Save us, oh Lord from the portraits and animations!

[Girgistian]

So, soon after finishing a somewhat lengthy essay on vikings, transforming my mount&blade character to a nord, creating a dual-axe-wielding killing machine in neverwinter nights and starting to grow a proper beard, I found this cool upstart of a faction from the faction & era contributions - the Væringjar, who seem to be as brutally fun as their norse counterparts. The original thread is here, and on this thread shall be the upcoming artwork for the faction. Sprites first, obviously.

So, here's the base frame for the lvl 0 Fyrd, who's supposed to be wielding a saex (or seax?). I'm somewhat finished with it myself, so if anyone thinks they've got any advice, comments or general critique, post away. I'm thinking the head could use some more work, but let's hear the crowd first.

EDIT: here's the complete unit tree so far and a link to the faction's wiki site, thanks to doofus-01

[thespaceinvader]

...it's a Klingon...

With the dark skin, goatee, and high forehead, that impression's easy to give... CHanging just one of those aspects would probably alleviate the issue.

Otherwise, nice =D

[Girgistian]

...it's a Klingon...

Never thought it like that. I'll see if I can fix the skin and hair a bit, probably going to fiddle with the beard too. Now that I look at it, the whole dude looks awfully small too might see to that as well.

Off-topic: I was watching a tv show called Kill Arman just yesterday, and happened to see a black belt taekwondo... person with a ponytail. They were in London at that time, so... been in tv recently?

[thespaceinvader]

Nope. I've not done TKD for a year or two, either...

[Cloud]

Wow, very nice start . Looking forward to seeing how the rest of the units look

And oops, I misread Seax amongst all my other funky names and swapped the vowels around .

[Girgistian]

Funky they are indeed.

And thanks, here's an update to him, along with a shot of the little buggers in actual gameplay. I'm pretty much pleased with it now (size didn't have to change after all, it's a lvl 0 anyway), so if someone else sees anything to nag about, be my guest.

Next up: the bóndi. probably tomorrow.

EDIT: grr, a stray pixel on his chest. fixing that when I start with the bóndi.

[Girgistian]

Douple your post, douple your... fun.

The sprite's Bóndi, Jämesr Bóndi. Also fixed the pixel on the fyrd. These are the finished versions so far, if you're satisfied with them.
EDIT: I always forget something. Added a shadow to the bóndi's base frame.

fyrd copy.png (4.42 KiB) Viewed 8809 times

bóndi copy.png (5.26 KiB) Viewed 8500 times

[Lord Ork]

Isn't the bóndi a bit big compared to other humans. I think even the orc warlord is quite scared and even ashamed.

[Girgistian]

Possibly, but he's supposed to be pretty burly as far as I know (neutral with 8-3 damage, plus he's a hulking barbarian). If other's think it's too big as well I'll scale him down a bit. Right now it looks like I could darken some outlines too.

EDIT: no scaling yet, but did small fixes to the colouring.

[thespaceinvader]

A few things strike me: first, his torso's very long compared to mainline units - this seems to be something of a feature of your style, but it does look unusual. Similarly, we see his feet from more of a side-on angle than in mainline units.

Second, his arm, assuming it's supposed to be bare, could use some muscle definition, or at least an elbow =P. It's a bit tube-like at present.

Third, I can't really make a lot of sense of his helmet - the top part is good, but I can't really work out the visor type bit.

Fourth: His spear could use a little anti-aliasing, or maybe just a different angle - 2:1 works better than 3:1 for straight lines.

Otherwise, he looks great =D Nice work. This faction's shaping up well.

[Girgistian]

Thanks, nothing like valid criticism . I should post more stuff on the forums, you can't get the same feedback in real life without having to pay for it. I hope this clears out at least most of the issues tsi brought up. If not, point it out.

[thespaceinvader]

I think you overdid it a little with the elbow this time - what i was suggesting was more that you kept the arm in the same position, but added some extra shading to show where the elbow was by defining the muscle shapes a bit - just a bit of widening and narrowing here and there, plus the odd shadow, would have done the trick. The position you've put it in would be kinda uncomfortable.

Otherwise, you seem to have taken care of everything else. Nice.

[Girgistian]

Ah, I see. This hopefully fixes it. I'm assuming the spear's anti-aliasing isn't going too far?

[thespaceinvader]

Bingo. And no, apart from one stray semi-transparent pixel just above his hand that sticks out from the shaft, that looks great.

This is going to be a very high-quality faction.

[Girgistian]

This one thanks ye.

Here are the last clean-ups for the bóndi, next up: the jór. It'll be an interesting challenge, since I've never sprited cavalry before.