Comments/critiques on these frames:

BloodIssyl · Post by **BloodIssyl** » August 10th, 2007, 8:57 pm

i personally think Irrevenant's edit is worse than the original. For one, if you look at mainline units, you can't really see a neck, because the sprites are small in scale and dont have room for that much detail, plus the bulk of the armor would extend up to the base of the skull anyway.

I think the spearman looks great as is.

Post by **irrevenant** » August 11th, 2007, 10:34 am

BloodIssyl wrote:i personally think Irrevenant's edit is worse than the original. For one, if you look at mainline units, you can't really see a neck, because the sprites are small in scale and dont have room for that much detail, plus the bulk of the armor would extend up to the base of the skull anyway.

You can't see a neck on mine either - the point isn't 'neck', it's the position of the head relative to the other body parts.

However, I had forgotten to account for the 'looking down on an angle' perspective of Wesnoth units. Here's an 'in-between' version that's more in line with other Wesnoth units. (Although it should be noted that I haven't adjusted the head for the angle that the viewpoint calls for).

Post by **shiremct** » August 11th, 2007, 11:14 am

The head should be in the proper angle because it was ripped straight off the horseman unit.

I put his head in the same position as the heads existed on the bodies that I based the spearman off of. He had the peasant/townsman's body with a new spear, shield, and armor. I think that whether his head seems too sunken or not depends on what you use to reference it: If you base it off of the position of the arms, I think the head seems decently placed, however, if you use the shoulders, it seems sunken in because of the unusually large pauldrons.

Your second edit presents a much more natural look with reference to his shoulders but makes his arms look odd (his right arm primarily). I think this is an excellent example of what I see many other artists say about frankenstiening and how it can easily lead to disproportional or off-balance bodies.

When I rework him, I will certainly shoot for a shoulder-head position more in-line with your second edit.

EDIT: Posted a pic to illustrate what I mean: the first guy is my original first attempt at the spearman armored in chainmail. I was unhappy with it and re-shaded him to his current style, somewhere along the line making a large addition to his right pauldron. This unusually large and slightly odd-shaped pauldron is what makes his head seem set too low I think.

Post by **shiremct** » August 19th, 2007, 1:04 pm

Although my productivity with these guys has dropped off quite a bit the last 2 weeks, I am still working on them.

I finally worked out what to do with the body I made for the Peltast: Instead of him being a Peltast, he will be a Scutarii, a heavy infantryman from Iberia. The Scutarii will be an alternative upgrade to the Peltast. His all-metal javalins will have the slow ability but he will only have 2 and they will do mid damage. Essentially a legion-styled soldier who fights with a thrusting spear instead of a short sword. The Peltast will have to get a new body with lighter armor. I think I'm going to keep a bronze armor theme going with all the spear-wielding level 3's and probably use a steel or grey iron coloring for the sword-wielders... probably grey chainmail for level 3's archer units where applicable. Not sure about the mounted units I plan to do.

The upgrade tree would look something like this:
Militia Spearman - -> *Other upgrade lines*
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Javalineer
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Peltast (quick, good ranged damage, weak melee, better defense)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Scutarii (mid melee and ranged damage, slow ranged special, better resistances)

The Scutarii's legs have been giving me a hell of a time and all my attempts at adding in some design on his scutum turned out horribly bad, but at least he has a proper role now. As always, constructive criticism is encouraged. Thanks.

BTW, would units done in this style be useful to anyone? I have a rough idea of what I want the rest of my units to look like, but am willing to accommodate suggestions (to an extent) if it will make the unit useful to someone else. I enjoy playing about with these sprites in my free time but will be the first to admit my project will probably never get finished, so I'd like to make they useful to others if anyone is interested. Just throwing it out there.

Post by **shiremct** » August 29th, 2007, 7:43 am

Just another WIP unit for constructive comments: The phalangite. He is an alternative L3 upgrade to the Hoplite.

EDIT: An additional unit, a level 1 healer, the herbalist.

Post by **irrevenant** » August 29th, 2007, 9:00 am

The Phalangite is nice. My only suggestion is to anti alias the spear - it looks pixelated. Ditto the Scutarii.

Very nice indeed.

[EDIT] Re: The Scutarii, it looks like the entire nearest leg is shin (which is thus too long). He appears to need a knee in there somewhere.

Your work is very nice indeed - as good as what's in mainline, IMO.

Post by **shiremct** » August 29th, 2007, 9:02 am

I do plan to anti-alias the spear a bit and add shadows at some point, but I hate the GUI in gimp so i do all my work in paint until I HAVE to use gimp for transparency.

EDIT: Quick question: I find it really annoying that the units switch their hands when flipped so I may want to do seperate frames for facing right and facing left if its easy to implement in the units WML. This would be a lot of extra work for each unit, but I may do it for some of them.

