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This month’s collectibles are the Frostbite, Snow Witch, and Time Machine!
 Why does Narnia come to mind?
Seriously, why does it? Could be because you have an item known as the Snow Witch? Yeah, I think that’s it. The steampunk item I’m actually indifferent to with this initial snap judgment, but we will see how well it shapes up against two ice oriented items.
A Cold Cut
Frostbite seems like an appropriate name for an ice sword, but it also sounds generic enough to not cause any second thought as to what it could be other than an ice sword. That can only mean that this item is designed for the RPG crowd out there.
The design of default option is your standard RPG design of an ice sword. Katana-like blade with a snowflake hilt design all colored in ice blue. Rather generic and boring. But wait! You can turn on Frostbite’s Aura! Does this make it a better looking sword? Why yes it does! The sword gets slightly longer and is designed to look more like a European broad sword. The snowflake hilt is replaced with a more icicle design, and it appear to be emitting shards at various points off the dull side of the blade. Between the two, turning on the Aura is the better of the two designs.
Frostbite isn’t exclusive to the warrior class, as made clear by the staff option. Here, you get your traditional ice mage staff design. A blue rod with half of a snowflake on top with ice crystals hovering in place. You can turn on the aura as well to create a kind of blizzard around the snowflake, suggesting you’re about to perform an attack. From a design stance, these aren’t that very impressive and will rely heavily on an outfit to make them work. What that outfit will end up being will involve a lot of blue.
For those that like the feel of the staff but want the combat abilities of the sword, there’s the Frostbite Lance. Unfortunately, this weapon has no aura mode. The spear tip of the lance is designed as a sharpen icicle connected to a blue orb or diamond. I can’t tell because the shape keeps changing between hand positions. The hilt of the spear tip is a butterfly design made out of smaller icicles. The lance is also duel-ending, meaning you can jab both the person in front of you as well as the one behind you. Be careful which position you hold the lance in. It can easily make or break your outfit.
Frostbite offers wings as well, but the design of them is rather lame at best. Simply take the half-snowflake from the staff option and tilt it so that it looks like it is coming out of the shoulder. You have to buy two in order to get a full set of wings if you want. But there are better wings out there than this pair, both in offerings and in design.
Frostbite Aura is pretty much a halo made out of snowflakes. This halo is using the illuminated design, so don’t expect it to be a ring around the top of your head. Instead, the ring of snowflakes, which creates a bigger snowflake, is positioned behind your head as is common of religious art. It sits kind of high on your avatar, so keep that in mind if you have big hair or is a fan of tall hats.
Overall, I cannot say that I’m all that impressed with Frostbite. While I know there will be people out there that will appreciate the item for the fact that you now have a cooler looking sword than the Ice Gauntlet’s chopping block of a blade, there just isn’t enough here to warrant a use if you are not a fan of blues or whites or any combination there of. Get one if you must, but no more than two for the wings. Getting three means you probably found a combination that works on several levels that I didn’t think of.
The White Witch Cometh to Gaia
While the name of this item, and even several of its options, are straight out of the Narnia books, they are done so in a loving way that makes them original and separate from that which fans will ultimately connect them to.
The default option of this item is as the queen’s cape. Here, you are treated to a large fluffy collar wrap that begins a short outer trim of the cape, designed to look like a flower as it fans out towards the bottom. It has a high collar trim, which is a very good indication that whoever is wearing it is the bad guy by Disney terms, and the back is decorated with several strings of pearls of various shapes and sizes that glitter like the freshly fallen snow. Perfect for anyone wishing to kill the animal equivalent of Jesus! Or for an innocent sleigh ride giving out Turkish Delights.
The Sorceress Gloves is the next option, which for the female avatars is nothing really all that spectacular. For the guys, particularly the cross-dressing crowd, this is the pair of gloves we’ve been waiting for! You are giving a nice, skin-tight pair of gloves that stop just below the shoulders that are very elegant in design. Up until now, if a drag queen needed dress gloves of the female style, they were stuck with either doing without or using the large and flowing Elegant Veil Gloves. It worked for a little while, but the large, scarf-like tails from that glove killed any kind of elegance such an item named as such could offer. Well, here is the alternative. The only downside to the gloves is the blue hue that the gloves slowly change into as it gets closer to the hands and the flowering design of the top. If you can work with it, then you’ll be fine. The girls have better gloves than this, as I’ve stated before.
