Help needed defining team rgb values for unit graphics

[Jetrel]

When the pathfinder raises his arm for the ranged attack, it looks like it is getting bigger and it's shape also looks wrong. Perhaps the muscle line is too dark.

I'm pretty sure it needs another frame or two, as well.

The muscle lines are generally too dark, and you're making the same damn mistake of "highlights flush with the right side of an curved object" again. Stop making that mistake, it's been pointed out to you dozens of times. Given the same parameters - a curved surface, and our unchanging light conditions, the highlight will be about 30-40% in from the right edge. Keep this in mind.

Also:
- The "readying hatchet for a toss" frame - the one where it's hidden behind it back - try doing that at an upwards 45°, or maybe 30° angle, rather than hidden behind his back. I don't know if it'll be better, but neither does anyone, so please do experiment with it and post the results.
- Try doing a single color on the motion blur, and do the motion blur across multiple frames, like is done on the augur, wraith, naga, and skeleton fighter. It looks MUCH better.

Other than that, though, these look excellent. They really do - I don't want to sound like a nag, you've done excellent work.




Also, in other news, I'd like to sneak in one last-minute edit to the thugs, before kitty does the portraits, as part of the animation-upgrade for these guys. I was looking at neorice's chaos faction sprites, and musing on how our current thugs don't look thuggish - at all. It was very ironic, when I compared color tables, that the sprites I borrowed these arms from were actually derived from the thugs, originally. Also - this has been done without a single pixel increase in height, IIRC.

(No, I still haven't done an edit TSI suggested for these guys, but it's worth tossing it to the community at large. For 'experimental control group purposes', it'd be nice if he didn't mention what it was immediately.)

[Eternal]

Lovin' the new thugs.
One thing that especially bugged me with the old ones was the decrease in chest width between lvl 1 and 2.
The new lvl 3's arms might need a bit something. You keep making muscled arms look like they're tilted exactly to the sides (caused by the dark line between the biceb and the rest of the arm being centered quite often). In this case it looks like the lvl 3 has two left arms.
This can be fixed by opening up the pose and giving left arm a different angle, or by bringing the mace closer to the body.
He looks like he's pointing the thing exactly to his side, which looks very unnatural.

Of course, this is spriting and it is tough to do details since the pixel is often too huge for the job, but one can get around these problems.

[thespaceinvader]

When the pathfinder raises his arm for the ranged attack, it looks like it is getting bigger and it's shape also looks wrong. Perhaps the muscle line is too dark.

I'm pretty sure it needs another frame or two, as well.

The muscle lines are generally too dark, and you're making the same damn mistake of "highlights flush with the right side of an curved object" again. Stop making that mistake, it's been pointed out to you dozens of times. Given the same parameters - a curved surface, and our unchanging light conditions, the highlight will be about 30-40% in from the right edge. Keep this in mind.

Also:
- The "readying hatchet for a toss" frame - the one where it's hidden behind it back - try doing that at an upwards 45°, or maybe 30° angle, rather than hidden behind his back. I don't know if it'll be better, but neither does anyone, so please do experiment with it and post the results.
- Try doing a single color on the motion blur, and do the motion blur across multiple frames, like is done on the augur, wraith, naga, and skeleton fighter. It looks MUCH better.

Other than that, though, these look excellent. They really do - I don't want to sound like a nag, you've done excellent work.

I'll fix those highlights sometime today, and see about adding a recovery frame to the ranged attack. I'll try to fit in another frame of motion blur too, but I'm not entirely sure where right now. I'll see.

I'l try doing something with the wind-up for the axe throw, too, but currently, it is in a position that actually works physically when I try it. Making the axe more visible would make the position more uncomfortable.

[kitty]

The new thug and bandit are much more beefy! Nice work! It will be fun to work from them.
I'm not convinced by the new concept for the highwayman, to me he doesn't feel like a bandit anymore but more like kind of a mercenary. His equipment looks like pieced together pillaging on battle fields not like stolen and half rotten living in the forests. Dunno, less shiny things and perhaps a cape would make him more of a highwayman.

Out of curiosity, what are all those loinclothes you seem to tend to add about? I wouldn't have associated them with medieval gear in general, but they do look nice.


And do you plan edits to the footpd line, too?

[Jetrel]

The new thug and bandit are much more beefy! Nice work! It will be fun to work from them.
I'm not convinced by the new concept for the highwayman, to me he doesn't feel like a bandit anymore but more like kind of a mercenary. His equipment looks like pieced together pillaging on battle fields not like stolen and half rotten living in the forests. Dunno, less shiny things and perhaps a cape would make him more of a highwayman.

To me, the highwayman -is- a mercenary of sorts; the description you give sounds more like our "fugitive" unit. Of our outlaws, I view the thugs as not being free-rangers or woodsmen at all, rather they're just brutish "down on their luck" soldiers of fortune, and they have no scruples about working for robbers. Whatever pays them. Their function is to be the bruisers that get right into the fray, and IMO they'd generally have reasonably soldier-like equipment cobbled together by the time they're at a high level. I don't think they'd usually -be- part of the core robber groups during downtimes, rather they're hired-guns brought in when they plan to pull a job.

What you described sounds exactly what I picture our footpad line as looking like.

