kitty's elvish portraits

[wayfarer]

sorry to say, but that's real nonsense . . . .

You eat to few you are too thin...
Translated a bit more serious do you have considered that man have a slightly bigger small of the back. Especially a man with this kind of physique.
You have translated your female body structure onto the body of a male bodybuilder. Somewhere it must go crack.
(The muscle structure is more pronounced and the volume of the upper body is bigger while the length of the arms is still the same, they got some extra volume too.)

I admit it you can grab behind your back this way but I can't.

I have a slightly bigger small of the back but still pretty normal and I can't grab something behind my back without touching my neck and my elbow stands at the middle of my chest.



Yep hell just froze a little bit. I hate cameras


That said even sense or nonsense I don't say something out of the blue.
So excuse me if I don't write essays but sometimes I think before I type. Rarely but it can happen from time to time.

[Sgt. Groovy]

I agree, that the arm looks bad. You basically have the position right, but the angle is such that it's very hard to make all the foreshortenings and depth differences work correctly. Also, I think that with such a puffy physique and all the armour, it would be much easier and more natural to grab the sword from the same side. That way, the movement is also parallel to the direction of the scabbard, so the sword comes out more easily.

But all that is kinda moot, because I think the pose is too aggressive for a portrait anyway. It's also awkward to have the caharacter to be in a process of doing something, when the same portrait appears over and over.

[irrevenant]

DDR asked me to post this comment here as he doesn't have access to the forum. It seemed on-topic (though I'm not sure if the character design issue being discussed is already resolved):

A human druid probably would. Elves are generally depicted as having a sacred respect for nature and probably wouldn't kill animals for their hides.

Well, yes... but there are other ways to get fur without killing an animal. A druid is quite well attuned to the forest (an understatement, surely!), and probably knows when a fur-bearing animal dies of natural causes. I am not sure on this, but I think that a druid would have few qualms of stripping the fur from an animal that was already dead... However, they are probably unskilled in the art, which may restrict the quality of the produce.

I could go farther, but I would digress.

[Sapient]

Arm position issues aside, the armor, face, etc on the champion are really good. Thanks for sharing the work in progress! I wouldn't worry too much about tweaking that arm because, as Groovy said it's an aggressive action which could look a bit out of place in normal dialogue.

[Noyga]

Hello, i have just commited and wired the following :
* fighter (update)
* shaman
* scout
* ranger (male & female)
* marksman (male & female)
* lord
* lady
Thanks again for this great job

[Jetrel]

Um....this is a wonderful debate and everything, but I think kitty's portrait of the left of druid3 is fine without further reconceptualization.

As do I. Can we let the controversy die, folks?

[kitty]

i have redrawn his right arm to avoid further controversy... it seems to be easy and ok now to me. what do you guys think?

i still think the old pose is possible, but there were mistakes with the hand, like yobbo pointed out.
and unfortunately i have no good possibility to try out if a body builder's musculature would hamper with the pose, because i know none ...


@ wayfarer: i did not want to annoy you. but if you just type a few words without giving reasons or at least adding some relativisation like "to me" or "it seems like" it is just a claim. and i just set my claim (which felt reasonable to me) against it... you don't have to write essays but giving justification for your statements would be nice

@ groovy: you are very right about the pose. it was much too agressive for a portrait. the portrait postures slowly start boring me ....

@ noyga: thank you!

@ jetryl: just for the record - can i consider her finished?

[Rhuvaen]

@ jetryl: just for the record - can i consider her finished?

Seeing Jetryl's verdict, she was committed in time for the next release.

Great work!

[turin]

Champion: Very nice. Some people will probably have a few nitpicks, but personally, I think it's definitely good enough to use.

[Urs]

woah, I can post in here?

I like the Champion portrait, but I have two nitpicks:

1) The Champion has only one sword, not two.
2) The Champion also has bow and arrows. I don't think this is terribly important though, as they are the secondary weapon, and the unit is basically a swordsman.

