Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

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Crucis_Deus
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Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Crucis_Deus »

So I was feeling meta and decided to turn the Squishy Wizard and Men Are the Expendable Gender tropes right on their heads, and made the first sprite of a unit line which, as the title indicates, is a suite of blood and life related mages.

Fluff tangentially related to art at best:
Spoiler:
This is what I've done so far. For some reason, I decided that most Blood Mages will be women (maybe it's the wolf moon, who cast her spell on them) and made the female frames first.
Base frame: I noticed the shadow not matching the lady, I'll get around to fixing that later.
Base frame: I noticed the shadow not matching the lady, I'll get around to fixing that later.
bloodmage-trans.png (2.14 KiB) Viewed 6171 times
I've begun animating her too. It could probably use another two frames...
I've begun animating her too. It could probably use another two frames...
bloodmage-animblk.gif (5.57 KiB) Viewed 6171 times
I'm sure that they can use much improvement. Fire away!
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Flameslash
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Flameslash »

The sprite is good and the animation is promising, but it doesn't seem to fit the style of Wesnoth and I can't put my finger on why.
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Midnight_Carnival
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

Flameslash wrote:The sprite is good and the animation is promising, but it doesn't seem to fit the style of Wesnoth and I can't put my finger on why.
No, Crucis_Deus has his own style. I actively encourage people do draw units in their own style for their campaigns and eras. The only problem comes when you have your own style of units alongside mainline units in your campaign, it looks terrible.
I'm guessing based on the unit I have seen (first attempt?) that Crucis_Deus will probalby be able to draw units which will fit in with mainline Wesnoth and it might be something he might consider practicing, but I would urge Crucis_Deus NOT to give up on his own style and to develop it furhter.
:)
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
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doofus-01
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by doofus-01 »

The animation blocking is good, you'll be way ahead of most UMC if you have animations like that. Nice job. :)

The shading of the base sprite could use some outline, and more contrast, to fit in more with mainline. And despite what M_C says, the mainline style exists for a reason: Sprites are supposed to be read-able representations, essentially icons, of what is going on. The other path is to take realistic forms and scale them down to little blurry things-not-quite-ants, and then it's all muddled and boring.

One could quibble about the details, but if you need to use mainline assets, it helps to play along.
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Crucis_Deus
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Crucis_Deus »

Thanks aplenty for your responses!

Upped the contrast, added somewhat of an outline (probably not enough, seeing as I have quite the allergy to clear-cut lines in general :P) and fixed the staff so that it is less telescopic now. Also made her coat more glittery, since Blood Magi have a keen sense of fashion and are as morally correct as many of the Disney movies are.

Still, there's bound to be mistakes that I've overlooked. After a round or two of feedback I think she'll be ready to addonize.
New baseframe: touched a bit the cape and fixed the bottom point of the crescent axe.
New baseframe: touched a bit the cape and fixed the bottom point of the crescent axe.
bloodmage-melee-0.png (2.1 KiB) Viewed 6038 times
Also filled in the animation! I think it looks pretty sweet, but then again, I'm wrong more often than not :)
Also filled in the animation! I think it looks pretty sweet, but then again, I'm wrong more often than not :)
bloodmageanim-melee_001_bg.gif (8.62 KiB) Viewed 6038 times
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Flameslash
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Flameslash »

The animation is really good, but the head seems a bit static.
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Vyncyn
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Vyncyn »

Flameslash wrote:The animation is really good, but the head seems a bit static.
This will propably be unnoticeable in-game as the unit moves while attacking. Needs to be tested though
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beetlenaut
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by beetlenaut »

It's a good animation, but the weapon comes to a stop unnaturally--like it hit a brick wall. It probably could be fixed without moving it too much.
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taptap
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by taptap »

It looks as if her right arm (the one on the left) sits really high.
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Crucis_Deus
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Crucis_Deus »

Finally I had some time I could dedicate to my Wesnoth campaign. Dangnabbit did it take long...

Anyway, I've managed to (mostly) complete the animations for the level 1 unit. Behold, the blood mage:
Melee and ranged attack. In the second case, the halo was superimposed
Melee and ranged attack. In the second case, the halo was superimposed
bloodmage-attacks.gif (29.9 KiB) Viewed 5290 times
Just the halo.
Just the halo.
halo.gif (4.42 KiB) Viewed 5290 times
Projectile in-flight.
Projectile in-flight.
blood_ball_n_ne.gif (3.52 KiB) Viewed 5290 times
Projectile impact anim. Gif screws over the last three frames, which are semitransparent.
Projectile impact anim. Gif screws over the last three frames, which are semitransparent.
blood_ball_splat.gif (2.71 KiB) Viewed 5290 times
Projectile disintegrates if it misses. Similar to the splatter, gif screwed over 1 frame because of transparency.
Projectile disintegrates if it misses. Similar to the splatter, gif screwed over 1 frame because of transparency.
miss.gif (1.42 KiB) Viewed 5290 times
So, how's it lookin'?
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The_Gnat
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by The_Gnat »

Wow It looks really great! :D I love what you have done. I personally would say that the blood looks a little to much like a strange creature rather than liquid.

Maybe if you make it less in lines like a gel or sticky substance and more in waves or droplets than it will look more like a liquid, or perhaps you want to make it look more magical with a glow around it.

Overall though it looks very good and doesn't really need any more work. I am interested to see the advanced next unit in this line! :D

(also could you post an archive with the animations and halo for use? :) )
Crucis_Deus
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Re: Unit Line -- Blood (and Life) Magi

Post by Crucis_Deus »

Thankyouuu! :P

Hm, the blood being all stringy is because, as I envision them, blood mages and their Hemomancer tree advancement have a crude understanding of what they're working with at best, so they basically physically pull at the blood as if it were a ferrofluid in a magnetic field. Another reason is that a motley collection of dots usually don't read very well in a sprite this size. That said, I might have overdone it a bit, if so I'll revisit the blood halos when I'm done with the Hemomancer (lv2 bloodmage, damage dealing tree)

Speaking of which, I could block out 6 frames of that unit, base frame and melee attack. How do they look?
Slow anim so any wrong pixels or whatever can be spotted.
Slow anim so any wrong pixels or whatever can be spotted.
hemomancer-prototype.gif (7.88 KiB) Viewed 5205 times
Faster version of the same anim to see whether it is overall right
Faster version of the same anim to see whether it is overall right
hemomancer-prototype-fast.gif (7.88 KiB) Viewed 5205 times
Also yes, when I'm done with the blood magi they'll be available for anyone who wishes to use them. ;)
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