I didn't have the time to make major changes. Me too. My dancer would not be much better without changing her pose. So please forgive Miss Vox's flexible spine and bootymania . @sirrob, my pic is 300dpi PNG. Copy and paste .
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Post by paladin on Mar 1, 2011 4:44:19 GMT -9
revgunn, yes, you're right. I actually placed two balls next to each other. Crack-contrast is very high, cause I've worked in B/W. I wanted her to bend a bit forward, pushing out her booty (her hair on the back should follow the flow too ). Therefore her upper body is shortened and you should see more of the underside of the booty, so more crack. Don't know, if this is convincing The digital anomalies (GIMP's "video" filter !) also give the impression that she wears nothing when looking at her frontside. That's unintentional . Anyway, blame the defect unit's chip for all faults ;D. Tommygun, can't help me, but I like the first version of the manga cutie better, I mean: her lighter skin tone and her face. A bit too much of orange (or radiation burn ;D) in the second version . Your second (proud) female is . Egyptian. Her face looks like Nina Hagen, famous punk/rock singer here in Germany. If we were not into "civilians" this month I would want to see her with a katana or vibroblade ;D.
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Post by paladin on Feb 25, 2011 9:14:41 GMT -9
I've never seen so much paper minis in one shot. Fantastic colors ! Thank you, Sanity Studios, for starting the word-of-mouth-machine. I hope you'll succeed with your game system and minis. Very professional showcase, indeed.
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Militia
Feb 25, 2011 8:55:37 GMT -9
Post by paladin on Feb 25, 2011 8:55:37 GMT -9
First impression: very good ! Some of the archers remind me of Tom Meier minis, there is some sensibility to your pen, labrat. They all seem to be handdrawn. Nothing can beat that in my opinion. No vector-tricks. I also like the historical feel of your work. One suggestion: the arrow-barrel on the right of the archers shows some contradiction in perspective. To make it all flat (bottom and top) is (I think) a valid option. I wonder, labrat, how much time do you need for one mini in this style and technique (with coloring) ?
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Post by paladin on Feb 25, 2011 8:03:50 GMT -9
Yes, they match ! Rotate the back piece 180 degrees, put it directly left or right from the front piece and they will match too. Two ways of printing layout. Up/Down or Left/Right.
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