I guess getting rid of the sword on our left and replacing it with a quiver would do it. What to do with the bow, though...

[Sapient]

I like the Champion portrait, but I have two nitpicks:

1) The Champion has only one sword, not two.

I think she's going off of the Hero sprite (and nothing wrong with keeping a backup sword, anyways)

2) The Champion also has bow and arrows. I don't think this is terribly important though, as they are the secondary weapon, and the unit is basically a swordsman.

I guess getting rid of the sword on our left and replacing it with a quiver would do it. What to do with the bow, though...

It's an often stated rule for unit portraits that they don't have to display all the weapons.

[Jetrel]

I'd like to give special commendation to kitty for the face on this portrait; for making something simultaneously both decidedly "elven", but also decidedly masculine as well. I'm not too fond of the "androgynous elf" portrayal, at least for wesnoth's elves, and I'm glad you seem to be thinking exactly the same way.

i have redrawn his right arm to avoid further controversy... it seems to be easy and ok now to me. what do you guys think?

i still think the old pose is possible, but there were mistakes with the hand, like yobbo pointed out.
and unfortunately i have no good possibility to try out if a body builder's musculature would hamper with the pose, because i know none ...

@ groovy: you are very right about the pose. it was much too agressive for a portrait. the portrait postures slowly start boring me ....

I'd like to personally make an attempt at making the old arm work - I thought the pose was rather interesting, and still workable for regular dialogue - it's quite normal for warriors to idly grasp at the handles of their weapons even without really thinking about it - it becomes sort of a habit, which they encourage either accidentally or intentionally to keep their blade-drawing motion in top form. In fact, it's a common motif in either medieval or fantasy stories for "unarmed in unusual circumstances" swordsmen to be identifiable as swordsmen by their habit of grasping at where the hilt of their weapons would usually be - like a gunslinger grasping at his pistols.

I agree with Groovy that it's borderline for "stance aggressiveness", but I think it's workable, and worth trying. I agree with Kitty that it helps keep things interesting, and in my opinion, it really adds to the character of the portrait to give him that big, beefy arm.

@ jetryl: just for the record - can i consider her finished?

Yes.

I like the Champion portrait, but I have two nitpicks:

1) The Champion has only one sword, not two.
2) The Champion also has bow and arrows. I don't think this is terribly important though, as they are the secondary weapon, and the unit is basically a swordsman.

I guess getting rid of the sword on our left and replacing it with a quiver would do it. What to do with the bow, though...

These are irrelevant, so please don't feel the need to modify the portrait based on these. Some things to remember about making wesnoth portraits are:
1] It is not mandatory to show the unit's primary weapon so long as the unit is recognizable by other costuming, etc.
2] It is even less mandatory to show a secondary weapon.
3] It is not a problem to improvise a variety of alternate weaponry, etc, so long as none of it breaks the unit's damage type. If you show the dwarven fighter carrying a hip dagger in addition to his axe - no problem. If you show the elven champion having a spare smallsword (c.f. the relationship between the katana and wakizashi, or perhaps the claymore and dirk), that is likewise not a problem. It would be a problem, though, if you showed the human spearman carrying a short sword, because like I said, that breaks with the in-game functionality of the unit.

So, Urs, and everyone else, please keep these in mind when criticizing a portrait; if they're not flaws according to what I just stated, please don't complain about them.

[Urs]

Yeah, don't worry about them, Kitty. They were tiny details, nothing more.

I like champignon02.png, although it doesn't really remind of a mushroom.

[Sgt. Groovy]

I see nothing wrong about he extra sword, except that the perspective is wrong, it looks like it's thrusted into his back.

[wayfarer]

@kitty
Well excuse me.
Sometimes I'm just too lazy to type that much.
This and the fact that I don't want to praise you everytime, although deserved. I like my philosophy short so again I beg you pardon.