Valkiers portraits: It's like I can touch you!

[thespaceinvader]

No, keep the arthian one, it's awesome. Ditch the sothian one, which is less so. That is to say, I like the one with the big hat, spirally red ribbon, and free floating eye. I can never remember which one is which...

[Valkier]

No, keep the arthian one, it's awesome. Ditch the sothian one, which is less so. That is to say, I like the one with the big hat, spirally red ribbon, and free floating eye. I can never remember which one is which...

Problem being: Arthian is the ancient lich here. Not Sothian.

[thespaceinvader]

I don't see the problem. If you want to design an ancient lich generic, go ahead. Just keep the good portrait, and ditch the poorer quality one. The one with the floating eye is good, interesting, unusual and fun. The one with the staff is not. If that requires swapping them round, so be it. The characters are pretty interchangeable anyway.

[Darker_Dreams]

what everyone really wants, whether or not they'll cop to it, is more of your awesome portraits- so just doing them all is the easy fix! and everyone's happy!



That said; the Arthian(sp?) portrait is made of innovative and awesome, and it'd be a crying shame for it not to be finished and used somewhere. It's a picture not just of a skeletal mage but of a skeletal mage doing something and being inherently creepy in the process. There should definitely be more of that in the world.

[Frogger5]

what everyone really wants, whether or not they'll cop to it, is more of your awesome portraits- so just doing them all is the easy fix! and everyone's happy!

That... was the wrong thing to say.

Comments like that in contribs don't generally go down all that well.
(I know from experience.)

[Sgt. Groovy]

The design of Stalrag's axes is just plain wrong, the shaft should be going through the head, not vice versa.

[Valkier]

First rough at an ancient lich.

As for Portraitgate: The top hat lich will probably replace Sothian, and the new portrait here will be the new Arthian. You guys get to choose which one though!

[boru]

I like the four armed guy with the chandelier, but really, they are both pretty amazing. Glad to see we're not going to lose the top hatted lich, he will always be "the Christmas lich" in my book.

[Zerovirus]

I personally prefer the top one if only because I can tell where recognizable anatomical parts are. The bottom one looks like a [censored] of arms. Both are cool and I don't doubt your ability to make them clear and defined with further work, though.

[thespaceinvader]

Top's preferable to me, too.

[Darker_Dreams]

2 random and possibly impertinent questions;
1) why is the ancient lich running around with 4 arms? is there a new sprite (either made or in the works) that gives the Ancient the extra appendages?
2) on the previous page Valkier said the Sothian portrait was done; if it's complete but being abandoned for the purpose of the campaign is there a reason not to make it an alt for the lich?

Just asking since I hadn't seen either item discussed.

[thespaceinvader]

The AL has needed a remake for a while, and making it less humanoid is on the cards. The portraits Valk comes up with may serve as inspiration, or we might introduce the idea that different ALs simply look different, and their appearance is down to their own personal desires.

There will be a new sprite some time, yeah.

I'd like to see some improvements before I committed the sothian portrait as a lich alt, but I'll talk about those with Valk later on.

[kitty]

So many again! I hope I forgot none of them…

Sothian:
I generally like his costume very much! What throws me off most of all is the green colour you chose for the staff's top. It has no connection to anything else in that piece. Try to tie it together by wether adding more reflections of the green light in sensible places or by simply tinting it yellow like the collar. Apart from that the shine's shape is very much digital soft brush like shaped… give it a more interesting one And Sothian could use another round of detail shadows, like the inside of the hand holding the staff, the shadow of the hood on the skull, the shadows those little twirly things at the side of the hood cast on the robe and on each other, below the yellow collar on the brown stripe…

Morvin:
I very much agree with Bob's suggestion of desaturating the green cloth - the new version already looks a ton better, it should be even less blue. You're probably aware that we can see too much of his right sleeve's inside considering the perspective.

Tallin:
The rear hand is still way too big. Plus check the ear's placement. Apart from that, more details are really improving this one His hips seem rather wide for a young man and the beltbuckle needs to be redrawn. And something about the head's perspective is inconsistent - if one can see the bottom side of the nose one shouldn't be able to see the vertex… (This also applies for the headband, which should curve the other way round)

Stalrag:
Very dwarf-y! I'm not quite sure what the round thing with the evil tangent to his right axe is - please clarify that and get rid of the tangent. His ear seems tiny. And Groovy's critique of the axe shafts is spot on. The last issue apart from those minor ones are his hands, they seriously lack anatomy, wrists and definition. Try to grab a ref.

Rakshas:
I'll generally leave this one to LordBob. But I think the bald look is interesting for him, too. Perhaps indicate his general hairy-ness with a bit of stubble (or blue-is shades) on his head (and don'T forget the hairs on his arms/hands!)? And the skull design on his belt doesn't look drake-ish at all, more like a random chaos monster, please make clear where he snatched that one

Ancient Lich:
I am so glad that this old topic is getting taken care of as well! I think the general multi-arm / kali-like way is quite interesting. But since that design has such strong cultural connotations you need to be very careful to not use more south-east asian influences as well. Use the motif but keep within our already defined setting.
Apart from that the top one seems to be the preferable one to me as well.

[Valkier]

Too many comments! Blah.

Kitty: The robed lich guy with the staff is on his way out anyhow. I'll probably ditch the glow for when that time comes, but as of now he's not really a priority. Same with Tallin really. I really just don't like him at the moment, perspective or not. His design is, well... Not so good. I keep hoping to talk to esr about it but he hasn't been around. As of now, I'll probably just hold off on him for a bit.

Ancient lich: Why the four arms? It's just what I was in the mood for last night. I guess you could link it to some culture or religion, but in the end for me it was just a flat out design choice with no strings attached. If I were to make more sketches today maybe he'd have only two arms but but four legs, or three spines, or whatever. I have no idea exactly what will end up happening with these, so I'm not very concerned about it for now. I just need to get some more remaining NR portraits done and then I can focus on the last few remaining portraits.

So much for having them all done by this week.

[thespaceinvader]

The robed lich, if you're willing to finish off, would be includable as an alternate for the lich generic in mainline.

Also, it might be worth putting together a big post of stuff you want reviewing, old and new, so we know what needs attention.