Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
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Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
Having practiced for a bit on my Gremlin Era, I would like to try something new by developing a mainline quality graphic for inclusion in the Descent into Darkness campaign. There is a unit in Descent into Darkness called a Giant Rat, but the graphic itself shows a swarm of little rats instead of a single giant rat. I would like to try to draw/animate a mainline quality giant rat to replace the swarm of little rats. I believe that by improving this graphic, it would bring into focus what the orginal author of the campaign wanted to portray in the game.
I took the liberty to interpret a giant rat as being as large as a human, therefore being a giant to rats. I decided not to take into account that a giant rat could in fact be giant to humans as this would make the Giant Rat be about the size of a troll or dragon. To give the rat character I gave it a hunched back and large claws. I created a rough draft of the sprite focusing on the new giant rat's new posture and form. The graphic is drawn in flat colors for now. Proper shading and colors will be added later.
The old giant rat and a rough draft of the new giant rat are attached below for comparison. Let me know what you think of the Giant Rat's posture and whether or not it looks natural.
I took the liberty to interpret a giant rat as being as large as a human, therefore being a giant to rats. I decided not to take into account that a giant rat could in fact be giant to humans as this would make the Giant Rat be about the size of a troll or dragon. To give the rat character I gave it a hunched back and large claws. I created a rough draft of the sprite focusing on the new giant rat's new posture and form. The graphic is drawn in flat colors for now. Proper shading and colors will be added later.
The old giant rat and a rough draft of the new giant rat are attached below for comparison. Let me know what you think of the Giant Rat's posture and whether or not it looks natural.
- Attachments
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- giant-rat.png (804 Bytes) Viewed 4710 times
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- giant_rat_standing.png (1.92 KiB) Viewed 4710 times
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I think making it anthro is a mistake. A simple giant rat would be fine.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I changed the anthropomorphic giant rat into a more realistic rat. Does the form/pose look better?
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- giant_rat_standing.png (1.43 KiB) Viewed 4653 times
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
Pose looks decent (maybe a bit too crouchy) but it's rather large, even for a giant rat. It should probably be more horse-/wolf-sized, if not smaller.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
Definitely smaller. Maybe up to knee height on the average unit - batt sized, but without the wings. It's a level 0 with minimal HP, remember.melinath wrote:Pose looks decent (maybe a bit too crouchy) but it's rather large, even for a giant rat. It should probably be more horse-/wolf-sized, if not smaller.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I think what comes to mind is the R.O.U.S. from the Princess Bride movie.
Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I have been tinkering with the size of the Giant Rat and I made him a great deal smaller. Is this a good size for the Giant Rat?
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- giant_rat_standing3.png (1.28 KiB) Viewed 4561 times
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I think we went a bit too far in the "small" direction. It is a giant rat, after all... it should be relatively clear that it's not a normal-sized rat.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I like that size. Though you'll need to fix the outline where his haunches turn into the tail. There's something funky going on back there.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
On the other hand, a unit of that size would serve nicely as a L3 "Truly Giant Rat"...melinath wrote:Pose looks decent (maybe a bit too crouchy) but it's rather large, even for a giant rat. It should probably be more horse-/wolf-sized, if not smaller.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I'd say that given the size of the mice in the rat swarm, that would work.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
Theres has been some discussion going around about how big a Giant Rat actually is. Therefore attached to this post is a graphic of a character from the Descent into Darkness Campaign and various sizes of Giant Rats. To get the correct size for a Giant Rat, we need to use the character as a make shift measuring stick to compare with. Which Giant Rat do you think seems to best fit a level 0 unit?
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- Ratcomparison.png (4.43 KiB) Viewed 4331 times
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I'd probably go with the middle one personally, in that it's roughly the same size as the level 0 bat. But you'd need, i think, to do something about making the tail and feet darker and more easily visible.
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
I don't know about that. The rat is only used in a cave, so they will be plenty visible. The tail does need to be more limp. Rats drag their tails instead of holding them out like that. I like the size of the middle one too.thespaceinvader wrote:But you'd need, i think, to do something about making the tail and feet darker and more easily visible.
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- rats_in_a_cave.png (26.73 KiB) Viewed 4217 times
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Re: Descent into Darkness Campaign: Giant Rat Revision
However, if it turns out good enough, there's every chance it will go into mainline and be used elsewhere too
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