Thread "HA is getting bigger. Should there be split like a Gold and Silver team?" in forum "HA Town Hall"

Posted at 9:08AM, Aug. 25, 2014

I started to think how big the HA is getting. I looked over he raster and it is full. Should there be a split division like HA gold and HA platinum?

Posted at 11:08PM, Aug. 27, 2014

It's an interesting idea.

Personally, I suspect it's not a good fit for HA, just because HA membership is so *fluid*.

If you look at the list on the wiki, a lot of heroes have been part of HA at one point or another, but they come and go. There are around 17 heroes who work with HA in some capacity, but only half a dozen of them show up for any given story. And those half dozen are an unpredictable mix that depends on character availability and suitability for a given story. Fixed teams would probably be too rigid an approach for a collaborative effort like HA.

That said, HA does seem to be heading down the path of following two different teams with the introduction of R.I.S.E. So who knows…

Posted at 9:08AM, Aug. 28, 2014

So basically when the time is needed the "extras", will be asked to fill in. So if a hero wanted to be part of HA they would simply ask ? You see I wanted Solarcell to be part of the team but it does not look like it will happen. That's why more or less I was thinking of the split idea. I will try my best to have her involved with as much as possible but it looks like she maybe going at it solo, OR she will call on the other part time HA members if a threat.

Posted at 7:08PM, Aug. 28, 2014

Abt_Nihil will hopefully weigh in with more information, but as I understand it:

1. Rarely does anything HA move quickly. It's a community project composed of volunteers working in their spare time and people tend to progress things when they have a chance to.

Have a look through the older posts in the forums and pay close attention to the dates and how long those posts took to come to fruition. It's definitely a 'slow burn' kinda thing.
The next 2-3 HA issues are already locked in. At a page per week, an optimistic estimate says it'll be around a year before HA has an opening for a new story. So yeah.

2. It's definitely useful to post your characters and ideas and make them available as 'extras'. And they may eventually just be grabbed (with permission) and incorporated into a story. I think this is what happened with the Spatulator in HA #7. But if you're eager to see your characters appear in HA often you have to do a lot of the groundwork yourself.

Look at what PIT_FACE did to get Fandango up. She came up with the idea, discussed it with Fuku (because it involved his character), wrote the script for it, drummed up interest and rounded up artists to work on it. All of which only helps if:

3. The timing has to be right. Fandango got taken up because PIT_FACE pushed it (and because it's a cool idea) but also because it was the right story at the right time. It features a R.I.S.E character just as we're wanting to flesh out the role of R.I.S.E, it's a fairly light, fun adventure to release dramatic tension prior to what I presume will be a fairly heavy-hitting season finale.

I understand where you're coming from. HA moves at a glacial pace, and it's easy to come up with awesome story ideas and character developments much, much faster than they can actually be implemented and produced. I confess to more than a little frustration myself at times.

Given (a) what I understand of your plot, (b) your eagerness to get going on this, and © your ability to produce quality pages much, much faster than me, here's what I'd probably do in your place

Get the appropriate permissions from creators and do the original "Solarcell comes to Earth, meets HA" storyline as part of her own standalone title (featuring the HA characters as guest stars) . As part of the HUniverse I'm sure there'd be no problem with you promoting it in HA (especially if you supply your own promo page). Then Solarcell would already be an established character with her own following by the time there's an opening for her to appear in HA. Otherwise there's going to be a long, painful wait before you can debut her in HA.

Partly because HA is so backlogged, a few people have floated the idea of a side-series a bit like the old "HU Adventures" title. Though visions for the specifics differ, the basic idea is that it would serve as a home for short, standalone tales featuring both new and existing HA/HUniverse characters. Particularly a combination of the two: HA Presents Monsieur Monkey, guest-starring RELIK for example.

It seems to have stalled for similar reasons to HA's glacial speed: everyone thinks it's a great idea but that doesn't mean the artists have the free time and availability to actually *do* it. Especially since we're talking about the exact same artists who are busy trying to keep up with HA.

Posted at 7:08PM, Aug. 28, 2014

PS. Please disregard how borked the font sizes are in my above post. Getting that to work properly in a long post is a hassle at the best of times. Trying to get it working while posting from my phone? *sigh*

Posted at 5:08AM, Aug. 31, 2014

irrevenant wrote:
Abt_Nihil will hopefully weigh in with more information, but as I understand it:

1. Rarely does anything HA move quickly. It's a community project composed of volunteers working in their spare time and people tend to progress things when they have a chance to.

