"Marvel: create your own" platform is a cashgrab

[JKtheMac]

All the other slots below are "Coming soon", only Spider-Man, Gwenpool, Moon Girl, War Machine and Bullseye are free.

Now that would be an odd team-up. Almost worth using it just for the challenge of writing that team.

[leokearon]

All the other slots below are "Coming soon", only Spider-Man, Gwenpool, Moon Girl, War Machine and Bullseye are free.

What about Civilian and supporting cast like say MJ or Jonah

[Dreaded Porcupine]

No, you don't pay for the closed beta, you had to sign up earlier and you're randomly chosen. I was referring to the characters. Only 5 of the 28 available characters are free, the remaining 23 you have to purchase.

OK that's different then. That's usually what apps do these days. Especially gaming ones. I'll pass. I like team books so I would be spending more than I want to. Maybe do a team package at a reduced rate and give you options of the size of the team and characters to choose from. Buy four get two free sort of thing. Different packages. Something enticing but reasonable.

[Aliltron]

OK that's different then. That's usually what apps do these days. Especially gaming ones. I'll pass. I like team books so I would be spending more than I want to. Maybe do a team package at a reduced rate and give you options of the size of the team and characters to choose from. Buy four get two free sort of thing. Different packages. Something enticing but reasonable.

Yeah they need another way to unlock characters, another form of "in-game" currency or so or they'll never get anyone interested in it. Maybe by publishing a certain amount of comics or something you get a certain amount of in-game credits that can go towards unlocking another hero. It'd be slower than just purchasing obviously but at least it'd give users an incentive to use the app.

Also there are only 4 "extras" right now, no characters like MJ, J Jonah Jameson or anything.

[John Garrett]

I went in there and made a quick comic. While the process itself is easy, it's a bit buggy right now as you would expect from beta software, which made the whole thing a bit frustrating. Once all the bugs are shaken out it will be a smooth process.

This has to be built on some sort of Poser/Daz Studio engine. Those models and poses look just like the models and poses I use on figures in Daz Studio, plus the visual style of the characters and art looks like the results you get when you use one of the "one-click cartooning" type shaders/filters typically used for 3D models when making a 3D comic.

So far I don't see much control over lighting. It seems to be straight on, so rotating the figures brings the side facing the camera into the light. War Machine loads with his back to the camera and somehow completely in shadow, so it looks like a mistake, but you just have to rotate him to get him to show correctly.

The unlockable characters surprised me. I knew they had to make money off of this somehow but I wasn't expecting that. Anyone looking to make a team comic is going to be shelling out quite a bit of cash. Still, I can't begrudge them trying to monetize this, I was wondering exactly what Marvel gets out of this when the announcement first hit.

I sent some feedback with various issues I had to their tech support, and I was told that so far "more comics were created in 12 hours than Marvel create in a year". So there's definitely a lot of initial interest. People want to make comics with their favorite characters.

If I were Marvel I would try to get some of their top writers to login and see what kind of comics they could make using the software. That could be a great testimonial for it.

Basically, I don't see anything pro level coming out of this, but it could be useful for those with a bit a spare cash lying around to show their stuff - or else to writers looking to communicate their ideas to their artists. I use Daz Studio and Blender myself, but I'm going to stick around and see how it improves as time goes on.