Editing wesnoth images: Give your hero a personality!

[fmunoz]

This small article doesn't have been proofread and was written in the bus some hours after the image files were done so point me any mistakes and typos.

I had a file done some time ago with an assortment of heads and I though about posting it here to help people with those special charcters in their campaigns. (one or more used some Neo's stuff)

All instructions are given to use The Gimp, I'm sure that Photoshop users know how to do it too with them.
Attached to this message is a zipped file with the gimp file.

1st Image, Edgar mercenary sword: Swapping heads

We want a variation of the swordman as our hero, we are going to use the easiest method, giving him a new head
We save it with other name (to avoid accidents overwriting the original one, better use .xcf gimp original file format)
We open the swordsman image and change its mode to use more colours (Image->Mode->RGB)
We delete the original head of the image either selecting it and deleting the pixels in the selection (R and later Ctrl+K) or using the eraser (Shift+E but change the size to use 1 pixel size)
We select the head from the head template, copy and paste it over the body image, move (M) it to pick a place where it looks right. Then We can just click again to merge it with the body layer or create a new layer for it (better option) clicking in the menu option under layer or in the layer palette.
Now we have the 1st image of our new hero ready.

2nd Image, Harold of the horned helm : Layers

Lets do another one, this time we select the horned helmet head, we do the same steps again.
If we used the multilayer approach we can reuse the body layer, after hiding the first face (click on the eye icon in the layer palette, if you don't have it you can open it from the Dialogues mmenu)
Looking at the image we notice the horn over the sword. It doesn't look good. This time we are going to use another later to fix it.
We select the sword, copy and paste it. This time we need to put it in another layer (not really but it helps).
We have to make sure that the new sword layer is placed over the head layer.

3rd Image, Victor Pirate marine : Adding bits

This time we want more, we are going to use all the steps from the previous edit (and the same file too), but we are going to add minor extra bits here and there, a new sword point, a red gem in the shield and extra shoulder padding.
After adding the new head and our new sword copy (to lay over the red bandanna end) we change a bit its point to make it a kind of boarding sabre.
We create another layer where we draw a bigger set of armour should pads using the armour colours. You can copy a few bits of armour in this new layer to later get the colours easily, just paste them at one side and delete them when you are done. Using the pencil (N) with 1 pixel size, we draw the new shoulder armour, you can use the CONTROL key to pick colours fast from the samples we paster before.
We paste a red bit over the centre of the shield too (again in another layer)

4th Image, Rufus the Breathdrainer: Colourize and change hue.

We want a evil swordman variation, the have a evil looking hooded head (kudos to Neoriceisgood) but the armour and weapon don't look evil enough.
We create a copy of the body, hide all the unused layers and add the head using the same method as before.
We go to the new body layer, we want a dark metal look so we start selecting the blue bits using either the Rectangle selection (R, later we can use CONTROL to remove parts and SHIFT to add them) or the Select by Colour (SHIFT+O, later we can use CONTROL to remove colours and SHIFT to add them). We can mix the two methods.
We remove the pixels of the sword, we are going to change them layer.
From the menu Layer->Colours->Hue-Saturation we change the saturation (less) and brightness (less too) until we have a darker armour.
We deselect the pixels (SHIFT+CTRL+A) and try to select the yellowish bits of the armour. As the pixels have a really soft colour the former method doesn't work really good now, we have to use Layer->Colours->Colourize to add more Saturation. We change mostly hue until we have a dark purple.
Now we repeat things with the sword blade and the its handle to make it look like a wraith one (We can also easily do things by hand with the pencil tool)
Take note of the colour settings used if you plan to edit all the other unit frames (I forgot it).

5th image, Karina the Firemaiden: All at the same time

In this last image we add a new head, edit the sword to look like a flaming sword and change the armour colour until it looks like a a brass one.
The sword has been done using 3 layers, the original one, a flames one done using the fire colours from the Wesnoth item-firesword.png image and another copy of the original with a 50% transparency (change it in the upper part of the Layer palette).
As a last touch we add the same red bit we used in the Victor shield as a gem in the breastplate.

