Drake Portraits

[Jormungandr]

Well, only one, actually. I've got other lvl-1 drake portraits in various stages of production, but I wanted to see what people thought of my version of the race before I went too much farther.

EDIT: Removed old version to save space. See Jetryl's tweaks further down.

[Zebulon]

Really good.

[Cuyo Quiz]

Love the face and anatomy, for real. I don't know about the armour, although it does make him look warrior-like, but i don't think i'm the one to listen about that.

I hope the strong large neck to be the common trait for all drakes.

[Jetrel]

Good.

Will, almost certainly be gameworthy after I do a little tweak. Namely, it's not that it needs "black outlines" as some might think, rather it needs a few bits of darker shadowing.

It is my intent that with these things, we are providing the game with stuff that is good enough that we will never want to replace it. This is why I've been so hard on you with regards to these - you, not unlike myself, are right on the edge of that line - some of your pictures cross over (and really do look good).


Related to that - the shading method you are using looks very good, but ONLY for materials like what this drake is wearing - they do not look good on things like that female thief's leather, or the mage's robes that you made a while ago.

That would be, specifcally, materials with smooth surfaces, and thus, a very small angle of specular reflection. Other materials will have much smoother and wider bands of specular highlighting, and the highlights will not be so intense. (I've tried, in my studies on light, to apply a similar style of rigor that 3d programs use; it's really paying off and gives me a vocabulary to describe what other artists understand only intuitively or not at all. Clearly, there is a science to "how to shade", else raytracing programs would not be possible.)

[Jormungandr]

This probably isn't quite what you meant by "a few bits of darker shadowing", but I've turned up the shadow strength a bit (since I could do so quickly). See if it works any better.

Being "hard on me" in this fashion is appreciated, actually; one thing I get out of attempting these is the opportunity for practice and critique. It's become pretty clear that I need to come up with some more broadly useful shading techniques. The two-tone style I've been using was intended as a labor-saving device for myself, but it's apparently not working so well in many cases.

Thinking about light mechanically is certainly a good way to go, and it's something I do as well - but I would be careful about using 3D rendering software as your starting point. Those techniques are all based on observations of how light works that have been collected by (mostly) artists and photographers over many, many years, and usually make some number of simplifying assumptions to make the algorithms tractable.

Basic raytracing ignores some potential light interactions in a scene (and I speak as someone who's programmed one). Other techniques, such as radiosity, render certain other interactions but ignore some of those that raytracing handles. (radiosity models reflected illumination better, but specular highlights not so much).

Bidirectional reflectance functions (which are exactly the science of "how to shade" you're thinking of) are large and painfully complex for any realistic material. So modeling them precisely is not always worthwhile; hence the various simplified shading techniques one observes in rendering programs and artists alike. Problems really arise when one uses such a simplification without understanding that they're doing so.

Sorry for my rambling, but it's late.

EDIT: See Jetryl's tweaked version a couple posts down.

[turin]

I think we really need to get the anatomy of the drakes worked out. This portrait:

Is very different from the one you have. Personally, I prefer your version, since it looks less like your standard dragon, but...

[torangan]

I agree that this is a nice picture. The only things that bother me somewhat is that the face looks a bit bland and I can't imagine how the wing on the left side of the picture should look in 3D. It doesn't look like something which may expand to me.

[Neoriceisgood]

Nice job, I take that it's your version of the Burner? and the one pillager showed must be the Flameheart, yeah;


Good to see some drake portraits, but I want to see more of them!


As a side note, I prefer Jormungandr's version, as it, eventhough the shape of the head is slightly different; portrays the drakes better, and also has the red eyes drakes have portrayed properly.

[Jetrel]

Hmm - this was more the edit I was thinking of.

I have CVS access just fine, but that's meaningless now - soon as I have a chance, I'll get my SVN access working and commit the following image:

[Jormungandr]

Ooh, nice. The additional texturing (especially the neck ridges) is good.

[Neoriceisgood]

Groovy.

[Cuyo Quiz]

Good show Wesnothians Artists.

Mood is:

[Jormungandr]

A new one; this time it's the Drake Glider.

I'm playing around with slightly less sharp shading techniques; let me know how it looks.

Also, for comparison's sake, I've attached a quick sketch of what the glider's wing tatoo looks like unfolded.

EDIT: Removed this version to save space. See finalized version on page 3.

[XJaPaN]

Very good, nothing to complain here... you are the master of portraits

[wayfarer]

Yeah nice.