Monday, May 01, 2006

The Content Dilemma

One of the thinsg I do in between coding is the artwork for Kudos. I'm no expert, but thankfully Poser 6 makes me look good. Coupled with lots of trail and error, and an account at Istockphoto.com, I can just about pull it off.
The problem I am facing right now is a lack of character variation for the game. Poser 6 is great, but you get 2 (yes TWO) adult models, called Jessi and James. Now you can morph them, change the textures a bit, but they still look pretty similar. I can't get my people to look convincingly black or asian, so right now, the game is set in a racist suburb of London. That's not good. Worse still would be me trying to apply some RGB tints to flesh tones and thinking it looks ok, it does not.
Now it wouldn't be a disaster if there were just buckets of purchaseable extra figures for Poser, but in actuality all you can get is a japanese girl and a japanese middle aged man.
Thats not enough.
If you are a character artist, you know your way around poser, and you have spare time, knock up half a dozen new base characters, and sell em online for $30 each. I bet you will be suprised how many sales you get.
Or if you are a texture artists knock out a dozen different face textures for the existing characters. I want freckles! I want Scars! I want variation dammit, and the face editing room just doesn't vaguely cut it.
What with the imminent purchase of FRAPS, this new japanese character and ongoing sound effects costs, its good that Democracy has had a bit of a sales surge lately.