Covers - The Incomparable Decorum

[Paradox]

I've been using screenshots and graphics manipulations to make covers featuring my City of Heroes main character, Decorum. Feel free (in fact, PLEASE!) to critique. I'm interested if people think the strengths and weaknesses are the same as I do.

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/1375/decorum17zv.png

http://img289.imageshack.us/img289/233/decorum26rw.png

http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/4410/decorum32dh.png

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8310/decorum41du.png

[Paradox]

http://img347.imageshack.us/img347/2796/decorum52hz.png

http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/1411/decorum6ld2.png

http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/5852/decorum7fy9.png

[howyadoin]

Some funky stuff there. It's pretty obvious what comics you grew up reading.

The one critique I'd offer is that your camera angles are kind of static. The "Streets of Paragon City" cover, for instance, could really benefit from a worm's-eye-view angle.

(I also think the Silver-Age style lettering overpowers the images a bit, but that might be a matter of personal preference.)

[Paradox]

Ha! Yeah, part of Decorum's concept is that he's Silver Age all the way, baby! He's my "homage" to the SA Superman, so some of that stuff you're noticing is intentional (the trade dress, the lettering, the caption boxes..). Wait until you see him in his "Thunderfist" phase, which is my homage to the hideous Electric Blue Superman from the late '90s. Good lord I'm a mega-geek! :D

Worm's eye, huh? I'll give it a look. It's a little difficult in CoH to do that, because if some object's behind the camera (in this case, the ground), the shot zooms in a great deal. The camera rests on on whatever surface is closest in a direct line of sight behind (to a certain maximum distance, anyway). Part of the static repeated angles has been bothering me, too. I've since stopped taking "snapshots" and started taking "mini-movies" using a demorecord tool that will also dump out the frames into individual shots so I'm swinging the camera around more to give myself a bigger variety of angles.