Loyalists

[Jetrel]

Yeah, I'm voting for #1 on the far left, too.

The most recent swordsman frame posted by Amorphous looks good to move ahead with for animation.

Higher level equals taller unit?

Yes, mainline units tend to grow 1-2 pixels upon leveling.

It's the principle behind "heroic scale" - heroes are often metaphorically described as larger than life. All artistic traditions tend to use that metaphor literally, as well as verbally - "important things" are often sculpted/drawn/depicted in an unusually large size to convey the emotional/intuitive 'feel' of them being important. Really common in videogames. Really common in tabletop games. Really common in all sorts of stuff.

We use it because it works crazily well, and is an established tradition dating back to the stone age.


In particular, it's very funny to me how, in some games like Dota 2, (or warcraft 3), they'll use this not merely for base character models, but they'll even use it when a character gets "empowered" by some temporary magic effect - they scale the 3d model depicting the character by a marginal amount to make them look even bigger and stronger. Like ... in a matter of seconds.

[Amorphous]

*Four months later*

Sorry about that! School's out, so I've got more time at the moment, and I'm hoping to finish up with the Swordsman's attack within the week. Right now, the two things I'm worried about are consistency of shading/proportions and jerkiness of motion. I need to take a break from looking at him so that I can pick those things out better, but comments or edits would be even more helpful.

Thanks!

[aquileia]

Looking great!

The motion blur of the sword seemed a bit too bright at first, but looking at the single frames I think the issue isn't the color, it's that the blur is too far outwards on the attached frame - IMHO it shouldn't center around the tip of the sword but rather a few pixels earlier where the blade starts to narrow.

Glad to have you back working on the loyalists!

[Jetrel]

This is looking very good.

[Amorphous]

Looking great!

This is looking very good.

Thanks, both of you.

Good point, aquileia, and good catch, too. That's exactly the kind of thing that my brain stops seeing after staring at a sprite for a while. I made an adjustment that hopefully accounts for that and did more minor tweaks. If it looks okay, I can do final brush-up and then post frames with transparency and so forth.

Also, I started a quick draft for a defend animation -- most of it is just select-and-slide right now. The second frame might need more exaggeration on the shield raise, and the legs move pretty jerkily. Other thoughts?

[SFault]

Maybe in the defense animation guy could protect himself more with the shield

[Tom_Of_Wesnoth]

I agree with SFault, the defence animation would look better if the shield was used. That is, after all, what it is for. The attack animation looks great though - I love the detail in how the skirt moves.

[Mechanical]

Hi all! I realize that I still have much to learn, but watching this topic, I decided to try it. What do you think?

[Yomar]

All in all its not so bad, but the chest looks a bit oversized to me if compared to the legs, or the legs are just too short.

[doofus-01]

Is this supposed to be a new unit? Maybe it should have its own topic in Art Workshop.

Some aspects of it are pretty good. You use an appropriately high contrast for shiny metal, for example. Though I think you used a little too much highlight.

Other parts could use work though. The 90 degree outlines on the torso should probably be avoided, and the helmet is a little confusing. Do more of what you did with the shield, less like the helmet. Sometimes, you can leave out the internal outlines, because the eye will assume that border for you, especially if there is high contrast between adjacent pixels. Or you can use a bright outline (like you did with the shield rim).

Hope that helps.

[Mechanical]

Thanks for the tips!

[Mechanical]

New version:

[Amorphous]

Hey, long time no see! Aquileia kindly reminded me ages ago that I should finish Swordsman stuff, and today I polished the attack frames a bit. Crossing my fingers that no one thinks the changes are a step backwards. If these are good to go for commit, I attached the transparent frames too.

I'm not sure when I'll next have time to draw, but the next thing to do would be finishing the defend animation, which is still about the same.

Edit: Oh! And Mechanical brings up an interesting question. Is the Spearman base frame up for revision? I know it's already got a lot of animations, but there were some nice-looking edits going around a while go.

[doofus-01]

The attack looks great, I don't think it's a step backwards. Nice job.

[Adamant14]

The Swordsman looks great, and the animation is great too.
I also like the Javeliner, nice work.