Unit sprites for After the Storm

[Mefisto]

I think I should write here why I started to play with artisticdude's sprites. One of reasons was the palette which Blarumyrran finds "messy". I liked it because it retained a smooth gradient of luminosity but the hues variation allowed for interesting effects. Similar palettes were used in some challenges on Pixeljoint. It was a shame that artisticdude used other simple colour ramps for hair, weapon blades weapon handles and parts of armor for level 3 unit. I would prefer it integrated into another colour palette. It's kind of pointillism as I see it. And I already eliminated several very similar colours from the sprites.
Blarumyrran's approach gives easier way to emulate gradient of skintones and he already mastered his technique. I am still learning basics and my main reason of taking part in modifying these sprites was to trying to enhance something which had a flaws obvious to me but was well thought of. (And of course I was sure I could design better weapons for L1-L3 and better wings for zephyrs. ) The more experienced artists are to tell if my work makes sense or not.

The other parts
Hand thickness - I made females' hands on pixel thinner than of males (or half pixel if you see the diagonal lines). I didn't want to make them too thin because: a) they are female warriors so they need to have strong hands, b) some time ago somebody of this forum gave me a tip to design unit sprites for Wesnoth like a cabbage patch doll (yeah, it was doofus-01 three years ago). I stick to this.
A tail - messy, yes. I'm working on it.
Horns, claws (toenails) etc - I would like to make something completely opposite - use hues which are parts of one integrated palette. And besides every toenail is just one pixel large and the horns have nice contrast with dark blue hair. I see no need for additional palette for them.

[Sleepwalker]

That is quite frankly an awesome edit. There's a lot to be learned there. I appreciate the reason of having a restricted palette the way mefisto describes as the elegance of achieving a lot with few colors is appealing. I do the same time to time trying to eliminate unneeded colors. But as there is no actual need of heavy restriction and can often mean shooting oneself in the foot I would prefer a sprite that simply looks best in the game while still looking like and being pixel art. Art is subjective blah blah...

Perhaps one should straighten the curved spine a bit to reduce the perceived... sluttiness.

Thinner arms makes it more feminine yes but as Mefisto says they are supposed to be strong too.

[Crow_T]

I see nothing wrong with a slutty demoness I do like Blarumyrran's rendering, it reads more as a female.

[Iris]

I definitely do not approve of that direction, or of random people suggesting/deciding what the intended direction should be.

[Crow_T]

or of random people suggesting/deciding what the intended direction should be.

The hazards of being in a public forum- perhaps this should be moved to the restricted area to reduce such noise- although I don't recall that I was deciding anything, just giving an opinion is all.

[Mefisto]

Current stage of demons. The warriors can be still to similar to each other but the others I think can be considered finished. I removed quite a few colours from palette, changed the hair - now females have more neat hair - and decreased dithering on zephyrs' wings.

[Iris]

Before saying anything myself, I would want to know what artisticdude thinks about this, seeing as how he volunteered to redo the set months ago in the first place.

[homunculus]

this looks very nice, even with the light source on the body of the winged demons being from south-west (as it appears to me) while the head and the wings seems to be lit from south-east.
which is what i attempted to adjust in the winged demons (and ended up also trying a number of other minor changes which might or might not be a good idea).

[Mefisto]

Before saying anything myself, I would want to know what artisticdude thinks about this, seeing as how he volunteered to redo the set months ago in the first place.

Of course, it was his design and his project. It was just a workshop for me and I only made a handful of suggestions that can be completely ignored.

[homunculus]

Before saying anything myself, I would want to know what artisticdude thinks about this, seeing as how he volunteered to redo the set months ago in the first place.

Of course, it was his design and his project. It was just a workshop for me and I only made a handful of suggestions that can be completely ignored.

lol, because no one can really formally blame you [Mefisto], because as far as i understand, artisticdude's sole commitment to the task was not stated anywhere in public, except right now which was afterwards, unless i missed something.

that doesn't apply to my last edit, unless we consider that i had already drawn it when shadowmaster posted (a bit like unintended ninja) and in the hopes that it was not a serious problem i posted the edit.
(btw looks better on CRT than LCD because of one too dark pixel at the chest and lack of deeper shadow at the side of the male, and maybe that the halberd seems to have an unintended dent on LCD)

actually i did like some of artisticdude's originals a bit more in some parts, because of the musclebaby syndrome generally discussed in way-of-the-pixel forum.

the way i see it, the females are supposed to be warriors with a strong stance (rather than the kind of weaker feminine that blarumyrran's edit looked like), and shadowmaster can correct me again if that is wrong in his mind and i would appreciate it.