Out of curiosity, what are all those loinclothes you seem to tend to add about? I wouldn't have associated them with medieval gear in general, but they do look nice.

I didn't think of them as loinclothes (but maybe they are ), so much as part of the belt/fauld armor. Sort of a leather guard hanging down - it's not a codpiece, because it's free-hanging. It's basically a tasset hanging in the front. They're an innovation of a lot of RPG art; realistically, they might have gotten in the way whilst running, but then again maybe not - they probably wouldn't be any worse than a roman war-skirt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassets

For some reason, because of filling space in the figure/silhouette (like a cape), I've found it makes the unit look much more 'solid'.

And do you plan edits to the footpd line, too?

I'm tempted to - I'd like to finish these first, but the footpads sure do look ... funny. The higher-levels actually look fairly nice, but the level-one footpads are rather gimpy-looking.

I plan to prioritize work on this thug line above all else, and if I do the footpad, I'd do it immediately afterwards.

[thespaceinvader]

Out of curiosity, what are all those loinclothes you seem to tend to add about? I wouldn't have associated them with medieval gear in general, but they do look nice.

I didn't think of them as loinclothes (but maybe they are ), so much as part of the belt/fauld armor. Sort of a leather guard hanging down - it's not a codpiece, because it's free-hanging. It's basically a tasset hanging in the front. They're an innovation of a lot of RPG art; realistically, they might have gotten in the way whilst running, but then again maybe not - they probably wouldn't be any worse than a roman war-skirt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassets

For some reason, because of filling space in the figure/silhouette (like a cape), I've found it makes the unit look much more 'solid'.

They're also a clever way of avoiding drawing hips and crotches, which are, in my experience, awkward at best to fit in and keep looking reasonable at the scale of our sprites...



And I ended up not doing anything yesterday. I was absolutely shattered from 2 nights on sleeper trains in a row - the name is misleading, believe me...

EDIT: fixed up shading, added a recovery frame to the ranged attack, separated the motion blur into 2 frames. Still got to make the ranged recovery frames for Explorer and Pathfinder, then I'll get onto their attack and defence anims.

[kitty]

To me, the highwayman -is- a mercenary of sorts; the description you give sounds more like our "fugitive" unit. Of our outlaws, I view the thugs as not being free-rangers or woodsmen at all, rather they're just brutish "down on their luck" soldiers of fortune, and they have no scruples about working for robbers. Whatever pays them. Their function is to be the bruisers that get right into the fray, and IMO they'd generally have reasonably soldier-like equipment cobbled together by the time they're at a high level. I don't think they'd usually -be- part of the core robber groups during downtimes, rather they're hired-guns brought in when they plan to pull a job.

Aha. That explanation works fine to me. If that's your intention you have nailed it pretty perfectly! They'll get some really old and used-looking army equipment!

I'm tempted to - I'd like to finish these first, but the footpads sure do look ... funny. The higher-levels actually look fairly nice, but the level-one footpads are rather gimpy-looking.

You know that I plan to start tackling the portraits for the footpad-line in about two weeks But if you give me a description or perhaps links to some mood refs I'm sure we can work parallelly on them, too.

[thespaceinvader]

Anything more on the scout before I commit?

Finished of the recovery ranged frames for the Explorer and Pathfinder, too.

[AI]

Part of the explorer's axehead seems cut off on the "pointing at the flying axe" frame.

[Jetrel]

This is what happens when I don't build an animation all in the same file, previewing as I go. I put it all together, and some frames are off - in this case, the landing-the-blow frames (6+7) are dilated in size.

Is that a bad thing, or a good exaggeration by accident? Comparing against the corrected version will tell. (Edit: actually, it's getting late, and I see a few other things I want to tweak. It'll happen tomorrow.)


Also, a major thing worth noting on these weapon-reeled-over-the-back blows - whenever you have a limb like this arm, bent at a midjoint (this is also hugely important for rendering knees on bare legs - both our female elven archers, and our thieves look crappy because of this.), it seems to me that the best way to render it is to put the entire lower half in shadow.

Don't try and put the whole limb, bottom and top, in the light, and indicate the knee with subtle gradations - it'll just look like a smeary mess. There's not enough room for a shadow under the knee, AND a lit patch below the shadow (at least, not unless the character is barefoot). Hell, even if they are barefoot, you run the risk of making them look like they have melon-sized kneecaps.

That is of course the painful thing about pixel art - directly depicting any feature tends to make it look huge. You usually have to just hint at it with more general, larger-scale shading.

[Jetrel]

Drip, drip, here's a WIP:

[thespaceinvader]

Pathfinder animation test using up-to-date handlebar 'stache base frame.

[Jetrel]

Speaking of handlebar staches, this was an update I'd been meaning to do to the netcaster line prior to animation. They're going to have borderless armor which is just pure TC.

Back to work on the footpad, I know... It should be the first thing I work on tomorrow.

[Jetrel]

Well, here's half a footpad..

I still need to make a head+hands, and iron out a good palette for the hair.

[Jetrel]

Note: the shoulders are just pointy leather bits of the vest/jacket. I don't see it as out of sync with the recent portrait (which helped inspire a few things).

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic. ... 26#p364926