A Tale Of Two Brothers - Portraits

Post by **West** » November 26th, 2006, 2:06 am

turin wrote:I don't know a whole lot about shading, but a more metallic color would help, I think. The light blue just isn't doing it for me. That might be the color of the sprite, but you can get away with extremes in color in pixel art that you can't get away with in portraits...

Uh, well, many other Wesnoth portraits use a similar (though admittedly less saturated) color for armor... Just check out the portraits by Jason Lutes. Personally I'm not entirely fond of this choice of color, I was mostly trying to do the image in roughly the same style as other portraits. Colors can easily be changed though. For example:

Post by **deserter** » November 26th, 2006, 9:05 am

I think that it would be nice if each bolts or whatever they are, the things that go around the edges of the shoulderpads and all, were shaded individually. I have a feeling that it would add a lot of depth to the image. Which they did in inked version. The effect was lost in coloring.

I do realize that you might have had that in mind already as the whole coloring process is obviously rather unsettled. Actually I feel somewhat bad when I'm giving comments about portraits when I myself have no expertise in the matter, really.

Anyway, I would like to say a *word of encouragement*

Post by **SkeletonCrew** » November 26th, 2006, 9:50 am

I really like these new drawings, and I see a consistency problem I didn't notice it before, sorry.
His lower right arm has three straps, his lower left arm only 2. I do like the 3 straps better.
Also it seems the rivet next to elbow on his left arm and the strap aren't aligned properly, the strap seems to close to his elbow.

Post by **West** » December 1st, 2006, 3:59 am

Going nowhere really. The armor looks like shite. Maybe I should leave the coloring to someone else instead :/

Post by **Jetrel** » December 1st, 2006, 6:07 am

West wrote:Going nowhere really. The armor looks like shite. Maybe I should leave the coloring to someone else instead :/

Actually, for cel-shaded armor, it looks alright. I'll have a look at it when I have some time; or perhaps pekka/pickslide could take a swing at it.

Post by **deserter** » December 1st, 2006, 6:22 am

West wrote:Going nowhere really. The armor looks like shite. Maybe I should leave the coloring to someone else instead :/

No it doesn't! What it misses is shading of the details, as I mentioned earlier in other words.

And now I'll mention it in other form: in a form of a cheap edit.

Also, I'm not sure about this but, the saturation of the hair and beard could be a little lower. It's pretty nice already, but it might be even better with less of.

Post by **West** » December 1st, 2006, 1:22 pm

deserter wrote:
West wrote:Going nowhere really. The armor looks like shite. Maybe I should leave the coloring to someone else instead :/
No it doesn't! What it misses is shading of the details, as I mentioned earlier in other words.

And now I'll mention it in other form: in a form of a cheap edit.

Also, I'm not sure about this but, the saturation of the hair and beard could be a little lower. It's pretty nice already, but it might be even better with less of.

You know, you might be right. I had planned to add those details later on, but seeing it now it looks a whole lot better. But what bothers me about the armor is the shades and highlights, those big, ugly "cakes" of color. But then again, it is supposed to be cel shaded I guess... At any rate I can't think of any better way of doing it. Possibly I could make the armor less shiny, but that might make it look too fake and not like metal at all.

As for the face being too saturated: I'll fix that. In fact I intended to to so when I changed the hue of the armor, but I must have forgotten.

Thanks for your comments.

Post by **Darth Fool** » December 1st, 2006, 1:27 pm

The big thing about the shading that I find bothering is that it is too angular. I realize that it was probably done using the line tool in PS or gimp, but it needs to be more smooth. The edges that were hand drawn are nice curves, so the shading should be similar.

Post by **pekka** » December 1st, 2006, 3:43 pm

Jetryl wrote:Actually, for cel-shaded armor, it looks alright. I'll have a look at it when I have some time; or perhaps pekka/pickslide could take a swing at it.

As you wish.

I've only retouched the armor and the skin. Hair and the sword needs still some work. Here is also a proposal for the final composition of the portrait. This one is quite hard to compose in 205x205 picture.

Post by **West** » December 1st, 2006, 3:47 pm

Darth Fool wrote:The big thing about the shading that I find bothering is that it is too angular. I realize that it was probably done using the line tool in PS or gimp, but it needs to be more smooth. The edges that were hand drawn are nice curves, so the shading should be similar.

Yes, well... I'm doing this with a mouse, which means that making clean, smooth curves is very hard. At least on bigger areas like the armor. Thus I used the brush + shift method, but you're right, it doesn't look good. I have an idea though. I'm gonna try and use a median filter to smooth the shades and highlights out. This might distort the shapes in places, but that should not be impossible to fix.

... or, alternatively, I could just wipe the shade/highlights on the armor and start from scratch. Coming up with a new approach is maybe better than trying to tweak a bad one.

Post by **West** » December 1st, 2006, 3:59 pm

pekka wrote:I've only retouched the armor and the skin. Hair and the sword needs still some work. Here is also a proposal for the final composition of the portrait. This one is quite hard to compose in 205x205 picture.

Hey, that's a clear improvement! I think my problem is that I have a hard time visualizing what the shades and highlights on the armor should look like.

Only problem I can see with this approach is that the armor now looks oddly bulbous in places (like his right, uh, elbow guard). Or am I the only one seeing this?

As for the sword: yes it definitely needs some more work. I haven't even begun working on it yet

Post by **Sgt. Groovy** » December 1st, 2006, 6:24 pm

I'm doing this with a mouse, which means that making clean, smooth curves is very hard.

You should learn to use paths. It's not diffucult, and you get as smooth curves as you want.

As for the smaller composition, it's usually a bad idea to cut at the joints.

Post by **West** » December 1st, 2006, 6:38 pm

Sgt. Groovy wrote:You should learn to use paths. It's not diffucult, and you get as smooth curves as you want.

It's also highly un-intuitive IMHO.

My primary objective is getting a drawing tablet as soon as I can afford one.

I'm also starting to think that going cel shaded wasn't too smart after all. There's obviously many people here who are a lot better than me at that style, so I wonder why I'm even trying.

Ranger M · Post by **Ranger M** » December 1st, 2006, 6:58 pm

West wrote:I'm also starting to think that going cel shaded wasn't too smart after all. There's obviously many people here who are a lot better than me at that style, so I wonder why I'm even trying.

Aye, stick to what you're good at and enjoy, it's what I do (mostly), unless you really really want to get good at cell shading.

Post by **Pickslide** » December 1st, 2006, 8:39 pm

I suggest, if you're using a mouse, that you use the polygonal lasso tool with anti-aliasing on for your shadows. It makes selections from point to point, so you just click your mouse along with very small and precise short lines.

What I do is I use lasso with anti-aliasing off and I trace my lineart to make selections, and paintbucket the area. This sets up my flats. Then I take a circular gradient and draw faint highlights to get a little feel for volume. Then I draw shadows with the lasso, and a fill. At least, thats how I used to do these.

But a Wacom is better.

Also, you're bothering because its all good practice.

And fun. Lets not forget fun.