Have a look through the older posts in the forums and pay close attention to the dates and how long those posts took to come to fruition. It's definitely a 'slow burn' kinda thing.
The next 2-3 HA issues are already locked in. At a page per week, an optimistic estimate says it'll be around a year before HA has an opening for a new story. So yeah.

2. It's definitely useful to post your characters and ideas and make them available as 'extras'. And they may eventually just be grabbed (with permission) and incorporated into a story. I think this is what happened with the Spatulator in HA #7. But if you're eager to see your characters appear in HA often you have to do a lot of the groundwork yourself.

Look at what PIT_FACE did to get Fandango up. She came up with the idea, discussed it with Fuku (because it involved his character), wrote the script for it, drummed up interest and rounded up artists to work on it. All of which only helps if:

3. The timing has to be right. Fandango got taken up because PIT_FACE pushed it (and because it's a cool idea) but also because it was the right story at the right time. It features a R.I.S.E character just as we're wanting to flesh out the role of R.I.S.E, it's a fairly light, fun adventure to release dramatic tension prior to what I presume will be a fairly heavy-hitting season finale.

I understand where you're coming from. HA moves at a glacial pace, and it's easy to come up with awesome story ideas and character developments much, much faster than they can actually be implemented and produced. I confess to more than a little frustration myself at times.

Given (a) what I understand of your plot, (b) your eagerness to get going on this, and © your ability to produce quality pages much, much faster than me, here's what I'd probably do in your place

Get the appropriate permissions from creators and do the original "Solarcell comes to Earth, meets HA" storyline as part of her own standalone title (featuring the HA characters as guest stars) . As part of the HUniverse I'm sure there'd be no problem with you promoting it in HA (especially if you supply your own promo page). Then Solarcell would already be an established character with her own following by the time there's an opening for her to appear in HA. Otherwise there's going to be a long, painful wait before you can debut her in HA.

Partly because HA is so backlogged, a few people have floated the idea of a side-series a bit like the old "HU Adventures" title. Though visions for the specifics differ, the basic idea is that it would serve as a home for short, standalone tales featuring both new and existing HA/HUniverse characters. Particularly a combination of the two: HA Presents Monsieur Monkey, guest-starring RELIK for example.

It seems to have stalled for similar reasons to HA's glacial speed: everyone thinks it's a great idea but that doesn't mean the artists have the free time and availability to actually *do* it. Especially since we're talking about the exact same artists who are busy trying to keep up with HA.
The speed can also be that some artists are still in school or college and other priorities take first place to responding on here as well. I personally like the fluidity of the team since it can allow characters to interact in different ways and honestly create more interesting team dynamics.
I@Irrevenant - I agree that with the introduction and with the push of RISE in this arc we are going to see that and perhaps even see a clashing of ideaologies who knows?
And for scripts taking awhile, I can vouch for that since my original script Wraith of the Zombie Queen took a decent while to write and a decent while to be included into the Issues. I'm honestly glad that my original idea was used for the arc to really set up how far HA has come and really help push RISE to become decent rivals to HA.

Posted at 7:09AM, Sep. 3, 2014

What irrevenant said!

If characters are submitted without any further initiative on the part of the creator, it can take some time until they show up. But I encourage everyone to do their part in MAKING them show up - i.e. take part in organizing a chapter which features them. And I'd be happy to post shorter stories too! Say, a (ca.) ten-pager that features a new character teaming up with an established HA member would be a neat thing to have, and it wouldn't be as laborious/time-consuming to produce as a regular chapter.

Posted at 9:09AM, Sep. 8, 2014

I see the progress of HA. My only real concern is lining up Solarcell's plot with HA invasion series. (Which by the way still needs to be discuss) I don't know if anyone respond to the story forum yet, but it would be nice to use a villain that is behind the entire invasion, after the invasion ended, or so they thought. The whole idea was so that Shard/Nth could enter the HA universe. Nth would have made all his host believe that invasion was their idea in the first place.

Anyways, the shard is what's being used on Solarcell and Dark Beauty while transferring to the HU/HA universe. The Shard has a different effect on Demigods and Immortals. It makes them forget who they were. Again, this story don't have to take place during the invasion. Only maybe show hints of the shard at work with the head invaders.