Vyncyn's sprites

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Vyncyn
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Short colour lesson

Post by Vyncyn »

I'm propably not telling anything new to veteran pixelartist, but since I've been experimenting a bit with colours in the last few days, I thought to share my findings.
Some of the newer mainline sprites (eg. Firedragon, mudcrawler, elvish outrider) use a lot of shades you (at first) wouldn't expect.
For example the Firedragon has purple and greenish hues, while the elvish armor consists of yellow and blue colours.
Additionally some shades can be used for very different surfaces.

Here I made a white dress with the same colours as the elvish armor (2 blueish shades, bright yellow and white)
shading isn't complete, so it's best to ignore hands and wings
shading isn't complete, so it's best to ignore hands and wings
fairy.png (1.08 KiB) Viewed 14230 times
The whole fairy is made out of only 12 colours (not counting magenta). Hair,skin,dress,shoes and staff reuse the same shades with various different effects.

I was trying to make a palette, which would look good on many different sprites. Though I only partially succeded, I've put togehter this 36 coulour palette (including 5 magenta hues, shadow, and transparent background). It is far from perfect. Some shades will hardly be useful, while many better ones are still missing, but I think it's a good start.
colours.png
colours.png (324 Bytes) Viewed 14230 times
Finally, here are some changes I made to my units, to show you the effect of the palette.
result.png
result.png (4.84 KiB) Viewed 14230 times
The top-right one has only 13 colours (around 18 with magenta and shadow), while the old one had about 30 (including TC). As you might see (or not), the armor looks hardly different (from afar), even though I completly changed the colours from grey to green,brown and blue. All shades are included in the palette.
The bottom right one was a bit unfortunate. The brown shirt couldn't be replaced with colours from the palette, so I only made changes to hood, weapons and skin. As a sidenote: the face is a bit greyish and sickly, but this was a pure artistically choice; the palette inclued several shades for a pinker skin.
It is arguably which sprites look better; the point of this was more to see the effect different colours can have on a image.

Especially darker shades can be changed (to green or purple) to give the sprite a nice undertone without changing to much.
Lighter shades can look better with yellow or blue.
Shadows on a surface might look better when you use another colour insted of just a darker hue. Here are some good pairings (imo): Red/brown/orange -> purple shadow
Grey/black -> blue/green shadow
Gold/yellow -> red/brown shadow

TL;DR: Colours can be changed :eng:
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Crow_T
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Crow_T »

Nice post here, I think these kind of useful tidbits would be good additions to the wiki- eventually this post will get buried.
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

wiki page has been created https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Choosing_your_palette .
It isn't complete yet, since I want to do some more testing before adding the rest.
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taptap
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by taptap »

Really appreciate that someone is still talking technically about sprites. Thanks Vyncyn. The low color count units are so much easier to modify (animate too, I guess) and work with in general. When you look at some custom units that are sliding scales with hundreds of colors ... this becomes painfully obvious. One thing that would help me reduce color count in my experiments would be if I could do wood, leather and dark skin with one palette instead of three, with maybe a few different highlights, but I can't.

The unusual colors in the fire dragons are for the most part not there for lower count, variety and reuse, however, but are likely complementary (greens) and warmth (purples) contrasts to emphasize the red/orange tones. I believe there was a page on the wiki talking about these things once, but all the explanation images are gone now.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

taptap wrote:One thing that would help me reduce color count in my experiments would be if I could do wood, leather and dark skin with one palette instead of three, with maybe a few different highlights, but I can't.
This gave me a great idea. I'll work a bit on it and post results later.
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

Changed the wiki article. I removed the bit about shadows for now.

I created 3 new units, trying to minimize the number of needed brown tones.
Spoiler:
If anyone has aditional ideas about shading, you can share them here and I'll try to cover it in the wiki. (or edit it yourself if you have an wiki account)
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taptap
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by taptap »

The shaman looks great as is. The others could probably use more color ;) Nice study in minimalism.

