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@Pixote: Thanks for considering revising the thread title; you're a gentleman. (I think "Black Dude" is probably the term we're more likely to refer to this character as, anyway.) I don't want to belabor the point, but I think I should respond to (and acknowledge) some points foks have made. (BTW, I'm certainly not offended, nor do I advocate censorship as a rule; I'd simply hate for us to offend or unintentionally push away some current or potential future players / playtesters / modders, you know?)
x'il said:
Really? it must be an english speaking people's cultural thing, having this overly delicate approach to some words which seem pretty neutral to non-english speakers. IMO, making it taboo through 'pc' self-enforcement and even talking about it is what makes it racist. As someone whose native language is not english i genuinely saw the term 'mr. blackie' as mentioned by someone else in this thread, merely as a lulzy innocent diminutive term [...] P.S "Mr. Cool"? so black men = cool?, isn't that using a media stereotype [...]
Re: "cool" - I was thinking more along the lines of *this* Black Dude critter being "Mr. Cool." I agree that blackness does not equal coolness, but Samuel L. Jackson certainly == cool.
Re: words and their connotations / interpretations: yes; it's all totally context-dependent (and therefore doesn't translate automatically). I'm sure there are words in anyone's native tongue considered offensive to some people because of the words' connotations / history. (Most languages have derogatory terms for women, for instance, that offend most women; also, calling a man by the same terms ["bitch," for example] is usually considered fighting words.) Also, I don't think we're self-censoring any more than it's self-censorship to avoid flame wars in most threads. The key issue is not whether words
themselves should be taboo: the issue is whether we ought to be sensitive to how certain uses of words might affect others. In other words, it's an issue of politeness. Either we don't give a damn about others (and about getting along with each other), or we sometimes make an effort to pay attention to how our actions affect others... no?
I totally agree that as a rule, we should engage in frank and open discussions of racism and hatred (and censorship!) where needed. I would agree that consideration of other people (i.e., politeness), rather than mindless "PC" censorship, is what we ought to care about. (Preventing the discussion of certain terms definitely can perpetuate racism, X'il, which I think is what you were referring to with your PC censorship / taboo / racism comment, so I think we agree.)
Ghouly89 said:
In every context I've ever heard the term "blackie", it was for a lulzy effect, as in comedy sketches and whatnot. [...] the term "Blacks" was widely used to refer to African people. [...] It's purely naming conventions here.
Ghouly, sure: to be honest, the first thing "blackie" brought to mind was a Saturday Night Live sketch with Phil Hartman and Michael Jordan portraying blacks' integration into what then was all-white basketball. And yes, the term "black" was (and still often is) common and generally not considered offensive, but "blackie" is a different word, more like calling someone "boy": its use was more commonly derogatory and indicated a disdainful second-class status. It and "black-face" now are most often used in comedy/satire in reference to such offensive uses, but the power of those satires derives from the greatly negative historical uses / events that preceded the comic references to them.
@Goweigus: Robert Downey, Jr. was playing a comic character in a satirical movie (and not a great movie at that). Fallout is not satire; in the Fallout context, black-face would seem inappropriate - even despite Fallout's occasional humorous elements, which are a different kind of humor, I think. In "Tropic Thunder," though, perhaps it was appropriate.
Context is key!
Anyway, thanks for listening; no offense meant to anyone (nor do I mean to drag the thread OT); just seemed like something important that ought to be acknowledged / thought about.
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Anyway, I think the build is totally on the right track
, and I look forward to seeing the artwork come together and being able to play the new critter (next year, I expect)! And if I didn't have a full-time job and a wife and new baby to take care of, I'd be right in there helping out with the graphics as much as I could!
Speaking of graphics / labor-intensiveness 
: isn't there some better way to automate this whole process of character generation - such that three or four or a dozen different character "looks" could be built rapid-fire, just making slight changes to one or two layers of the artwork? I'm thinking, all characters have identical body positions for each animation, right? The clothes are different, the hair may be different (or lie on top of different parts of clothing, depending on the hair), etc. Couldn't someone build a set of layers in Photoshop for each frame so that the art only on certain layers would need to be swapped out for the set of animations - and could be done with more automation and therefore less time?
Say you wanted to update the red-headed woman to be brunette: rather than going in and having to draw circles around every head by hand, wouldn't it be easier to open up the "hair" layer, re-color it blond by palette (?) - not having to monkey with chopping the head off of the character by hand - and then simply re-combining it with the other layers to export the final brunette character animation? Better yet, "color: brunette" > export; "color: blond" > export; "color: brown" > export, etc. (Even better with creating a variety of mohawk colors, no?)
Or what about changing armor? One wouldn't have to worry about how the spikes on the metal armor interfere with the character's hair if the hair layer simply gets laid on top of the armor layer. Just swap out the armor layer for the new armor, export, and done.
I mean, it seems like that would require some significant additional development time in the front end, but couldn't something like that save a relatively great amount of time in the back end, if we keep making new character designs? It's been a long time since I've worked with Photoshop / layers, so please forgive my ignorance... but could it be done? Is it feasible?
-m
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