[Iris]

btw looks better on CRT than LCD because of one too dark pixel at the chest and lack of deeper shadow at the side of the male, and maybe that the halberd seems to have an unintended dent on LCD

I honestly wonder who would use a CRT for digital painting/drawing nowadays, seeing as how LCDs have become the norm, are less migraine-inducing, far more convenient to transport, and less susceptible to software-induced damage (unless safe CRTs became a thing while I was too busy enjoying my first 17" LCD screen).

I don't know much about pixel art differences between both screen technologies myself, but I recall Jetrel explaining that a previous iteration of the Elvish Shyde looked smooth and good on CRT while it was all jagged and broken on LCD.

Anyway, that’s entirely orthogonal to the topic at hand.

...

...

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate all your suggestions the same and they may help artisticdude or myself shape the final product later. The thing is, we both had come up with this over IRC and Twitter a while ago, and obviously we didn’t tell anyone because (I assumed) nobody is really watching these topics for anything; and likewise, nobody contributes art to my campaigns unless I explicitly ask force them to do so because that’s just how things work in these forums in general.

When artisticdude first posted here I thought I wasn’t necessary to explain that it was a task that had been assigned to him months in advance because it was the first time (aside from Sleepwalker’s portraits) someone had posted their own revision attempt for my own existing art in my topics. I thought everyone would see that and provide suggestions and amendments in a more orderly, case-by-case fashion.

So I was effectively proven wrong in that regard.

But as I said, it’s not all in vain. We will sort all this feedback out in time, hopefully. Right now my primary concern is not with this unit line in particular (albeit it defines the form factor for many other units), since I’m still working on the last few scenarios of E3 and churning out sprites as fast as I can, without any outside help. So pardon me if I sound bitter about organizational issues or art perfectionism from time to time, but what I’m doing here behind the curtains is really, really exhausting. And I still have to deal with the glaring issue of not having portraits for most of the AtS-specific major characters while play-testing.

And to make things worse, the clock is ticking.

the way i see it, the females are supposed to be warriors with a strong stance

Yes, this is correct. For their culture, there are no artificial gender distinctions like that, and all individuals of either gender have the potential to become powerful fighters and some day ascend to the ranks of the Demon Lords — assuming they don’t get killed first. This is even exemplified throughout AtS E3 in the form of Ergea, and in the most extreme case, Uria herself.

This is not to say that there aren’t more classical succubus-like demons in Inferno too — they just don’t get any screentime in IftU and AtS because they would contribute absolutely nothing to a war-based plot.

[homunculus]

oh really, no one is interested in contributing?
for example, i have secretly considered suggesting (and attempting) a redraw of the imp line, originally drawn by the holy (if i am not mistaken) neorice a while back, because of readability of the form.
even did some research on imps in folklore, and found that this is not quite the imps that are probably needed (but clarification of that can wait).
being stuck with another idea at the moment (the glamorous clam, if you are aware of that).
not that i would make any promises or reservations.
the thing is, everyone has his own style and own opinion of what is right, and pixeling can take time.

(about the exhaustion, i somewhat understand this, based on my own comparatively extremely small campaign)

and CRT is teh rocks, everything looks better on CRT than on LCD like everything is better with cheese.

[Dixie]

This is completely off-topic, but about things looking better on CRT: it kinda reminds me how there are "flat (I'm referring to the EQ here) ear phones on which most stuff sounds bland and non-flats ones on which songs tend to groove more, but if the latter kind is used by the sound man during recording and mixing everything might sound uber awesome but it will really sound weird and excessively dull for anyone not using these exact same earphones afterward. If the metaphor was to subtle, I was suggesting that working harder on sprites so that they look better on LCD might be more profitable in the long end, if really CRT looks better in any cases.

Out with me now >>

[Mefisto]

I can assure everybody that I work with LCD monitor, not CRT.

I am the one to blame for hijacking artisticdude's thread. I have written already what made me to give some contributions here: I liked the original approach and design and I felt I could add something useful quickly. Designing something from scratch is still something I am rather bad in and this was one of the reasons I didn't claim any other sprites to make. I did some sketches, but nothing worth of mentioning.

[Sleepwalker]

Artisticdudes art was a big improvement over the old sprites. Perhaps it was a bit rude to raid the art with edits. In that case I apologize. Let's see what he says about this.

SM: Well... I've been watching your topic, and have thought about trying some edits to your heroine and faerie sprites in lack of having any verbal suggestions. But I have a lot on my plate already and haven't gotten around to anything like that.

I remember my dad having a laptop for his work like 20 years ago. The LCD screen really sucked crap with barely readable colors and any movement on screen (like mouse pointer) gave a motion blur. Yes nowadays I wouldn't trade away my LCD.