When taking armor pictures for the wiki...

1. How do you make the charracters 'pose' for the screenshot, on guildwiki they stand tall and stiff with their arms against their body, on the official wiki they hold their arms and legs wider, but still stiff.

2. WHY do you do that? Both of these positions are unnatural and the charracters wil never look like that. Since the pictures are supposed to present armor shouldnt they look like they should?

I mean compare these two pictures. Which one describes the armor and how would it fit on a charracter better?

What bugs me about the Real (="unofficial") wiki is that everyone makes them stand to attention. This serves no purpose...i don't get a good enough idea of the armor when a character goes into a stupid Pose. I much prefer the image on the right...a character just looks stupid in a pose.

You cannot make them stretch their arms like this.

These images have been uploaded by ANet's design liaison Emily Diehl, which contributes in this way to the Wiki.


I prefer this over player uploaded pics, but it also has its drawbacks:

Check here:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Range...ur-Lined_armor
and
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Talk:...ur-Lined_armor

The "real" armor ingame has some glitches that are not visible on the idealized rendered Wiki display of the armor at all.

It also discourages me from uploading GWEN Armor screenshots, why? They are probably replaced with a perfectly rendered image sooner or later. The drawback is again that these look just better than the armors do ingame, hiding any glitches and just looking a lot worse in reality.

As far as I'm aware, the pictures on the Official Wiki are provided by ArenaNet's armor art department, and as a result they're provided in the default modelling pose which can't be replicated in game. These pictures are high quality and are close in many ways to what you see on max graphics in game. If you go into the sections for each armor, you'll also see the armors posed by players in their component form in the more natural pose.

The Unofficial wiki has players posing the armors, and so they're in a more natural pose or as Beaver says, to attention. I personally prefer the natural pose for determining if the armor will suit my characters.

First one looks like a typical render to me.

the one a designer would use to see how a armor would look like.

second looks more like the standar pose at the inlog screen.
and to answer youre cuestion i always take a screenshot of the character screen of of my character while using skills

I do realize that theyre renders because theres no background. but still on guildwiki charracters pose. Are those renders too?

like this one
http://gw.gamewikis.org/images/thumb...gray_front.jpg

No, this is the /attention pose and it is rubbish. They should just stand still, gives you a much better impression than raising the head to the sky and having the arms attached to the thighs, it just looks odd.

You do not have to do this, it is up to you, and I do not recommend it.

I prefer the more natural pose too. Maybe if you WALKED with /attention on all your characters across maps, pulling off Monty Python's Ministery of Silly Walks, then fine! By all means!

What REALLY bugs me are people who post their armor pictures with Sunglasses or STUPID Dragon Gauntlets, etc..

These should ALL be removed and NOT quality to be posted as they show a very UNACCURATE representation of the armor, not only giving a false view of said armor but not displaying the entire set!

*raises hand*

It's really petty, but the /attention poses on the wiki really annoy me too.

I like pics taken from the char select screen, as the poses are more natural and they're usually bigger and better quality.

Agreed, wear the armor and nothing else. i don't want to see your pumpkin hat when I'm trying to find out what paragon dwarven armor looks like.

Oh another thing people need to fix - when you post a picture, don't take it in a very dark place... or adjust your in-game gamma. It's annoying that when you want to see details on the armor, you can't for two reasons;

- Dark lighting
- Black dye

It's nice to see how it dyes black, but also with OTHER colors, mind you. Kinda ties with the "show off" aspect.

I'd rather use the Dye preview pictures.

I used the /attention post for when I take ss of armor.. because well.. I'm not sure.. I think it was a.. saw other people doing it before.. so I assumed its how it was suppose/majority liked it to be like that.. so I started to take pictures like that as well.. o_o;


Here's an example.
Here I just took a regular standing piece for the whole set.. but for the section pieces I did it to an /attention.. ? >o<
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Galle...t_Asuran_armor

I actually prefer the Attention pose.

It gives me a more complete understanding of the armor.

I can't stand the Attention pose....it's completely unnatural...(you can see some of my comments on this in the talk pages of the guildwiki armors...)

I go with no pose at all...just my character standing around....of course with no extra pieces of armor...just the armors I'm taking the shots for. I also make sure to stand in well lit areas facing the sun...I can't stand it when a shot is taken with the sun at the character's back.

it just doesn't make sense to pose them....I mean do you stand around doing /attention all the time? No you stand around with no pose at all. When you're looking for armor you want to see how the armor will look on your character...not some rigid stick figure standing at /attention.

