Coming up with new units!

[Mmetafour]

Just posting the progress of these new units I've been working on for the past week for a faction I'm making

Its good pixel art practice!

[Lord-Knightmare]

For a beginner, those are very nice. Keep it up! Is the faction supposed to be half-elves?

[Mmetafour]

Thanks!

Yep, they're like an elvish offshoot, living in a far off deep forest

[Mmetafour]

If I may ask, what should be improved upon?

[Lord-Knightmare]

If I may ask, what should be improved upon?

The shape of the dagger/dirk/knife on the upper left ones. They look like spoons to me.

[Trayanee]

I am not an artist, but I beleive every input can be helpful so I will try. I feel like they should have stronger outline and more contrast shading overall. Also I am not sure about scale. Unless they are small on purpose I would say a 10% increase in size would help.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Ok, you seem to be doing 'the impossible' here buy making units which show your own unique style but which won't look totally out of place alongside normal Wesnoth units.

You're showing promise, but you need to do a lot of work improving things - I believe you will soon be producing some amazing looking units.

You chose some fairly dull colours which is good, too much contrast and too many bright colours can make your units look like a circus carnival.
However, you have applied shading better in some place than in others, look a the shields for example.

The thing which really stands out to me is the guy in the middle.
I have no idea what is going on there. I think it is an Elf riding on a Golem. If it wasn't your intention to draw that then please tell me what you were trying to make. Ok. the plants on the thing are a nice touch, but if I were you, I'd have saved the nice touches until after it was clear what the thing was. it seems vaguely humanoid, but kind of formless and not so well defined, I think your shading might need a little tweaking here. The guy on its back(?) might be riding it or he might be partially absorbed, there is no way to tell- he just seems to be 'behind and above' it.
The detached part does not help matters because it is hard (for me at least) to see what is going on anyway.

I look forward to seeing the interesting new units you will make. I like your style - I like anything original, but your stuff seems original and in a consistent style. Keep drawing, keep improving and watch out for getting lazy on areas, saying "oh, but that's just..." you've impressed me so far, for what that's worth, dying to see what you'll come up with next.

[Mmetafour]

Thanks for all the input guys!

Thats actually EXACTLY what it is

This faction is supposed to be the result of a group of Elves who left the main, canon, elvish society, a long long time ago. (for whatever reason)

They took up living in a far away, deep forest and found that the forest created manifestations of its own energy/spirit in the form of these ethereal stones. Its not uncommon to see these stones/rocks/boulders just lying about, near trees or jutting out in rock formations in the forest. Being the ELVES, they took well to this "natural" place easily and soon thrived in this forest. Their most skilled sages became "weavers" (the mage looking units in the middle of the picture) developing the ability to use their own branch of sylvan magic, in tandem with the stones, to create "constructs" that are powered (and influenced) by the literal spirit of the forest they live in. In effect, they're living hand in hand with the forest itself.

So, half of the units, like the sentry (top left), the archer (bottom right), and the weavers, are just straight up elves. The other half, like the living chest (top middle) are the "constructs".

And occasionally, there are units that are both at once....like the Golem Caretaker (Middle left) who is an elf, riding on the back of a golem. This will also be the same case in the next level of the shield maiden, who upon reaching level 3 will wield a regular shield in her left hand and a literal Golem shield in her right.

I've been creating units for battle for wesnoth since I was in highschool 8 years ago hahahaha, I created an entire faction (which...I lost because my computer crashed...) but, since I never invested in a better program, I've created all my units (and any pixel art I do in general) using MS paint. Whats interesting is that Wesnoth units are VERY SMALL and the shading thats done on them is very difficult hahaha. Honestly I don't think I'm doing it "right" if that even means anything. When I usually do pixel art, I do an outline, pick the colors I'd like to use, fill the outline in and then pick two more colors, a darker one and a lighter one. In total 3 colors for every one color like in this picture from my own personal project:


However.....in Wesnoth...its not the same. In wesnoth there are like...3 billion colors placed side by side rather than one FILLED solid color being emphasized with two shades. I mean there are more colors in a unit's hand then there are in that entire picture hahaha (and dont even get me started on hair ), and the units are TINY so every single pixel counts! and I've never shaded like that before.

I've tried to create this faction a couple of times since getting back into this game and each time they come out looking a little better.


This time I decided to sit down and make them again from scratch with canon units right next to them so I could get them to look...well...canon?

Their sizes and shading are based right off the canon when I'm working


Problem is...unlike people who know what they're doing when they shade, I sort of just...grab 5 shades of a color and go to town with them with a general idea of where the light is coming from hahaha

[Vyncyn]

If you're still using MS paint I highly recommend switching to another free editor like "pain.net" or "gimp".
I think pain.net is the more userfriendly (at least I can work better with it) than gimp and has far more features than MS paint.
Gimp seems to have even more features, but isn't easy to use imo.

[Computer_Player]

I'm not an artist.. but cool looking units! XD
If I may, to resolve the form of the Golem Caretaker.. perhaps make it so it is sitting on the Golem's shoulder instead of sort of hanging on for dear life.