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Tips for CoX players on making a prettier face
mashugana
Posts: 87 Arc User
I've posted a few times over the years asking for advice on how to tweak the face sliders / makeup / skin color / whatever to improve the female face in CO and make it more CoX or comic-book-like.
Anyone have tips or (better yet) downloadable templates of a 'pretty' default face?
FYI, in no order, here are the tips I've collected from the community over the years:
I find that making sure to minimize the muscle slider is a must, and slightly lowering lips and hand size helped quite a bit, also using heroic or average stances and the pleasant facial feature really helps me with an attractive female character.
Starting with the default, I always drag eye size, eye height, & mouth width down to 15-25%, then whatever makeup with eyeshadow to make up for the eyelashes. Nose width up a bit, chin size & width down a bit, and things can get fairly close.
Ditching the "vixen" stance and freakish back muscles comes first though, yeah. The ditzy airhead idle animation just makes characters look constantly grossed out by everything.
Also don't shy away from things like leg length for an over all picture.
The right eye color does a surprising change on the facial look. Sliding eye sizes and shapes helps a lot.
I also find that setting the hero's attitude to Determined gives the female characters a more natural looking mouth.
I think the Enhanced Makeup really adds a lot to keeping the face from looking bland, though just careful tweaking of the sliders can yield some pleasant results.
In fact you can get a few very different looks just by playing around with eye size and eye height.
Darker skin tones will make the face look more smooth in the game because the shadows will be less dramatic. Lighter skin tones will have the opposite effect. Makeup can be used to fine tune effect like sunken eyes.
Thanks for any help to those of us who are artistically impaired
Anyone have tips or (better yet) downloadable templates of a 'pretty' default face?
FYI, in no order, here are the tips I've collected from the community over the years:
I find that making sure to minimize the muscle slider is a must, and slightly lowering lips and hand size helped quite a bit, also using heroic or average stances and the pleasant facial feature really helps me with an attractive female character.
Starting with the default, I always drag eye size, eye height, & mouth width down to 15-25%, then whatever makeup with eyeshadow to make up for the eyelashes. Nose width up a bit, chin size & width down a bit, and things can get fairly close.
Ditching the "vixen" stance and freakish back muscles comes first though, yeah. The ditzy airhead idle animation just makes characters look constantly grossed out by everything.
Also don't shy away from things like leg length for an over all picture.
The right eye color does a surprising change on the facial look. Sliding eye sizes and shapes helps a lot.
I also find that setting the hero's attitude to Determined gives the female characters a more natural looking mouth.
I think the Enhanced Makeup really adds a lot to keeping the face from looking bland, though just careful tweaking of the sliders can yield some pleasant results.
In fact you can get a few very different looks just by playing around with eye size and eye height.
Darker skin tones will make the face look more smooth in the game because the shadows will be less dramatic. Lighter skin tones will have the opposite effect. Makeup can be used to fine tune effect like sunken eyes.
Thanks for any help to those of us who are artistically impaired
Post edited by mashugana on
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Comments
Something like this is a good place to start. The majority of facial features are similar in size to other parts of the face, or line up with them in different ways. Don't feel like you have to restrict yourself to this guide- obviously this is the "ideal" face, and individuals all have variations. But if you stray too far from it, you end up with characters who look 'wrong' or 'weird' and people can't always explain why these characters seem to look strange.
Personally, I'd say also to keep a character's ethnicity or country of origin in mind when designing their face. There are certain aspects and proportions that are more evocative of certain places, and can help you look unique.
Getting the face right is the most difficult part of CO character creation, and I really wish there were some good face templates out there. Or at least a set of pre-made settings in-game.
@kelpplankton
Oldschool CoH player, Lifetime CO and STO subscriber, animator and artist.
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Yes please.
I feel like "remember, legs are just a tad longer than arms. Don't set the leg length to full. You won't look hot, you'll look like a mutant" is probably the best advice one can get. Same for eyes, even the default eye size is MASSIVE.
What I like to do is have a reference. Pick a celebrity, and go for something near their features. I actually had a spot-on Natalie Portman for a good while. Having a pic of a real person handy really REALLY helps, since you can see where you're over-exaggerating. I mean, sure, all comics have a bit of a caricature feel to the art, but starting from that base framework and just tweaking a little bit can work WONDERS.
RIP Caine
Also, as a quick aside, thank you for all the in game advice you've been giving me and my CoX brethren in the CoX channel - greatly appreciated.
Make the eyes smaller? No! I want them bigger. Make the legs shorter? But they're too short as it is. Lower the muscle slider? But that's one of the best things about the character editor. That sort of thing.
Personally, instead of creating guides about how to make a "pretty" face, we're better served by asking for direct examples of pretty faces to help recreate some approximation of. For instance, say I find Sara Palin irresistibly beautiful and want my character to look more like her, but not exactly. That's a lot more specific than "prettier" just because we have an objective base to go off of.
Incidentally, I don't actually know what Sara Palin looks like, it was just a random example that came to mind.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
She looks like this....http://www.freakingnews.com/Sarah-Palin-After-Dark-Pictures-56990.asp
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
I get the feeling Champions hasn't received the care and attention it deserved, at least based on what I'm seeing and based on user comments. As I said elsewhere, a "single face" system can work - it does in ****. But it needs a broader range of facial sliders with a greater range of options.
