WSAS: Milestone Three

[thespaceinvader]

Minor tweaks to clasher base frame - shadow changed to new schema, added blades to spear hand guard, cleared up the other blades a touch. I'll try to block up a blade animation this morning.

EDIT: also, preliminary blocking for the portrait shading.

EDIT: attachment. Curses.

[A-Red]

The detailing on that new sprite is simply gorgeous, but the legs seem to have issues. They look impossibly far apart to me, it's hard to read what he's wearing on them, and the feet seem a little small.

The transition between the wing and the forearm/hand on our left makes that area a little difficult to read as well. Possibly just a slightly awkward tangent?

[thespaceinvader]

It's worth bearing in mind that I didn't make any of the sprites - they're from Neoriceisgood. But I'll have a word with Jet and see whether we can fix them up a bit.

Blocking for a brand spanking new slash animation. Obviously this is a WIP, so please comment only on the general motion and layout, rather than the image quality. A few issues I do know about whichwill be fixed in the final cut: expanding legs during the windup, lack of body and head rotation throughout, jumpy tail, missing wings.

EDIT: and the recovery jump should probably be higher.

[melinath]

This is probably partly because of the lack of body movement, but the jump at the end is very separated from the rest of the animation. It doesn't look like the slash is so powerful that it ends in a jump (dragon punch!) but rather more like the clasher finishes the attack, then thinks "Oh, I think I'll hop now" and does so.

[Velensk]

I'm confused about the movement of the arms. The right arm (from the drakes persective) seems to jab forward while at the same time the left arm appears to have a motion streak (after it has been drawn back. without actually moving much. If the left arm is doing the attacking then shouldn't it move to the right then streak to the left, and if the right is jabbing it would not stretch itself like that it would instead step forward with its right foot.

[thespaceinvader]

The right arm isn't involved in the attack - it's purely winding up for it. The motion will look better when the slide is applied in-game (not to mention when it's cleaned up...

[melinath]

... Am I seeing a different sprite than everyone else?

frame3.gif (1.46 KiB) Viewed 3361 times

The right arm is clearly the attacking arm and has a very nice motion blur. It's not a jab, but a kind of uppercut motion. Look forward to a clean version!

[kitty]

Just some quick comments on the portrait, (apart from the arm/hand/leg ones I made last round you don't seem to have adressed by now) In a sense it is too early in the process to say anything, but nevertheless:

• Push your values more! If you convert to greyscale you can see that everything is pretty midtone right now, you'll need real darks and lights, too!
• Everything seems really saturated right now, you could use some subtle and desaturated colours, too. Those contrasts will make your saturated colours pop even more. Use those more purposeful!
• And generally you've chosen a *very* challenging lightsituation with both lightsources set up facing each other directly. If I wanted to work that out I'd paint the whole guy considering only one of the lightsources (propably the rear one but which one doesn't really matter) until everything looks right and after that add in the other one cautiously (perhaps on a negative multiply layer to keep full control)

[thespaceinvader]

I got my left and right confused again, didn't I >.<

EDIT: on another note, making a start on the scaling pattern. How does this look as a preliminary appearance (clearly, the render will change the lighting a lot)?

Also: yep, there's a lot more needs to go into the render - that was just a preliminary shading to give form ideas. And I hadn't intended the lightsources ot be directly opposed - the secondary one is meant to be coming more from behind. I was going to add it mostly in a separate layer anyway, thanks for reminding me =)

[kitty]

EDIT: on another note, making a start on the scaling pattern. How does this look as a preliminary appearance (clearly, the render will change the lighting a lot)?

Hmm, those look more like a pangolin's than a reptile or corocodile - I think they stick out too extremely.

[thespaceinvader]

This is my inspiration: http://ironshod.deviantart.com/art/Fore ... -102539781 I really like that style of scaling, even if it's not totally reptilian. It looks like scale armour, and I like scale armour =D

There should be a chance to show off some other areas in some of the other units, which should be more crocodilian - the clasher being drowned in armour doesn't help with showing the nice scaling patterns. makes the portrait quicker, though =D

[kitty]

Ah - if it is on purpose the scales are fine, I just thought you said somewhere that you took crocodiles as reference, but pangolins are really great creatures, too.

[thespaceinvader]

Reworked blocking for the animation after discussion with Jet. I'll have a chat with him in a bit, btu I think this is basically ready for finishing. The final few frames will be clearer when the shadows are in place, but in case you can't figure them out, they constitute a jump back and a quite deformed and crouchy landing.

Also, used blue rather than white for the swipe, for better visibility.

EDIT: also I had an interesting idea for the Warden's halberd design, for the portrait - a blade shaped and decorated like a flame - http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:jVv ... /flame.jpg - with the pole parallel to the bar under the flame, across about halfway up. It could fit very well with the fieriness i'm trying to evoke with the shapes of the weaponry.

[Girgistian]

Oh. You used my sketch and I didn't even notice. Thanks, I guess. All I can do is wish you luck, I mean I wouldn't have tried to colour that mess

[melinath]

Is the blue a permanent change or only for the forum posting?

I like the new windup + jump back; I'm guessing you're planning on adding the wings to the frames where they're missing.

One thing bothers me: where's his spear? I guess he could pull it out of hammerspace, if that's the intent, but if it is somewhere on the sprite, that should be clear. The thing's about as long as the clasher is tall (in the portrait.)