Fire guardian portrait

[bonehead11]

Here is portrait for fire guardian, if you want it, a quickie about an hour playing around and it is done, reference for pose is from posemaniacs, some pictures of fire. Tried to leave the contrast low, saturation low so it would fit into wesnoth line of portraits.

[zookeeper]

Maybe it needs just a little bit more work.

[bonehead11]

Oh yes, forgot about that transparency thing, here it is.

[Zerovirus]

Don't you have a version with semitransparency on the flames instead of the fade-to-black outlining?

[mameluke]

The flames from his head are cut from the border of the picture

[edited grammar issue]

[francophone]

black > transparency

[bonehead11]

Hope its done.

[mameluke]

I think it's a great picture but as far as I know from earlier discussions between art developers it's an issue that those flames get cropped (where the green line shows)

Flames cropped

fireguardian11_borderissue.jpg (7 KiB) Viewed 7254 times

I hope this can be fixed without to much work?
To crop the picture from top or from the right is bad afaik... (to crop from the left, like his arm now, is ok)

[thespaceinvader]

You have a reasonable eye for the appearance of fire, but this doesn't match the technical guidelines by a long shot.

Thanks, but no thanks.

[bonehead11]

Forgot about the cropping and other minor things, my bad. Hope its fixed and I havent forgot anything.

[mameluke]

UMC? to good to get lost imho!
Maybe move to artworkshop?

[Pewskeepski]

I could use this in my campaign. He could be the loyal fire guardian, who you get in scenario 3

[bonehead11]

I could use this in my campaign. He could be the loyal fire guardian, who you get in scenario 3

Sure


So I gave another shot for the fire guardian portrait, tried to go with my style, tried to hold unto the technical part for wesnoth, hope you like it.

[Dixie]

I can't omment much on the look of the flames, but the smoke is still cropped at the top of the picture. I can't say for the black-background portrait, but for the transparent ones, I don,t think there's an upper limit (see Rithrandil's portrait).

[LordBob]

There may be some interesting things in the fiery pattern, but all in all it's really just impossible to read anything with such abuse of the "smudge" tool. In both pictures you have an interesting starting point, however it gets utterly wasted by the super-heavy smudging.

Should you be willing to give it another shot, I'd recommend the following steps :
- before anything else, do some research. Look for pictures of industrial fires, forest fires, live embers, every manner of smoke... You'll never have too much documentation for a drawing.
- begin with simple shapes and lines. Outline flames and fumes, but do it with a pencil or brush. Keep things simple so that you're able to better analyze and evaluate what you're drawing.
- keep working with simple lines until you're satisfied with the pose. Continuously check that the pose of your character is coherent and understandable to an outside viewer. No shading yet, and above all no smudging. If your drawing isn't convincing at an early stage, no amount of wizz tools will make it right.
- only when you have secured a solid base sketch should you consider shading. A process which should first involve only light, shadow and colour. Transparency and (some very small amount of) smudging ought to serve as finishing touches, nothing more.