BSG Season 3 spoilers

http://aaronrutkoff.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/is-america-ready-for-a-cylon-president/

Koschei:



I edited the result in Photoshop to move the gun to the left hand, engrave the blade, return the end of th etie and improve the feet. Sadly the program doesn't seem to do lace-ups for the ladies unlike Heromachine. The red is meant to be something like the stripe down Han's pants in the Star Wars films

Yeah, I just found that last night. It's utterly brilliant.

Pretty much, except it should take you to the wiki entry

Have you seen the Director's Cut? The romantic subplot and immortality issues are much more prominent and it's a vastly superior film as a result, so I can kind of see where he's coming from - kind of. Ultimately the best realization of the concept would be a fairly equal blend of the three, though I admit that doesn't sound like what Davis is shooting for.

I think my main problem is that the modern romance (a) is simply repeating the story beats of the original, and (b) suffers from a critical lack of chemistry between the participants.

The Director's Cut is exceptional, especially the part with the Nazi officer and how it relates to his secretary. "It's a kind of magic. Heh, heh, heh." The line carries so much resonance for later in the film before he goes to fight Kurgan.

All that was in the cinema release version as I recall.

I did see the film while I was in high school

Saw it at school camp. Loved it at first sight.

Bwahaha.

In a way, reminiscent of the forced feminisation body horror of the Alien but potentially made worse that it's happening twice.

He giveth with one hand and takes with the other...

Iron Man writers tackle Highlander remake.

I think I must have missed something, because according to Peter Davis, producer on the original and new film: "romance was key to the series' popularity and will be a central theme in the new film. I would hate to think that people viewed 'Highlander' as a sword fighting movie because it's much more than that. The issues of an immortal falling in love with a woman and knowing she's going to grow old and die in your arms, those are very romantic issues to deal with."


As far as I'm concerned, the cool thing about Highlander was the guys with swords fighting through the ages in search of the Prize. The forensic examiner was pretty much a standard heroine in distress used to initiate the final confrontation and act as (how I hate the term) the audience identification figure. The women in II and III were even more redundant.

Come the series, it wasn't Duncan and any mortal chick that grabbed the largely female audience, it was Duncan, Richie and Methos and the simmering sexual tension between them. The central relationship in Raven was more about a lawbreaker and a cop working together (and was essentially repeated verbatum in Birds of Prey).

I feels all warm & fuzzy over this.

I personally quite dislike the overtly demonic take on4th ed tieflings. They're pretty much epic fail ever since they first showed them, but given they're still relying on the jack ass who redesigned dragons for 3rd ed it's not too surprising.

Of course, the first cover drank deep from the fountain of suck.  Like licking the bottom deep.  The new one doesn't strike me as too terribly much better, but at least Satan doesn't appear on it. 

I'd quite forgotten that they'd had a different cover originally.

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Comparing the two, it's interesting to note the body language:

Old cover has the spell caster backgrounded, but with chest thrust aggressively forward and arms reaching bckwards to summon power; similarly his staff is behind his body, providing support. The fighter is similarly posed aggressive, but quite obviously she's focusing on something completely different to her companion -- well, one hopes she is because otherwise she's in an utterly ridicuous spine-twisting pose designed solely to show off her tits and thighs. More than that, Mr Satan there is clearly the focal point of fthe image, as his pose is quite naturalistic while the chick is contorted to fit into th space around him, the space that he has made available.

New cover has pretty much reversed everything except gender positioning. The spell caster is now out front, but being soft and unarmoured (and displaying more flesh), her bodylanguage depicts her as recoiling from the fourthwall -- her staff is beforeher as a shield, the fireball a smaller & defensive demonstration of power -- but at least her still obvious posedness looks more comfortable. All the aggression has been transferred to the fighter -- who looks even more monstrous than Mr Satan -- with everything about him being sharp and aggressive and ridiculously oversized as he obviously prepares to attack. Strikingly, this is also the first time I've noticed the indistinct figures of the rest of the party in the background

Just for point of reference in response to the "busy" vs. "retro" stance, here's a few pieces of reference I looked to for inspiration:

Man,  I so deeply <3 the original PHB cover, not least because instead of just showing stuff it tells a story.

I think I might have figured out the complaint.  It's not that the cover is too busy, it's their eyes.  I can't find a focus point in the Fantasycraft cover.  On the Blue Box, your eyes go straight to the dragon.  Warhammer, like the first edition Legend of the Five Rings RPG, has a prominent hero at the center of the melee.  There is no doubt that the AD&D cover is about that statue being looted.

What's the first thing your eyes go to with the Fantasycraft cover?  Yeah, it's awesome, but where do you first focus?  The... giant... hand?  Then maybe to Hannibal Halfling?  You have to pull back to see the party, and then further to discover the unique point of view.  If you have a frame a reference, your mind will then resolve the whoop ass taking place.  If you don't, you are lost.  It is so old school you have to have graduated from the school to know.

I think it's quite obviously the teeth. But more than that, the cover has at it's very centre a giant hand radiating out from which are halflings, elves, monsters, magic, treasure... The cover says "Fantasycraft: you'll eat it up!"

Some less than flattering on-set images of Snake Eyes

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And for comparison, the official (and now suspiciously poorly lit) images:

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Ben has gone on to do the majority of our interior pieces and the unifying effect on the look of the book has been very impressive.

A unified artistic aspect to a gamebook is a truely great thing (unless like the original B5 RPG it sucks which happily is far from the case here). Most books can't manage it, and many of those who do only go so far as a house style (D20 Modern again springs to mind).

The cover art for Fantasycraft isn't busy, it's dynamic, something that the art of the core D&D books lack. Not only does the D&D art come across as posed, the artist's style tends to blur the focal point (the characters) into the background, and are generally murkily coloured.

Yeah, the 4E covers are kinda drek

That's mainly a layout issue - I'm not a fan of the way the covers are structured or composed, even though that chick is quite hot in a delightfully ethnically unspecific sort of way.

Howefer, I definitely continue to loathe the cover of the core Spycraft book and how it looks like a uninspired knock-off of D20 Modern.

Still, not exactly combining the Joes and the Gate.

Anyhow, this Dungeon thing is great. Especially now that I've gotten my hands on the wiki, and have managed to work 2 direct references to Doctor Who into the setting. (one of which results in the invasion of Tibet)