The Jeweled Shoulder Muffler is for anyone out there that wants to look like they are wearing a mink but, like Pam Anderson, doesn’t want to wear the pelt of a dead mink. What jewels that are on said piece are predominately on the back of the shoulder and neck accessory. The two that are in the front function more like hooks for a barely-noticeable string of pearls. While a very simple and boring design by itself, it can easily bring that nice winter feeling to nearly any jacket that matches it. That is, any jacket not already designed for the winter season. Through the Sorceress Gloves on at the same time for a more full look for your fancy winter ball, and call it done!
Frozen Crown is one part Ice Tiara and one part Kurogane’s Mask in the most respect possible. While you are not given the actual Frozen Crown as illustrated in any of the Snow Queen’s incarnations from the Narnia books, you’re given something that could easily have been worn by her. Keep in mind that because they are using the mask design used for the Kurogane’s Mask sponsor item, you’ll probably have hair layering issues to deal with. Any do that doesn’t have bangs would be best. And make sure you have dark hair. The crown borders on a tone of white that could easily get lost in anyone that has light hair if you are not careful. By the way, if you are feeling daring, try combining this option with the Ice Tiara, Aquatica Sea Jewels option, and the Pixie Dust Circlet.
The Snow Witch is more than just elegance and class. She’s also a warrior when she can be, as evident from the Battle Cloak option. Don’t be looking for a lion here. Instead, you are given the pelt of a Pora Bear and the antlers of a winter buck of some kind. Apparently, it was an eight-point buck too, which is a shame because a ten-point one is more impressive from a design stance. You have the option of wearing the hood up or down. Wearing it up is very impressive, design wise, but don’t be surprised if you end up looking a little bit like Kiba from Naruto, what with all that Pora Bear fur looking a bit too much like the fur lining on his hood. I also cannot help but wonder how this option would look with a monk robe. Maybe then we can set Christmas back to what it was originally, a pagan holiday celebrating the coming of winter.
If you are a fan of capes and cloaks, you’ll like this item. If you like Narnia, you will want to try to use the cosplaying options in this item. If you are just looking for something white and fluffy, you’ll like this item. Definitely, hands down, the best item so far in this package.
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again!
Steampumkers of Gaia, rejoice! An item for you has arrived and your petition didn’t have to sit in the Petition forum for very long. But does it live up to the steampunk aesthetic? Boil some tea while I tell you.
The default option is this massive Time Piece that gets strapped to your avatar’s back. And I mean this thing is huge! It takes up about as much space as a small hat, a medium-length cloak, and a pair of back wings combined! From a design aspect, it is rather busy. The copper and iron watches and gears, while greatly detailed for what is ultimately an item that won’t be seen any larger than 150 pixels in height, take away from the avatar to the point where no real outfit will ever be able to draw the eye to the person wearing it. Unless, of course, your avatar is naked or is brighter than the copper brown coloring of the item. The thing is, if you turn around, the item looks better and more in line with the steampunk aesthetic. Why couldn’t the back be the front and vice versa? It would look better from a design stand point.
The TM Top Hat is a nice alternative to those who cannot get the Tin Can Hat from Fishing or cannot afford the price it is going for on the Marketplace. But don’t expect it to be a cheaper alternative to the Tin Can Hat in the future. Like the name suggests, you are given a copper top hat, the brim designed to look like a gear being welded to a washer. It is decorated with steel wiring and a pocket watch. Now, brown hats like these were not uncommon during the birth of the steampunk genre, but don’t expect to be wearing this to some kind of classy party. This is strictly a crazy scientist’s hat. Well, a crazy scientist that has a sense of class, which are always the most charming.
