Skeptical_troll's abominations

[skeptical_troll]

Hi Gyra_Solune, thanks for your suggestions. I think you are right, my fisherman hasn't eaten enough fish lately and he's definitely too slim compared to other wesnoth units. The problem with the outline is the worst, I reckon, but I need to find the motivation to fix all the animation frames, which will take me a while.

Meanwhile, I produced another monstrosity: I need a dwarf king unit for a campaign I am making and decided to try myself. It is supposed to be a level 4 unit, and he's wielding a sober and elegant double-bitted axe. I took inspiration from the arcanister unit and from the runemaster of 'Era of Magic' (and listened to Wagner at full volume while drawing it, this made the axe much bigger).
Any comments are welcome, they were very helpful with the fisherman.

What bothers me at the moment is that the axe has the same colors of the feathers on the crown, which may cause some confusion. The white background does not really help here. Also, the axe ends up beyond the HP bar (see other attached figure), but I think this is just unavoidable (a small axe is not a viable option!!). Also, does it look 'dwarvish' enough?

Size looks more or like right, comparing with the dwarvish lord.
Thanks!

[ForestDragon]

i have to admit, you are getting a LOT better at this, and about the axe going beyond the HP bar, maybe you can try having the axe facing the opposite direction, if you feel like doing so, and also the shading on the axe feel kinda not smooth enough (look at dwarvish lord of for example), keep up good work
oh pssssst, when it is complete, i might add it as a dwarf unit in my era, if you don't mind.

[skeptical_troll]

Thanks! Which side the axes is does not matter much, because the sprite is flipped depending on the unit's movement. I should either make him hold it more vertically or I just accept that it goes behind the bar. The axe was supposed to have two colors, darker in the middle and bright on the external blades, but this is not very convincing at the moment and looks just like bad shading. Maybe I don't have enough pixels for such details, Or I should put some more shading on the dark part.

You are welcome to use the unit, but it is likely that it will take some time before I publish this. Unless you want only the sprite, in which case it will be finished earlier and probably posted here.

[ForestDragon]

well, if what you want to is external and internal blades having different colors, then i suggest doing either:
a)probably make it more contrast, or or use a different color for internal blade, or something

b)or even better , make internal blade TC, it would surely make it a LOT more unique in compare to others, and not just a plain ol' axe like usual, keep up good work, as always

[DeCoolest_Cat]

Nice sprite! Just a few comments. 1 - the eyes and eyebrows look very flat on top. 2 - the green gem (I think that's what that is) on the axe looks out of place. It looks on top of the axe, not embedded in it.

[ForestDragon]

i decided to improve your dwarvish guardian a bit:
1. made the lower half of his axe a bit more curved
2.made the gem encased in a 1-pixel layer of metal
3.added 1 more shade of colour to internal blade
here:

dwarf_guardian.png (3.31 KiB) Viewed 3776 times

and tc axe:

dwarf_guardian-tc.png (3.23 KiB) Viewed 3776 times

[skeptical_troll]

Thanks for your replies. I worked at another version, changing color of the inner blade and putting a metallic case to the gem as suggested by forestdragon (I tried to shade it a bit and make it lighter). The gem now has a darker color, as it is supposed to be an emerald, and it is slightly transparent, although nobody will notice. I moved the feathers a bit and tried to fix the eyebrows. Also, I was forgetting the shadow!

I wonder whether I should rotate the head a bit, usually Wesnoth units look more down than this.
I add a png from the game on a dark bg, because white really sucks.

[ForestDragon]

nice! , it sure looks better than before, but now i think the dark part looks good on light background, but too blended with dark terrain like cave, or something (maybe make it a bit brighter, but most contrast at the edge, or something), and about the head, i don't think you should rotate it, i like the way it is for now, you sure did improve external blade's curve decently,and the emerald is finally emerald-ish (if that is even a word ), good job

[ForestDragon]

made a remake of your next version for you, changes are:
1.made internal blade more battleaxe-shaped (i might have gone a bit too far, but you get the idea)
2.a bit brighter internal blade, borders between internal and external blades are same dark color
here it is:

dwarf_guardian.png (3.35 KiB) Viewed 3718 times

[skeptical_troll]

I like your shape of the internal blade, I will use something like that! I will also probably change a bit the shape of the external one and made few other modifications. That axe still requires some work.

[ForestDragon]

thanks, it's nice to help a fellow artist/WML coder, keep up
by the way, what program do you use when creating images, just curious, i use Gimp, what about you?

[skeptical_troll]

Yep, GIMP as well, I use Ubuntu so I don't know valid simple alternatives, and that's more sufficient for what I want and I am able to do.

[Vyncyn]

It looks really nice, but i think the dwarf is missing a little contrast. I tried to give it a little more shading.

dwarf_guardian.png (1.71 KiB) Viewed 3676 times

Changes include:
-More contrast between hands and beard
-Outline on the crown/helmet
-Removed the blue pixels from the boots
-Shaded arm, beard and coat a little different

It doesn't include ForestDragon's last change yet.

[ForestDragon]

good job, Vyncyn, oh, and i made a combination of your version with mine
here:

dwarf_guardian.png (3.49 KiB) Viewed 3674 times

[skeptical_troll]

Thanks both of you. I elaborated a bit on your combined version. I wanted to try the effect of showing off some gold on the axe, but it's not very convincing to me, maybe I'll leave it only on the gem. Beside that, which shape of the blade looks batter to you? 1 or 2 (2 is the old one)?