Vitaeleous

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Vitaeleous

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#1  Edited By Vitaeleous

That Ryan Ottley drawing-within-a-drawing piece is pleasantly out of place among the usual superhero fare. Might be the most conceptual thing I've seen posted on ComicVine. Well done, G-Man. You're branching out.

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This thread looks long defunct, but I'll toss a thought in anyway. I've been shooting for about 13 years now, compound and traditional (recurve/longbow - Hawkeye uses a recurve). They have very different action, that is, the string behaves is a very different way as you draw it due to the mechanics of the bow's limbs. A recurve gives you smooth action with increasing weight back to your anchor point, while a compound's action is stiff and mechanical with an abrupt let-off that lets the archer anchor and hold for minutes at a time while they line up their pins. This is another difference, not an absolute, but generally true: compounds tend to be fitted with an array fiber optic pins for aiming, with traditional archers opt for "instinctive" or "natural" shooting with no sights (the big exception is Olympic competition, which features recurves fitted with sights, stabilizers, etc., hence the sense it makes for Hawkeye to be referred to as an olympian in the Avengers film, and us a recurve with sights).

What this all comes down to, I think, is that Hawkeye favours a bow over, say, a gun. Why? Tradition, training, image, who knows? Maybe all of the above; it's all written into canon somewhere. But the recurve vs. compound answer is pretty simple; to use guns as a reference point, one is a pistol, the other's a sniper rifle. A compound is useless is close-quarters, reflexive shooting but perfect for taking a perch and lining shot after shot of supportive fire at range. The quick, smooth action of a recurve is good for most of the kind of shots we see in Avengers, but because of the way draw weight stacks it just isn't practical for the kind of time you need to hold and aim if you're sniping.

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Vitaeleous

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Vitaeleous

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#4  Edited By Vitaeleous

The design of the star kinda intrigues me. What they used in the movie made sense to me, because it's how I've always seen the star: red, five points, no surrounding field. An emblem of the Soviet Union. This toy, and Bermejo's cover on Winter Soldier #4, feature a star that looks like it was repainted to resemble Cap's shield, an indication that Bucky has changed allegiance. I haven't read Brubaker's Winter Soldier title (I will now, though), so I can hardly comment on issue-by-issue plot development, but looking at the covers there is no consistency in the star. On some covers it's the Soviet star, on others the American. This toy, with the Soviet ammo crate, Luger (?), and what looks at first glance like a Dragunov rifle, seems to be Cold-War era Winter Soldier. So are these artists choosing designs at random, or there a real contextual significance to the design? Feel free to enlighten me.

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Let's dispense with the "Wolverine" schlock. It's so played out it's starting to look like a Batfleck forum. Another thought...when will we stop asking questions like "Does Ollie have what it takes?", because at this point that phrase is pointless promotional rhetoric. We haven't seen him defeated, and therefore we can assume he'll prevail, especially over a foe as comparatively petty as this. So please, let's hype this battle without asking questions we know the answer to, and save the pondering for the episode in which Oliver and Slade go head-to-head in Starling City and hero's future is well and truly in peril.

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You're sure that's fan-made?

It isn't. That term keeps getting thrown around in a well-that-explains-their-lack-of-funding/dialogue/plot context, and yes, the vid is an unlicensed production. But in answer to your question, it was produced by a professional studio out of Los Angeles, Rainfall TV, something that's being rather overlooked.

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#7  Edited By Vitaeleous

My thoughts in full: http://watercolour-horizons.blogspot.ca/2013/09/what-went-wrong-woeful-wonder-woman.html

@decept_o: I like that last question, How much "story" or character development can one expect with this? I think that reveals a lot about expectation in the superhero genre. The answer is: some. Anything, even. If this is a "trailer", as everyone seems to be claiming,what is it for? We don't know; nobody is telling us. We aren't given the name of a single character, a place, an event, a date, even a quirky anecdote about war or a witty quip mid-combat. Epic music, that we have in plenty.

We (all) should note that Rainfall TV, the studio behind this clip, has been promoting it as a "short film", not a trailer. "Short film" is a term a lot of people take very seriously. That person might not be you, but it's worth it to recognize that there are festivals and prestigious awards for the Short Film category, and that if this video walked into one of those festivals it would be laughed out of the building.

Can we add another category of comment? People are here ripping on each other for being "negative", as if positive and negative are the only two possibilities in this dialogue, and one of them is "good" and the other "bad", on some arbitrary moral scale. Let's add "critical" commentary to the mix, because I think we should afford people the opportunity to critique a work of art like this without someone popping up to tell them they're a terrible person. Cheers.

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#8  Edited By Vitaeleous

It looks like we're all agreed (mostly, at least) that they did a solid job with the costume design. We finally get to see a practical Wonder Woman outfit that still holds true to the original aesthetics. I think that's really cool. But let's not kid ourselves about this being some off-the-cuff fan-made video. No, it's not a licensed DC product (you can tell, because it hasn't caused open war on the internet yet). But the production studio, Rainfall TV out of Los Angeles, can do better than this. They have done better. This project's been hyped on Twitter and their site for months at this point and the promo shots they release were superb. But in the end they churned out a poorly rendered FX demo reel with no story. It's a bit of a letdown. Nah...it's a massive letdown. I thought we had something here.

On the upside, we now know it can be done: it's possible to put Wonder Woman on the screen without her looking like a hooker. There's just enough Greek armour in that costume and enough badass in those Amazons to make Themyscira believable. All that's lacking is writing...so for those of you who haven't already, check out Scott Lynch's proposed shot-breakdown for the opening scene of a Wonder Woman film (http://scottlynch.us/blog/2013/06/26/in-the-wake-of-man-of-steel-a-timely-proposal/). Read it, and visualize Rainfall's aesthetic (minus that godawful flight scene...), and then join us in kicking DC's tires until they wake up and realize that this is something that's both doable and desired by superhero enthusiasts at large.

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#9  Edited By Vitaeleous

So, I dunno how many of you follow the show Vikings, but it's worth watching even just to catch Gustaf Skarsgård's performance as Floki. He's a boatbuilder, and an endearingly unpredictable psycho. With an axe. I also think he would play a superb Joker, based on the body language and attitude he embodies in the character of Floki. Having had this thought, I made a quick (and shoddy) photoshop mock-up of what that might look like. I must say, despite the rush and poor quality, I like what I'm seeing. Check it. I'd love to see other mock-ups of this casting done by people with more digital skill than I, and feedback from those who know his acting. Do you think he'd be a good fit for the role? Why, or why not?

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Vitaeleous

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