heavy infantry portrait(wip)

[beetlenaut]

That shock trooper is better than what I could do, but I think his anatomy is a bit skewed. If you sketch the body that would be under that armor, I think you will find a few things wrong with his arms and shoulders.

[A Guy]

Well, I'm no artist, but I can say with confidence that shock troopers don't wield maces-they wield morning stars.

[Livor]

Well, I'm no artist, but I can say with confidence that shock troopers don't wield maces-they wield morning stars.

I can also confidently say that shock troopers wield flails not morning stars.

[A Guy]

Hey, I just reiterate what I see.

Code: Select all

[unit]
    id=Shock Trooper
    name= _ "Shock Trooper"
...
    [attack]
        name=morning star
        description=_"morning star"
        icon=attacks/morning-star.png
        type=impact
        range=melee
        damage=18
        number=2
    [/attack]
...
[/unit]

[Livor]

Hey, I just reiterate what I see.

Code: Select all

[unit]
    id=Shock Trooper
    name= _ "Shock Trooper"
...
    [attack]
        name=morning star
        description=_"morning star"
        icon=attacks/morning-star.png
        type=impact
        range=melee
        damage=18
        number=2
    [/attack]
...
[/unit]

It's a pretty common mistake actually. It's not really a big deal. I probably should have added a smiley in there to show that I wasn't as serious as I appeared.

[Mabuse]

nevertheless good that you mention it.

[xtifr]

I can also confidently say that shock troopers wield flails not morning stars.

Gee, you sound pretty confident about that, given that the second sentence of that first article says "There is some disagreement over the names for this weapon; the terms "morning star", and even "mace" are variously applied".

The second article seems more dogmatic, but it is also much shorter and only lists three references--definitely not what I would consider one of Wikipedia's more trustworthy articles.1 As someone who was invited (but declined) to become a Wikipedia admin, I can confidently say that Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

1. If nothing else, I suspect it could be argued that the article reflects a somewhat one-sided point of view, in violation of Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy.

[Livor]

I can confidently say that Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

It's obviously not a reliable source. I was just linking to it because I couldn't be bothered to look for any other sources. I was going by this book which clearly differentiates between the two of them, but obviously I can't link it.
In any case, here is a definition of a flail, but I realize it is not enough to prove that a morning star is not a flail.

I guess the lesson here is to read articles you link to more thoroughly.

edit:After further thought, "morning star" could be a broader term referring to the head of the weapons, but it still would make it unclear in conversation.

[BLM]

Well, since the last time I was here I had a computer die that had to be replaced, and well at the time I just did not care to continue with this little project. Just recently I had the urge to draw so I brought up photoshop did a little sketch and some shading and this is what came out. Yes the armor is uneven(shoulder), he has no face, the outlines are completely black, and his hand looks maybe a little odd. Oh yeah it should also probably be a bit lighter. I'll work on it later when I have more time.

[Neoskel]

Oooh! That's a much better start than the other Heavy portraits i've seen people attempt. You're going to have to retool his armor, but you've got a good overall feeling and basic pose going there. You'll definitely have to change how he holds the mace and make his armor look more like armor than colored skin, but as i said a pretty decent start.

[Jetrel]

You've improved dramatically, but you've still got a ways to go. Believe in yourself.

I can also confidently say that shock troopers wield flails not morning stars.

As wikipedia notes, the distinction is fuzzy.

Flails refer to a spectrum of weapons stretching from "a cat-of-nine-tails with particularly heavy debris on the ropes" to "a single chain with a ball at the end".

Morning Stars refer to a spectrum of weapons stretching from "a ball on the end of a chain" to "a ball on the end of a stick".

They've unfortunately become ambiguous terms.

[ciclemur]

Here's something I rushed through it in about half an hour after reading this topic. I sort of cheated with the proportions by tracing this guy http://www.supplement-stacks.com/. I'm not an artist but I can trace, is this generally allowable, can it be categorised as an original piece of work?

