The Forge Archives

Finally finished the draft cover for Capes (barring a few little additions and modifications I know still need to be done in the title-bar).  And I am now absolutely too close to it to give anything like a rational appraisal any more.

So how's it look, folks?  Any particular parts where you'd do something differently?

Heh... Sharks with lasers on their heads. Might need to color the water they're in more blue so they don't look like landsharks with lasers on their heads, though: At first I thought they were burrowing upwards through the floor (which, if the intent, is okay, too...).

LOL on the lasersharks, ditto on the blue water, though.

Personally, I'm not thrilled with the protagonist being a 'kid', but that's just me.

Captures the mood pretty well, I think!

Okay, I've got a worry about the blue water.  Specifically, tossing in even a tiny little bit of color outside the warm monochrome palette of the rest of the background seems (to my eyes) to reduce the amount that the colored pieces of the composition jump out and smack the viewer in the face.

Am I worrying over nothing?

As for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional.  In fact, even having been told that you see it that way I'm having trouble adjusting my perception... big old eye-areas in domino masks don't convey the same thing to me, I guess, due to years of indoctrination.  But I'll see what I can do.

Quote from: TonyLBtossing in even a tiny little bit of color outside the warm monochrome palette of the rest of the background seems (to my eyes) to reduce the amount that the colored pieces of the composition jump out and smack the viewer in the face.

Well, the Presumptive-Interest-on-a-String is already bright blue & gold (blonde), so a diamond of blue right under her shouldn't be too distracting -- in fact it might make a nice counterpoint to the big action splash in the foreground. Of course then you might have to change the relative placement of things to make it really work, which means [blood spurts from Tony's ears] redrawing the whole thing [/blood spurting], which might not be worth it at this stage.

Quote from: TonyLBAs for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional.... But I'll see what I can do.

Heroic stubble?

Quote from: TonyLBAs for the youth of the protagonist... wholly unintentional.  In fact, even having been told that you see it that way I'm having trouble adjusting my perception... big old eye-areas in domino masks don't convey the same thing to me, I guess, due to years of indoctrination.

What's happening is that the hero has a big, round/smooth face. That makes him look child-like. There's also a simplicity in the style overall that contributes to the hero looking young.

TonyLB,

It's the size of the head on the character that makes it look young.
People's head become as smaller percentage of their body as they grow up. The features are youthful also, but that doesn't bother me.

For a test, try shrinking it 25%.

Fun cover. Love the shark.

Gary

I like the cover. As for the laser shark, I didn't interpret it as coming out of the floor. On the other hand, you've already got the red laser on the shark (which is what made me notice it in the first place), so you might as well make the water blue.

The hero sure looks like a kid to me, though I didn't view that as a negative.

Thanks for all the advice!  It's really incredibly valuable to me to have folks who can come at this with a fresh eye.

I know that blue water wouldn't overbalance the composition.  But it would draw attention to the water, and frankly... well, the water's boring.  The dangling love interest and the red laser, they're fun.  I don't mind people's eyes lingering on them.

I have tried another in my bag of dirty tricks, keeping the palette mostly the same, but adding water-rippled reflections of the foreground elements.  And I think I've added about ten years to the face of the hero.

Newest draft is here.  Improvement?

Grey-but-reflective works for the water (nicely done, that).

And the hero is a little older. But stubble, dammit, stubble!

The water looks more like water, now, which is good. The hero looks exactly the same to me. I'm by no means an artistic person, but I can't even tell what is different.

I like the drawing, but I don't think it suits the game very well. This cover says "happy-go-lucky slugfest with tongue in cheek." The game itself (as I understand it) is an engine for much more ambitious sorts of play with the potential for a lot more depth and meaning than the cartoon cover suggests.

This cover doesn't say "Sure, power is fun. But do you deserve it?"

For the water, I definitely think it needs to be blue, but what if you go with a very pale blue/cyan?  Or a steel grey perhaps?  It doesn't have to be a bright or saturated color like the rest of them are.  It would make the sharks stand out better too (I noticed a red thing there initially, but had to look harder to find a shark attached to it).

I also see the hero as being very young, and I also think this is due to the head size - his head is as wide as his shoulders.  You might get away with this on a female character (using breasts and hips to show some age at least), but on a male adult, the shoulders just have to be wider relative to the head.  Using another comparison, the head is the same size as his entire chest.  (But the tied up woman's head is also as big as her chest, but we can see enough of her hips to know that she's got to at least be out of jr. jigh school).

Now, the impression this cover gives me is that you've got a tongue in cheek parody of comics going on here, sort of doing for comics what Paranoia did for nuclear holocaust.  It also strikes me as a game I should buy for kids in the 10-13 range (perhaps because the comics I collected through jr and sr high were much darker and more realistic).  Is this the right impression?

I have several unrelated thoughts about this.

For my part, I like the shark and girl in draft 2 the best out of those three - in 3 it seems like they are impinging on the action and drawing too must attention to themselves.

As for the hero's head...3 is slightly more adult than 1, but I would consider a different expression, if you aren't going to muck around with comic proportion (aren't superhero shoulders usually between three and four heads wide?), because that smirk is really taking the years off. I'm accustomed to seeing American comic adults having squared-off, angular features and small heads (check this guy... http://www.collectingfool.com/unpublished/barnett-captamerica.jpg ), so the hero here reads as "manga kid" to me, especially as large heads are pretty common in the Japanese style, and the hanging woman reads as "big-headed manga chick" to me, also.

I don't know how you could do this, but maybe by introducing some depth between the robot and the hero--indicating that he is much farther away from us than it is--it would make us reinterpret his scale, making him seem bigger than the robot, rather than much smaller.

I agree with Justin, the impression I get of the game from the cover is different from the impression I get of the game from the design (which admittedly, I've not been keeping up with) - it's very "punch, kick, save the girl!" rather than "Power is fun but do you deserve it?" - although how you would convey that through a cover, I'm afraid I don't know.