Below is an example; its very rough and needs work (bigger shield and better right arm) but it shows what I mean. The top pair is a simple flip like what the game does, the bottom pair are two seperate images to maintain the right-handed spear and left-handed shield. Is it easy to set up different frames for the two directions in WML? Is it even possible? I'm just curious because some units look really odd when flipped, at least to me. It seems the bigger the shield or the more angled the unit is, the more glaring it is... the Scutarii looks so strange to me when I flip him, but maybe its just because I expect his shield to be in his other hand since I drew him with that in mind.

Post by **shiremct** » August 30th, 2007, 8:28 am

WIP shot of the re-worked level 2 Spearman. I'm having trouble with contrast in a few areas but he is coming along. I'm unsure about his helmet... I didn't want it straight bronze like the level 3's but the grey color didn't blend in as well as I had hoped. I may need to add a brown tint to to make it closer to the bronze of the L3's, what do you think?

I've begun working with gimp enough to get a few basic processes down for dealing with transparency so soon I'll start tackling the pixelated edges of things like this spear, but for now it remains blocky.

Sabata · Post by **Sabata** » August 31st, 2007, 2:10 am

Very nice, havent noticed you before.
His left shoulder is out of perspective, it gets out too much.

BloodIssyl · Post by **BloodIssyl** » August 31st, 2007, 2:17 am

Sabata wrote:Very nice, havent noticed you before.
His left shoulder is out of perspective, it gets out too much.

Correct. Also, his legs are a bit thick and he needs some detail in general.

Post by **turin** » August 31st, 2007, 2:53 pm

shiremct wrote:BTW, would units done in this style be useful to anyone? I have a rough idea of what I want the rest of my units to look like, but am willing to accommodate suggestions (to an extent) if it will make the unit useful to someone else. I enjoy playing about with these sprites in my free time but will be the first to admit my project will probably never get finished, so I'd like to make they useful to others if anyone is interested. Just throwing it out there.

YES.

Over at the Imperial Era we've had a Greek-based faction idea floating around for a while. We call them the Dardanoi. This art would be about perfect for that.

So if you want to tailor the images you make to that faction idea, that'd be cool, or if you want to keep working on your faction and let us use the images you make, that'd be good too. In case you're interested, the planned Dardanoi tree looks like this, but it's flexible:

Code: Select all

Armsman -> Hoplites -> ArgÃ¼raspis -- good in plains, has grouping bonus
        -> HÃ¼paspistos -- good in hills, has grouping bonus

Scout -> Prodromos -- horse scout line; weak on attack, good in plains
      -> Hippeus -> Hetairos -- heavy cavalry branch; gains grouping bonus, gains attack strength, good in plains; not as fast as scout branch

Slinger -> Sphendonetes -- slinger, ranged (impact), good in plains

Javelineer -> Peltastes -- javelin-thrower, ranged (pierce), good in hills

Seaman -> Nautes -> Thalassokrator -- charge(pierce), good in shallow water

Initiate -> Epoptes -> Mageutes -- chaotic, shadow ranged magical, dagger
         -> Pharmakeus -> Philosophos -- neutral, psychic ranged magical, dagger; these would be the practicioners of "high magic"

Post by **Iris** » August 31st, 2007, 3:02 pm

By the way...

shiremct wrote:I do plan to anti-alias the spear a bit and add shadows at some point, but I hate the GUI in gimp so i do all my work in paint until I HAVE to use gimp for transparency.

Tried Adobe Photoshop yet? People say it's easier to use than the GIMP. I have not checked myself, as I don't have the money to buy it.

Post by **Blarumyrran** » August 31st, 2007, 5:22 pm

GIMP can be clumsy in Windows, but with KDE you can have many desktops so you can devote one to GIMP, then there shouldnt be problems.

Post by **turin** » August 31st, 2007, 6:11 pm

shiremct wrote:EDIT: Quick question: I find it really annoying that the units switch their hands when flipped so I may want to do seperate frames for facing right and facing left if its easy to implement in the units WML. This would be a lot of extra work for each unit, but I may do it for some of them.

Below is an example; its very rough and needs work (bigger shield and better right arm) but it shows what I mean. The top pair is a simple flip like what the game does, the bottom pair are two seperate images to maintain the right-handed spear and left-handed shield. Is it easy to set up different frames for the two directions in WML? Is it even possible? I'm just curious because some units look really odd when flipped, at least to me. It seems the bigger the shield or the more angled the unit is, the more glaring it is... the Scutarii looks so strange to me when I flip him, but maybe its just because I expect his shield to be in his other hand since I drew him with that in mind.

I'm pretty sure it is possible. It sounds like a good idea to me. Especially with units that form shield formations and such, it really doesn't make sense for the shield to flip... but you have to be careful to make sure the unit is still recognizably the same.

Post by **torangan** » August 31st, 2007, 9:10 pm

Wesnoth does support directional animations. Obviously the usual idea is that NE/NW and SE/SW are pairs for which mirroring is close enough to get away with it. But if you do provide special frames a look at the WML of units having seperate animations for S or N should tell you enough to implement e.g. SE specific frames.