[Jetrel]

Here's something I rushed through it in about half an hour after reading this topic. I sort of cheated with the proportions by tracing this guy http://www.supplement-stacks.com/. I'm not an artist but I can trace, is this generally allowable, can it be categorised as an original piece of work?

It's allowable, but kinda useless - as you can (hopefully) see, there's a huge difference between that and the official portraits. Trying to make one of our current portraits without actually knowing how to draw, is like trying to make a spaceship without knowing math. Good luck.

That said - it's quite doable to learn how to draw; I've only been doing it for 3 or 4 years now. And before that - I knew beyond any doubt that I had no talent for it - I'd tried and I'd failed. But I was wrong - anyone can do it, if they try really hard and work smart, too. You're never too old. The trick is that besides working hard, you need to constantly switch up how you do things*, and study a lot of human psychology with regards to "how we see"**. Knowing some geometry, to do perspective and shading, is also eventually necessary. You don't have to be some "magically blessed at birth as an artist", person, but you do have to force yourself to use better thinking habits about visual stuff (see below), rather than just running on gut feeling***.




* the point here being to "apply the scientific method" every time. Decide that you're going to do something differently, hypothesize about what it's going to cause, and test it. Always try to have reasons for why you're trying things - don't flail about randomly.

* also, switch up how you do styles. Unless you're doing some single coherent work (like a comic book), never restrict yourself to a single style, because you won't learn how to do anything else. It's skill suicide. Try every style you find/make-up, but spend most of your learning effort on drawing realistically, because that's what every style is ultimately (however distantly it might get) based on, and it's what causes different styles to either work or not work.

** Our brains are designed to compress a massive barrage of visual information, and they actually discard most of it, or deliberately lie about it to us (for example about brightness values) to make it easier for us to understand what we're seeing. We could barely function if this wasn't the case - actually, you can see living examples of what happens "when we don't have this kind of preprocessing" in autistic people. The part of their brains that sorts out what is/isn't important is broken, and they perceive everything that crosses their field of vision - it's why they can do feats like 'memorizing entire maps at a single glance', but have trouble with other, much harder tasks that we can do because we're designed specially for them (like recognizing faces). We're able to ignore everything but the face, and then process that tiny thing with our full mental intensity.

What you basically need to do to "see" like an artist, is to learn to cancel out these lies the brain is telling you. To see things as they actually are, rather than seeing them through the distorted brain-lens we usually see them through. A common example is a beginner's mistake where people put the eyes in a drawing of the head right near the top of the head. We humans don't instinctively realize there's this huge space of forehead there (literally a whole half of the head!) - our brains just delete our memory of it, because it's not important. Our brains see only the face underneath the forehead (eyes, mouth, nose), and ignore most of the rest. That's a trick being played on us, which we have to overcome.

Remember, our minds aren't trying to be mean - they have to do this, or we couldn't do the amazing things we do, like recognizing faces, or knowing what things are when we look at them. This inconvenience when drawing is a small price to pay, to be able to do those things.

*** some rare people are born with (either totally or mostly) good visual thinking habits, and just follow their gut. These artists might tell you to follow your gut, but it's bad advice if you're normal like me, because your gut instincts are wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. You need to spend a few years whipping them into being right.

Also don't be discouraged if you're not one of those people. Da Vinci wasn't either. "Being one of those people" has no correlation to how fast you learn, it's just a head start.

[Eternal]

*** some rare people are born with (either totally or mostly) good visual thinking habits, and just follow their gut. These artists might tell you to follow your gut, but it's bad advice if you're normal like me, because your gut instincts are wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. You need to spend a few years whipping them into being right.

I've been instructing wannabe artists to follow their gut for all these years. I feel I've tackled many a promising drawer into the ditch with that...

[ciclemur]

It's allowable, but kinda useless - as you can (hopefully) see, there's a huge difference between that and the official portraits. Trying to make one of our current portraits without actually knowing how to draw, is like trying to make a spaceship without knowing math. Good luck.

Thanks for the feedback, but yeah, I wasn't trying to get my art into Wesnoth, it's much too basic, I know .