Frankly, when it comes to face sliders, the ones here don't seem to range between thick and thin or big and small so much as "parody and believability." Seriously, who would use the maximal chin without going for a parody of a super hero? Or a Bruce Campbell knockoff meets Jay Leno hybrid, I guess.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
Oh c'mon! Seriously? Don't drag that political BS in here! That doesn't help anyone!
This is a thread about faces. And whether you like her or not, objectively Sarah Palin is attractive. And one of the reasons she's attractive is that she has very well proportioned features. I'd say she meets many of the qualities of a "Classic beauty".
Here. This is what she really looks like.
In fact she reminds me of Ann-Margret back in her younger days just a bit.
But that's a classic European idea of beauty. How about Zoe Saldana (Uhura in the 2009 Star Trek) or Halle Berry?
How about the incomparable Michelle Yeoh? A truly classic beauty who, by the way, is 49 yrs old and aging incredibly well!
But as to the face(s) in Champions. I'm of course a COH veteran. And COH had the advantage of having both faces proportion sliders AND a set of overlay textures that added a sense of realism and variety to the faces. And it annoys me how steep a learning curve it is in CO to get faces that look right.
It's strange to make this argument but... Without a lot of work, the faces tend to look too "cartoony". It's not because the CO face sliders are limited, it's the opposite problem - they allow you to stray a LONG way from what feels "natural". This is a strength in that it allows for extreme variety in faces and facial types. But it also means that it's easy to stray into "uncanny valley" territory. To make a face that just plain looks weird.
That's why the original face templates were so useful. They were quick guides to different facial types that were easy to use and with a little tweaking to personal taste, looked "right".
(UNCLE) One MORE thing! (/UNCLE)
Star Trek Online uses the same engine (or very nearly) that Champions does. And yet I feel that their faces look much better. One reason I feel is that - like City of Heroes, they have a variety of "baked in" textures to choose from. The skin of faces in Star Trek Online looks a lot more like actual skin than it does here in Champions.
I can't help but feel that just 3-5 of those types of textures made available to Champions players would make all the difference in the world to some people.
That's a lot of complaints, I know. But still - it's very possible even with the existing limitations to create faces in Champions that are unique and attractive. It's just that the learning curve is steeper than in COH or STO.
Which is why I think either putting back in the original face templates or us players creating our own would be very helpful.
for Human Faces and not for all the Demons and Bestials here.
I truly, deeply hope you are joking with that statement. I made absolutely no political statement with my post. However, I see no sign in your rather presumptious reply to me (quoted above) that you were joking.
If you think that my post was of a political nature then your gushy spiel about how fabulously beautiful she is must be considered as the same.
Be careful what you call people out for and quit over-reacting to an extremely harmless jest
To everyone else, ignore this post and please carry on.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Also, I'd appreciate it if the nose could move more. Right now, it can't move at all, you can just manipulate the tip into being turned down or turned up. That's not elongating the nose, it's just twisting it around.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
If someone could help me with getting screenshots of the faces I will certainly see what I can do.
Also, what are people looking for? I'll admit I have better tweaking abilities with female faces, most of my toons are females. But I play around with both.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Wait? Whaaaa..?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Actually...it's free to play now. You've got exactly two months left until they shut it down to go see the difference.
And for what it's worth....no matter how much you fiddle with the sliders...it's still just one face. Which isn't good.
In MMO's variety is a good thing.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
What do you need exactly? Do you want screens of all the different face "skins"? Or are you looking for what the COH proportion sliders do?
face 01 face 02 face 03 face 04
face 05 face 06 face 07 face 08
face 09 face 10
there is no basic quick and dirty option. what this game needs is more starting heads( in the same way you can choose different beast heads)
i would welcome starting options for different races.
well here are my tips
if you load the jpg into the screenshot folder in your game folder you can import them in at the tailor, feel free to modify or whatever.
i added some racial variety as well
female
1 2 3 4 5 6
male
1 2 3 4 5 6
I didn't realize there were both face shapes AND face skins/overlays. I'm going to try to tackle both as they can create different appearances. I'll probably go for the Shapes first and then see what I can do about the skins. This will take me awhile, but part of me loves doing stuff like this. I do have a full time job though, so be patient with me. *nods*
The only thing I can say is hop on and play around with it for now.
*Edit* I will also try to go through my toons and post pics and face sliders of my assumed 'pretty' toons. I have more female ones mind you.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Face Shapes are done. I did my best. Some of the faces feel like they have minor differences, but the differences are there. There are some shapes to the face that just couldn't be done exactly, so I hope you all are happy with what IS there. I will be trying my hand at the overlays/skins at some point, but there are so many.
I'm posting pictures that show the sliders so that way these can be used with body templates. I used the aggressive Eyebrows on the men. I also didn't adjust the head size to any given body shape/size so those will need to be adjusted accordingly. The pictures are on the large size.
Male
Average 1
Average 2
Average 3
Brute
Chiseled
Intellectual
Square
Strong
Thin
Youthful
Female
Average 1
Average 2
Average 3
Average 4
Intellectual
Square
Strong
Thin
Youthful
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Ive never even played CoH, and felt i've done ok making decent faces, and I still figure I'm going to use this.
Much thanks.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I love working on my character's faces. It is the most important thing ever, even when I was playing CoH.
I started Rogue Magazine in CoH because I was into fashion and style. I hope I would do the same thing here in CO. Anyway here is a sample of toons I've been working on. My styles are super thin women and cute men.
We used to have that... and then it got taken out along with preset body scalings for some reason.
And I will always be @DZPlayer122.
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there's something terribly wrong with the reward system...
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Original Join Date: Feb 2010.