I replaced the female ranger elite fur-lined pic set on GuildWiki because it was using the attention pose in all the shots...stop freaking using it.

I think this kinda falls under the "people can complain about ANYTHING" category.
Question: How many people, before this was brought up by the OP, really care?

Well, recently, I was thinking about finally getting my monk and my paragon a new armour suit. So I went to the wikis.

And they were of almost no help. No screenies of the new armours.

And many of the other screenies were also useless. I still don't know whether to get a norn ritualist armour - because whoever took the screenies made sure they were useless.

The common properties of the bad screenies were:
-they were taken in badly lit areas, so everything was dark and detail was hard to see
-they were taken against non-contrasting backgrounds, so it was hard to make out what is part of the armor and what not
-taken in "natural" poses, so you couldn't see the detail of several areas of the armor

So when I decided that since noone else was going to do it for me, I got myself the armors and then posted screenies of my own. Take a look at the monk male Ebon vanguard armor and the Norn male paragon armours.

Now, the /attention pose may look awkward, but it has the advantage of showing all the armour with no parts clipped or hidden. It shows the full armour "schematic". It also straightens out the character, which can be important with some types of armour. So in spite of it all, I did take the screenies using the /attention emote.

BTW, for anyone that cares: I found some resonable places to take screenies to make it as easy as possible to distinguish the armor from the background.

One place is the Vabbian Guild hall. Stand near one of the teleporters and face the sun. The high elevation will let you cut out almost all of the cyty, leaving just the sky.

The second place is in Thunderhead keep. Just after the mission start, turn left. You will find a nice snow ledge there that gives you a nice view of the first bridge. Under the bridge is an area of fog, and placing the character there grants a well lit image with almost clear blue background.

Seconding Thunder79's post.

I dislike the /attention in armor shots simply because I want to know how the armor looks naturally ingame. Honestly, I doubt anyone keeps their characters in /attention in towns, outposts or missions, so it's rather useless to pose that way in screenshots, imo.

Theoretically, it might look more accurate, but it's *not* how characters stand ingame, and I think the natural pose is much more useful for comparing armor.

I guess it's a "theory vs. practice" issue; some want to see how the armor looks when removed from context, others just want to know how it looks ingame. Personally, I use the armor shots to compare what sets to buy, so of course I prefer the more natural look. If I needed artistic reference (can't think of much other use for stiff /attention poses), I'd probably just dig up official armor art or ogle at characters ingame.

I could also rant about people using Paint to crop their pictures, which leaves absolutely horrible JPG artifacts, but I doubt this is the place for that.

Im glad most of you agree with the pointlessness of the poses

Though this is cool
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Galle...t_Asuran_armor

The natural pose with full armor very nicely displays the armor, and the component view with the /attention shows details to players who like to mix armor sets. Combo ftw


*goes to learn how to edit wiki pages*

I put a lot of work into setting up some unofficial armor galleries, with cropping, screenshotting, uploading & formatting the images and galleries, uploading about eight galleries in total, IIRC.

I used the /attention pose for a number of the galleries. Why? Because it shows the entire body. With females, the body is twisted, and there is no good way to display one facet of the armor without hiding another. It is also more difficult to fit such screenshots into the frames, harder to define what 'front' is, and just messy overall. We discussed it on the relevant talk pages, and it generally boiled down to, "Do it as you wish." - I went with the method that made more sense to me.

Please, spend the 7.5 to 70k required to buy the armors and dye, read carefully through the formatting and screenshot guidelines, and upload your own galleries, if you have an issue with it. All I ask is that you first work on the galleries that need more work than a reposing. While you might aesthetically prefer a natural pose, there's some galleries which are godawful, and are of far less use to anyone. I worked on submitting clear & detailed galleries because I wanted better armor galleries overall.

Regarding multiple facets of the armor, how about multiple angles? Which is ALREADY done with the /attention.
Regarding the difficulty of fitting the picture into a frame, how hard can it be to crop and resize a screenshot?!
As for those who cannot define what 'front' is, well, i wont comment that, to avoid offending anyone.

In case you were curious...

The standard spot for taking pics of armor for the galleries is out in the Isle of the nameless.






It has very good light, and the background is very clean, just make sure post processing effects are off, as they make the image blurry.