Skeptical_troll's abominations

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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

good job there :D , and about shape, it's a difficult question, you know, both seem promising enough but my opinion is: the new one (without 2, i mean) looks good (the old one looked like a separate axe, lol), gold looks good enough to me, makes it look a lot fancier and richer (that guy is a freaking king, after all ^_^ )

by the way, judging by the quality of your current sprite, it's relatively safe to say, that someday, you might gain the title of an Art Contributor :D
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

i think this state is good enough, maybe start doing animations or something, i seems good enough, and when it's animated, i might use it instead of that other stupid lvl4 Dwarvish Lord with a crown, keep up :D
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skeptical_troll
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by skeptical_troll »

Thanks for the encouragement! I am sketching the animations on paper and when I'll have time I will try do to them. I changed again that damned axe and this is the version I think I'll use for the animations, unless anydoby suggests further improvements
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

seem ok, good luck on animating :D
oh, and you might want to make a version with a hammer of a similar style, as a base for hammer attack anims (if this this guy is similiar to dwarvish fighter line, he must have a hammer too)
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by Elvish_King »

Although you used another style for making the dwarv (he is looking south instead of south-east) he looks really good and would fit into the wesnothian dwarves.
But: One question: How can such a small dwarv handle this big axe, it is even bigger than him? :lol:
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

looks southeast enough to me, and about axe, who knows, maybe it's sorta runic-enchanted and stuff to make it lighter or something :lol: , changing axe size would only ruin the overall idea, i think :hmm: .
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

made a sketch for hammer baseframe (he would indeed need a hammer attack, so i made a sketch, not by any way a fully ready version), any comment, i might need to draw the hammer from scratch, since this gold-ish-ness ( :shock: ) is kinda out-of-place here (who makes weapons out of gold, lolol :lol: )
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skeptical_troll
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by skeptical_troll »

@Elvish_king: yeah, the axe is sort of bombastic, but since dwarves cannot be tall it is useful to show that this is a lvl 4 badass. Anyway, I always imagined dwarves as short but super strong, like ants that can lift weights 20 times them, so it is not so unrealistic in a fantasy context (if that even makes sense).

@ForestDragon: I am not planning to give him an hammer, nor ranged hatchet like the Dwarvish Lord. It would look strange to me that he can hide this mega axe and pull out a mega hammer in the time of a frame. I don't want to overload him. He will have some magical ranged attack on which I still have to decide, and if I have to give him an impact melee attack, it will be with the haft of the axe, which must be heavy enough to balance the head. At the moment I just had time to made a very simple 1-frame defense animation.

However, if you need an hammer for your era, go ahead and draw it as you are doing. I think it is ok if it has some gold decoration, but maybe you may reduce gold and add some steel (or whatever war hammers are made of).
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

good progress, oh, and by the way, about the defense anim, may you be generous enough to post the frame alone pls
and about ranged, i think maybe magical lightning (like delfador's) being shot out of his axe 8) , seriously something like that will match him nicely enough
keep up good work animating all those :D
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by Elvish_King »

I like it when somebody is doing animations because it is difficult and many people don't want to try. But you did and it looks good, besides the fact that it sometimes looks like he is trying to brake the staff of his axe. :lol: Maybe you could draw the staff more straigth in the defense frame.
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by skeptical_troll »

I see what you mean, I think my shading was bad, and the handle of the axe gets also blended with the armor in the background, causing some confusion. I tried to fix it a bit, but I'm still not satisfied. I also sketched what I imagine tp be the magical ranged attack. It is rough and single frames need lot of polishing and proper shading, but I'd like to hear opinions about it before doing it. I'll need to draw the projectile for the attack, but that's not gonna be a big deal I guess (compared to the rest)
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

the ranged attack turned out REALLY good :D (but in some frames, it seems that the emerald mysteriously dissappears), but i think you should separate the dwarf and the green electricity (same animation, but without lightning), and a halo (basically a separate image of that lightning) to make it so that they overlap while in-game, but at same time easy to modify, and about projectile, look at delfador's lightning, it's instead of typical n/ne single projectile, it has a few variations, both shooting from above, you can just recolour the typical lightning in wesnoth core files to green, and it will look a LOT more impressive than just a simple projectile, good luck :D

EDIT: as a reminder here is the lightning (not mine in any way), i just posted a single frame, not the entire anim (the rest is in data/core/images/halo) :
lightning-bolt-1-3.png
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skeptical_troll
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by skeptical_troll »

I am trying to do the melee attack animation but I am a bit stuck. I feel there is something unnatural in his global movement but I can quite put my hands on what exactly, maybe his right leg? I'd like to find out before polishing the single frames and sort out the right movement of the cloak.
I am partly constrained by the fact that the axe is big, so he cannot move too much, and that I need to describe a wide arc as this will serve for the attack from north to south going through NE and SE.
All comments are welcome.

Also a minor thing: I was wondering whether I could use the feathers on the crown to give some expression in movements (especially the defense one), a là Asterix & Obelix, if you know. Would that be too cartoon-ish?
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by ForestDragon »

well i think that:
1.you should make an extra frame, since i the anim, the axe instantly changes from being in the middle, to suddenly appearing next to his right foot (left from our point of view), it isn't a problem for anims that have low amount of frames, but for smooth ones like yours, it's not really acceptable
2.both in your magic and melee anims, the gem dissappears in some (or exactly, most, or a half), you can just rotate it (you are using Gimp, don't you?), and then correct the colors (they get a bit messy), or just draw individually for each frame
3.maybe the cloak should move a bit more during the swing (similar to your magic anim)
4.oh, and your anims seem to be missing shading
otherwise, really good , i hope that my suggestions help at least a bit
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Re: Skeptical_troll's abominations

Post by beetlenaut »

skeptical_troll wrote:I feel there is something unnatural in his global movement but I can quite put my hands on what exactly
I think I see it. The wind-up is perfect, and he is swinging the axe straight down with a lot of force. But then, when the handle reaches the point where it is horizontal, the swing moves to the left. Changing the direction of the axe like that would require almost as much force as the original swing. It should actually end up straight out in front of him. Check out the attack of the skeleton. Yours should end like that.
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