New attack buttons - scratchpad

Post by **Blarumyrran** » January 16th, 2007, 9:37 pm

Konrad II wrote:Spells stylized would be really sweet. Like, a "symbol" such as a "spellbook symbol" representing the spell, instead of the look of the attack itself?

yup, imo all spells would be better if they looked like "entangle" and "thorns". naturally, im not quite Pekka, i cant make it look yber-cool (or even good enough to fit mainline), but a lot of people here can.

Post by **Zebulon** » January 16th, 2007, 9:52 pm

It is meant to be scimitar like.

Post by **Jetrel** » January 17th, 2007, 4:01 am

Syntax_Error wrote:
Konrad II wrote:Spells stylized would be really sweet. Like, a "symbol" such as a "spellbook symbol" representing the spell, instead of the look of the attack itself?
yup, imo all spells would be better if they looked like "entangle" and "thorns". naturally, im not quite Pekka, i cant make it look yber-cool (or even good enough to fit mainline), but a lot of people here can.

We are not moving to a set of symbolic spells.

Symbolic spells are only used where we are unable to provide a good direct representation of a projectile delivered by the spell; as is the case with entangle. There is no consistency problem with mixing the two "kinds" of icons, if you can even call them that.

End of discussion.

Post by **Jetrel** » January 17th, 2007, 4:03 am

Zebulon wrote:I thought I'd try one myself.

Edit : This is too small for a normal sword; it's more like the human dagger.

Crits: bring out the "secondary lighting" a bit more (e.g. the lighting on the side of the icon facing away from the primary light source).

Also, widen the blade, and for this style, make the bright edges on the hilt a bit more clear by using white lines at the highlight points.

The blade should probably stretch outside of the icon square's width.

Post by **Zebulon** » January 17th, 2007, 8:41 pm

Jetryl wrote:
Crits: bring out the "secondary lighting" a bit more (e.g. the lighting on the side of the icon facing away from the primary light source).

Also, widen the blade, and for this style, make the bright edges on the hilt a bit more clear by using white lines at the highlight points.

The blade should probably stretch outside of the icon square's width.

I tried to do what you said, but I can't make it look as good as I want it to.

Post by **irrevenant** » January 18th, 2007, 7:29 am

Zebulon wrote: I tried to do what you said, but I can't make it look as good as I want it to.

This looks to me like there's not enough colour variation. ie. the darks are too close in tone(?) to the lights. Glinty bits in particular should be a lot brighter, IMO.

Ranger M · Post by **Ranger M** » January 18th, 2007, 7:48 am

Try making more of a colour gradient on the sword (manually), metals are almost never that evenly shiny across the blade (unless there are loads of light sources)

Post by **Zebulon** » January 19th, 2007, 3:18 am

Ok, here's another try.

Post by **Sangel** » January 19th, 2007, 6:14 am

Zebulon wrote:Ok, here's another try.

Hmmmm. Currently the blade looks like it's fashioned from some exotic material which has bands of different colour - an ore or gem, if you will, rather than a metal. It's not a bad look, but it's not particularly metallic.

I suspect that smoother gradients would help achieve a metallic look, but I bow to the thoughts of those more artistically talented than I.

Ranger M · Post by **Ranger M** » January 19th, 2007, 6:53 am

Sangel is right here, try getting rid of the jaggedness from the blade.

I know that this isn't entirely evident in most of the current swords, but look at the human dagger's light side for the cleanest example of metal shading (by cleanest I don't neccesarily mean best, the others are good, this one is just the easiest one to emulate well) and emulate that one as much as you can. Then you might add another light source, but it is still a gradient, not little short lines like you have at the moment (see the elven sword for an example of two light sources)

The next thing would be to make the dark side obviously darker, I know that Jetryl just told you to make it lighter, but I think you took it a little too far, there should be an obvious overall difference between the two sides, one being lighter and the other darker, and that isn't present at the moment.

Post by **Jetrel** » January 19th, 2007, 7:52 am

Ranger M wrote:The next thing would be to make the dark side obviously darker, I know that Jetryl just told you to make it lighter, but I think you took it a little too far, there should be an obvious overall difference between the two sides, one being lighter and the other darker, and that isn't present at the moment.

The original, for reference:

I said something too simply. I said "bring out". What I meant was: make it more evident, but don't spread it all over the place. It should remain a hairline.

The most significant problem with this image, though, is the composition. You need to zoom way in on the guard. We're talking about 1/3-1/2 of the "diagonal" being occupied by hilt, and about 1/2-2/3 being occupied by blade. This creates a sense of balance, and also appeals to the psychological "rule of thirds" in composition. What you currently have, compared to what I just suggested, looks very unbalanced, not in terms of the subject, but in terms of splotches of light/color on the canvas.

If you look at the swords made by pekka and I, you may note how we composed those pictures - those balance the long thin section of the blade with a thicker, but shorter section of the hilt.

"Composition", here, refers to how we lay things/the subject out on the canvas. If you think of our little square for the canvas as the viewfinder of a camera (which is an extremely good practice to actually adopt as your normal "drawing mentality"), then "composition" is how we frame the subject.

For reference:

Post by **Jetrel** » January 19th, 2007, 8:02 am

Actually, read the above, deeply, and also look at:

The Kodak company made the following, very comprehensive introduction to composition. These rules apply to pictures as well, and will help you when laying out the subjects in a picture.

http://asp.photo.free.fr/Composition/ph ... lass.shtml

from: http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/External_Tutorials

I tend to get a knee-jerk reaction against things like this, "telling me what to do", but there really is something to the above suggestions. They're worth using, most of the time, unless you're going for some special effect.

battlestar · Post by **battlestar** » January 19th, 2007, 9:35 am

Sorry flipping this took so long. Further suggestions welcome, and, should I "bring it out" a little more as well?

Post by **pekka** » January 19th, 2007, 2:34 pm

Jetryl wrote:Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ Elven "gossamer" attack: Colors are right on, as is the composition, but the thing looks ... crusty; could you post the .PSD/XCF ? It's just a question of "smoothness of lines," I think.

No psd/xcf available, sorry. I haven't saved a working copy for this particular icon. This icon was kind of quick one. However, I just tried to soften the icon a bit here. Any better? I'm not completely satisfied for it yet, but I'm out of ideas and inspiration for this icon.

As I told, I'd like to create race specific icon groups. I consider the wood elves are the most complete group atm - only two icons missing. IMO there still should be 2 more sword variations for the elves. A bigger sword variation than the current one and even bigger sword for the champion. Jetryl, what do you think?

Na'enthos · Post by **Na'enthos** » January 19th, 2007, 5:28 pm

pekka wrote:As I told, I'd like to create race specific icon groups. I consider the wood elves are the most complete group atm - only two icons missing. IMO there still should be 2 more sword variations for the elves. A bigger sword variation than the current one and even bigger sword for the champion. Jetryl, what do you think?

The sword for the hero, avenger, etc. needn't be bigger, really (in my opinion). It could simply be a slightly different version of the basic elven sword.

Of course, part of the reason I'm saying this is because I really like that picture.