I cannot speak for the ladies, but the TM Corset looks rather ugly. It is clear that the artist was trying to go for the more modern steampunk aesthetic, a la Steamboy or even Rocketman. Well, someone goof’d. The corset, at least on male avatars, looks more like a half-complete work belt from the Work Set you can buy from the stores. The oddest thing about its design is the zipper-like welding/rivet job going down the center of the front. I understand why it is there, because there is something similar to that in the design of the actual corset that women used to wear, but in the steampunk aesthetic, it just looks odd. You would think I would be upset with all the small gears and watches bringing it to a visual off balance, but if they weren’t there, we’d have an odder looking brown corset.
TM Gear Skirt kind of suffers from the same “oopps” in the aesthetic department. This isn’t some Steampunk Lolita skirt for those of you out there that like the style. It’s an ugly, mish-mash of clockwork gears that flower out like a cone than a skirt. The design is dominated by a large copper gear that houses smaller copper and steel gears in a hoop-skirt set up. I can’t think of anything outside of the TM Corset that would go with it, but more on that later.
The TM Boots are very unoriginal. Brown and bronze colored boots, no gear design or anything that would reference a steampunk aesthetic. An interesting note is that the heel looks like little jet engine nozzles if you sit down and look at the shoes from behind, but that’s about it. What makes this really disappointing is that I’ve seen Steampunk Boots in real life that look better than this. They are a simple design, which consist of a separate rubber pad for the heel that is attached to the shoe by a bed spring. Offers great support, from what I’m told, and you can’t buy them from any retail store!
TM Wings is yet another obligatory wings option, but this time it’s actually well deserved, unlike some of the previous wings that were released with Collectables. Here, your avatar is given a steam-powered jet backpack that has a pair of bronze wings to help you fly. You have the option of putting the wings up and out or down and back. Now, these wings are small, and rightly so. If they were drawn to be as long as our avatars are high, you wouldn’t be able to see the wings when they were stretched out. The reason being is that the steampunk aesthetic is much like the Transformers design bible: everything on the machine must make sense from a functional stand point. You can’t have short wings out and then long wings down, as much as this item could benefit from having longer wings in the down position. So, for what it’s worth, the wings fit the steampunk look and offer a nice accessory to any avatar without being over-bearing on the wearer to the point where you have to make an outfit based around them.
It is clear that this item is a multi-quip. But unlike the other multi-quips that have come before it, this fails hard when you put them together as a set. If you don’t include either the wings or the default option, you don’t get that nice anime steampunk Lolita look you could have gotten. This is in part due to the bad design of the corset and skirt. Adding the wings doesn’t help fix the problem so much as it just distracts the eye for a short while. Adding the default option, which replaces the wings, ends up creating an avatar so busy it makes the Damascus Armor look good. This is one set that is best done in pieces, which is how I would like my collectibles to be done, personally.
Overall, if you can avoid the corset, skirt, and boots, you can use this item to give yourself that nice Jules Vern look. Anyone using the corset and/or skirt is doing so at their own risk and should understand the aesthetic repercussions of such items and their combinations. And anyone using just the boots alone needs to get their head checked.
Of Magic and Machine
The function of releasing three items in a letter is proving to be better for the artists, as this is one of the times the formula actually works in their favor. Two out of the three have appealing qualities in one respect or another, which is better than gambling on the half-and-half chance normally taken with letters.
However, the failure of the Time Machine as a set should, hopefully, send a message that making multi-quip collectibles is a very bad idea that died a long time ago. You can’t really expect a very good turn-over in purchases if it is obvious you are just phoning it in with an ugly design and a half-a** attempt to make the items match. That isn’t the case with the Snow Witch items, which are also multi-quips but match in with each other in a way that works. On top of that, the items work just as well by themselves as they do in a set. If Juno and her team of artists read this, consider this my official suggestion to you guys for next month if you are considering making more multi-quip collectibles.
But what about the Avatar Art Contest you were hosting? <span id="test16274755">. . .</span><br/><div id="post16274755" style="display:none; margin-right:75px;">
Nobody won because nobody entered because nobody liked the prize.</div>
 Zeek Slider · Sun Dec 16, 2007 @ 12:10am · 3 Comments |
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