[Kestenvarn]

Hey, clipart for sprites. Neat!

[szopen]

When I created the Akladian units, I made separately a lot of heads and torsos to help me. Here are some of them:

[Emmanovi]

Brilliant, but did you draw those heads/weapons/shields yourself? Or did you take them from other sources?

[fmunoz]

Mostly, some of my original swordsman images had been edited by a lot of people over the time.
The heads were in a file in my harddisck, I took some of the images and bits from Neorice and other people but all was mostly mine (summoner head, huntress, server icon fae + moustache + goatee, etc...)

[Jetrel]

If you don't mind, I'm going to add this into the Art Tutorials section in the Wiki. Thanks a lot for writing this.

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Art_Tutorials

[Neoriceisgood]

This is neat, sadly theGimp I do not have; so I cannot see which of my heads have been used for this; but I'm sure all is well;


give me your rhino.

[fmunoz]

Neo, the hooded one is almost fully yours. I changed one from your undead riders, tweaked the perspective a bit.

[turin]

We go to the new body layer, we want a dark metal look so we start selecting the blue bits using either the Rectangle selection (R, later we can use CONTROL to remove parts and [censored] to add them) or the Select by Colour (SHIFT+O, later we can use CONTROL to remove colours and [censored] to add them). We can mix the two methods.

This paragraph amuses me.

(You might want to go back and fix those typos, though. They kind of change the meaning of the sentence a lot...)

-----

Cool tutorial. Perhaps next you should do a tutorial showing how to change the pose of a unit. That and recoloring seem to confuse people for some reason.

[fmunoz]

Darn spellchecker!
But the ouput is funny

[Neoriceisgood]

Neo, the hooded one is almost fully yours. I changed one from your undead riders, tweaked the perspective a bit.

I know, but you mentioned using more of my heads, did you not?

[Zebulon]

This small article doesn't have been proofread, and was written in the bus some hours after the image files were done, so point me any mistakes and typos.

I had a file done some time ago with an assortment of heads and I though about posting it here to help people with those special charcters in their campaigns. (one or more used some Neo's stuff)

In this last image we add a new head, edit the sword to look like a flaming sword and change the armour colour until it looks like a a brass one.

This small article hasn't been proofread, and was written in the bus some hours after the image files were done, so point me any mistakes and typos.

I had a file done some time ago with an assortment of heads and I thought about posting it here to help people with those special characters in their campaigns. (one or more used some Neo's stuff)

In this last image we add a new head, edit the sword to look like a flaming sword and change the armour colour until it looks like a brass one.

Minor typos and grammatical errors.

[Jetrel]

I've added the page, with edits, into the wiki. The images are linked from this thread. By the way, fmunoz, the hair on those two images to the upper-right of the sprite sheet is quite nice. (I thought I'd point out one exceptional bit of work. )

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Give_Your_H ... ersonality

[scott]

If you made some variations on the peasant, that would be awesome. It may not be the most useful thing since this is a war game, but civilians in the world don't all have straw hats and pitchforks. I'm going to use some of your heads to try to create some variations, but if you were to make any generic people they would be used.

[Emmanovi]

If you made some variations on the peasant, that would be awesome. It may not be the most useful thing since this is a war game, but civilians in the world don't all have straw hats and pitchforks. I'm going to use some of your heads to try to create some variations, but if you were to make any generic people they would be used.

I know... I always imagined fighting peasants wielding things like sythes, swining them round and round in the air [drool] slicing through body and bone alike........[/drool]

Or even things like small knives. We're talking about farmers that live on the edge of Wesnoth. You've got orcs, undead, beasts coming at you if the south guard don't help. Peasants should wield things other than pitchforks, IMHO.