I find it amazing how the violet (aubergin) and orange work out on the shaman trousers. And I finally see that "metal" look is not palette but mostly lighting.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
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The_Gnat
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by The_Gnat »

Good. I like your sprites, particularly the night princess and flaming arrow archer! Would you post the archer and fairy with a transparent background so it could be easily used?
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

Sure, but fairy is partly unshaded and I do not plan to finish it, as it was just made to test some shading.
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fairy.png
fairy.png (1.28 KiB) Viewed 13983 times
archer.png
archer.png (1.46 KiB) Viewed 13983 times
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The_Gnat
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by The_Gnat »

Thank you! It is hard to use sprites with the green background. What tool do you use to remove it?
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

Just a selection tool and then "strg+x". Not every image editor has this though, but you can download some editors for free (for example paint.net or gimp)
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by The_Gnat »

Okay thanks, I find it is faster just to create the sprites on a transparent background in gimp.
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

I'm planning on readding the dwarves to my addon. Previously they got removed as I felt they weren't competitive outside the mountains, so now I changed their setup a bit. I'm still working out what units fit best in terms of theme and balance and I'll have to create some new graphics.
One featured unitline will be the Dwarvish Lizardriders. I'm not completely satisfied with the lizard head and the rider, but here is a small teaser.
lizardknight.png
lizardknight.png (2.27 KiB) Viewed 13904 times
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Gyra_Solune
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Gyra_Solune »

Vyncyn wrote:Changed the wiki article. I removed the bit about shadows for now.

I created 3 new units, trying to minimize the number of needed brown tones.
Spoiler:
If anyone has aditional ideas about shading, you can share them here and I'll try to cover it in the wiki. (or edit it yourself if you have an wiki account)
The warrior is a little difficult to parse at a glance - until you said shiny skin I presumed the bright spots were like, tribal necklaces or so. It's difficult to make out a lot of detail with the fairly dark color palette. If you want my advisory? I'd try team-colored war paint in a tribal pattern on the chest and a little on the face to make it stand out a little more, and make it just a liiiiiittle lighter so the detail of the body is easier to make out. Everything else though is really cool, I really wanted to see a solid Zulu warrior style unit and this is an excellent level 1 for that - I look forward to promoted versions that go all-out with leopard furs and feathers and such!

Might I ask what you have plans for how these units will be statted? It can be difficult to keep an ostensibly basic infantry unit feeling unique, after all. If you were to ask me, I'd say a Zulu warrior ought to be a midpoint between the Spearman, Saurian, and Jundi - not as tanky as the Spearman, not as fast as the Saurian, not as dual-ranged as the Jundi, but second place in all of those.. Something like...33 HP, 6 MP, 6-3 melee spear, 5-2 ranged spear, normal human movetype, normal human resistances?
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Vyncyn
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Re: Vyncyn's sprites

Post by Vyncyn »

Gyra_Solune wrote: The warrior is a little difficult to parse at a glance - until you said shiny skin I presumed the bright spots were like, tribal necklaces or so. It's difficult to make out a lot of detail with the fairly dark color palette. If you want my advisory? I'd try team-colored war paint in a tribal pattern on the chest and a little on the face to make it stand out a little more, and make it just a liiiiiittle lighter so the detail of the body is easier to make out. Everything else though is really cool, I really wanted to see a solid Zulu warrior style unit and this is an excellent level 1 for that - I look forward to promoted versions that go all-out with leopard furs and feathers and such!

Might I ask what you have plans for how these units will be statted? It can be difficult to keep an ostensibly basic infantry unit feeling unique, after all. If you were to ask me, I'd say a Zulu warrior ought to be a midpoint between the Spearman, Saurian, and Jundi - not as tanky as the Spearman, not as fast as the Saurian, not as dual-ranged as the Jundi, but second place in all of those.. Something like...33 HP, 6 MP, 6-3 melee spear, 5-2 ranged spear, normal human movetype, normal human resistances?
Don't want to disappoint, but I don't plan on actually using them (at least not in a forseeable future). They were just a study to show how a small palette can be used for a large variety of materials.
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