Zorai masks: what personalities do they represent?

[kipestia]

I love the Zorai. It's so hard for me to pick a mask. There are so many really nice ones. Does anyone have names for them, or think they represent certain personalities?

I'm not on the mainland anymore, so I can see the extended masks available at the tattoo parlor. I never liked the names there anyways. They seemed completely mixed up, like some used the names for colors, but those colors weren't on the mask.

Anyways, on the character creation screen, here's my rough draft of naming.
female Zorai tattoos (I just realized they're different for males and I don't play male characters... heheh.)
1 blank
2 watermellon
3 purple S-streaks
4 laughing tiger
5 crying pink butterfly
6 wrinkled red
7 red butterfly
8 pink stripes
9 teal racoon
10 green strokes
11 laughing red
12 pastels streaking flower
13 orange tiger
14 teal & purple war paint
15 crying goo
16 orange neutral
17 yellow & streaking brown
18 laughing white tiger
19 orange leafmouth
20 violet ghost
21 teal ghost
22 yellow tiger
23 pink confusion
24 confusion blues
25 simple red
26 brown wrinkles
27 worried autumn
28 sobre rainbow
29 sobre purple
30 streaking triple
31 red & green halves
32 worried pastels

a lot of the naming suggests what I think the personality is that it represents. there's a purple one crying green tears that would be good for goo-infected people. the wrinkly ones are good for old people. (although, do they change it when they get old, or are they born old? ) orange leafmouth and worried autumn also look a bit old. the laughing tigers are playful. the neutral tigers... not sure. more reserved warriors?

right now I'm trying to make a female Zorai named Kirostasia that's a Kitin worshipper, (later I'll make a female Matis Kitin worshipper named Kipestasia) but I'm not sure what would be most bug-like. working backwards down the list, maybe sobre purple, worried autumn, laughing white tiger looks a little sinister... streaking brown, purple war paint, or orange tiger...
I dunno, the bugs don't really have a single look or color I can duplicate... and I forget which ones the Kirostas are and which are the Kipestas. I think Kipestas are the flying ones... I forget if they're the rigid-body ones or the ones with curving bendy bodies...

[sehracii]

Anyways, on the character creation screen, here's my rough draft of naming.

If you go to the Tatoo Artist on the mainland in Zora they will all have names listed- even new tattoos not available at character creation.

But I think I like a lot of yours better

[pahya]

You know... I actually never liked any of the tatoos available for zorai. All my Zorai characters have had plain masks. The large blocks of bright (and often clashing) color choices never apealed to me, but the simply ivory color and texture of a basic mask did.

Then again... my matis/tryker/fyros characters never had tatoos either Perhaps if they were higher detail at a distance, but even with far clip turned all the way down at anything other than very close zoom tatoos seem to erase facial features and just become "Oh look, a tatoo with hair.". Especially the eyes, tatoos swallow eyes. Which is really very sad, because up close some of them are very beautiful.

[gretchen]

On the mainland there are more options, and better in my opinion. More naturalistic, with some wood grain, amber and sap decorations.

Not too crazy about the initial set available at character creation (again here only seen the female options.) When you get to see the names on the tattoo merchants, the names make no sense at all, and the colors remind me more of Mardi Gras. I initially picked a blue and purple design that I thought was least cartoonish of the lot...now I have opted for some of the more tribal looking designs. And what's a very tall Zoraï woman to do without some horns to make her even taller!

I'd like to see more development in regard to some naturalistic designs. I'm not saying the others are "bad" just not for me.

Also in the test animation you can play during character creation, the eyes and mouth are very expressive during casting motions...I'm rather disappointed to find that ingame the mask seems entirely solid/static. Unsure if this is just a "what people see/what you see" issue, since I can't see a lot of my emote gestures either.

The lore implies the mask is genetically bonded to the face...but the contradictory visual evidence leads me to wonder if it is supposed to be pliable or rigid.

(note that I also have, since buying different hair ornament and face tattoo, in the character selection screen on startup, my character's head and hair move independantly, though ingame this doesn't seem to happen. Must be a bug with the character selection screen.)

[jamela]

I like your interpretations! If you haven' seen this yet, though, then I think you might like to read an interview with Cioi Ba-Nung.

When Komissar published his interpretation of the Zoraï hieroglyphs I meant to make a similar study of the Zoraï tattoos but the only one I ever worked out was on Petej's mask - "Insert coin to play"

[katriell]

Also in the test animation you can play during character creation, the eyes and mouth are very expressive during casting motions...I'm rather disappointed to find that ingame the mask seems entirely solid/static. Unsure if this is just a "what people see/what you see" issue, since I can't see a lot of my emote gestures either.

The lore implies the mask is genetically bonded to the face...but the contradictory visual evidence leads me to wonder if it is supposed to be pliable or rigid.

I've tried to explain that in RP by saying that popular Zoraï philosophy teaches that the mask's seeming alleviation of facial expression is a good thing™, by forcing Zoraï to be more careful that their words convey meaning. However, with practice, a Zoraï can learn to shift the living material of their mask to imitate facial expressions.

An informative article related to masks: http://chronicles.ryzom.com/?page=featu ... n=&id=1695

[zangan]

Well, if anyone is going to do a little research on the patterns, I may...borrow (steal ) your results. I plan to have my guild, when it grows a bit, to wear different patterns to different activites or represent some sort of rank. Like wear a ceremonial pattern for ceremonies ( ) and some vicious looking ones for battles.

So hurry up and research so I don't have to myself! Hmm...if I plan to do the above...going to need to look at all races...

[michielb]

When you look at one of the ancient trailers (the one with the character creation too lazy to look it up right now) you can see mask decorations (can't really call em tatoos...) that, I think, look much better and more Zorai like than the ones we have now. (but then I liked the hair styles you see in that vid more that what eventually made it into the game...)

[meloner]

http://www.ryzom.com/images/cm/strip/cs ... too_en.jpg

lol

[iwojimmy]

Use the blank mask
Its handy for writing reminders on
Otherwise you have to skick Post-it notes on instead