Descent Into Darkness Campaign: Ghast Revision

[Stern]

I am in the same proverbial boat as far as spare time goes. heh! I completely understand what its like to do art with a busy schedule. As my studies ramp up in the next few weeks, my time will be reduced drastically. But thats ok, I just work on my animation a little bit every day and chip away at it. Eventually the little things add up to a beautiful graphic that can be shared with the world (even if the graphic is in fact a hideous monster).

For the animation, I am not worried about the claws on the right foot increasing in size, but I am glad that you pointed it out. As the Ghast shifts his weight to the right, he turns his claws towards the viewer. In an effort to forshorten and exaggerate the rotation of the foot, I made the claws grow bigger to the viewer's perspective. That was the original thought that I tried to convey, but do you think that the claws on the right foot need to be refined more?

Attached to this post are the frames for the defense animation and Zero's updated Ghast base frame. My first impression was that the Ghast's defense animation was a bit jumpy. But after looking at it while trying to ignore the flashing shadow, I think that my initial thought was wrong. I think that the heads, the feet, and the general shift of the Ghast's body weight from one leg to another are ok. The main jumpy piece is the movement of the Ghast's hands. While I admit the Ghast's hands move a long distance in a short amount of time, I believe that the overall impact of the speedy arms does not detract much from the quality of the defense animation's kinematics.

My intent was to stick with the movements of the Ghoul and Necrophage who retract thier claws to thier body when being attacked. Due to the Ghast's outstretched arms in the baseframe, this may not be feasible and may need to be readjusted. I am happy to do this, but I want to stay with the unit's flavor as much as possible. I would like to hear some input from thespaceinvader regarding how the Ghast looks defending.

[thespaceinvader]

A bit pillow shaded. You need to shade a little more carefully, and make sure you use the whole colour ramp - and not shade right down the middle of everything - the lighting should be from upper right. You're also losing a little of the refinement in the shading, and everything's becoming a little more tube-like.

The extendo-claws are a bit weird too - but the basic motion is fine IMO.

[Stern]

Im going to wait on the shading/coloring for now. Therefore, I have been working on the actual movement of the Ghast's defence animation. Tell me what you think of the movement. I tried to eliminate the jumpy-ness and the strangeness of the feet.

[thespaceinvader]

That looks better, to me =)

[Stern]

I have been working on the Ghast's attack and defence animation. All I need to do is add some shadows and some more texturing. How could I improve it more?

[thespaceinvader]

Shade the teeth. A lot - maybe even shrink them a touch, they get just a little too big in the attack frame. Otherwise, it looks good to me =) When I have a moment, I'll raise the possibility of using it as a special advancement for the mainline necrophage on the dev mailing list.

[Iris]

All I need to do is add some shadows and some more texturing.

It's Nightmare Fuelish enough as it is. I'm glad I'm not a Wesnoth unit fighting that thing.

[Zerovirus]

A'yup. Definitely more texture. You've turned his body into a conjugation of balloon shapes and tube limbs, in contrast to my twisted musculature and stuff. I'd really like to fix it, but I have tons of homework this week and a band trip this weekend. Maybe later.

[Urs]

That looks terrifying! (i.e. perfect once you do the shadows/texturing you were talking about)

[Stern]

Hi Zerovirus,

I think you could do an awesome job in applying the proper shading/shadows to the Ghast. Would you like me to post the frames to this thread in their current state so that you can finish them when you have free time? That way, I can begin the animation of some of your mermen units in the Dead Water campaign.

[thespaceinvader]

There's no rush here, people - the earliest this chap would get in would likely be the first 1.9.x release, which will be a while. So don't panic, just work when you can =)

[Stern]

I have been working on the shadows under the Ghast and the textures on the loincloth. I will finish working on the teeth soon.

[woodmouse]

That's awesome!

[thespaceinvader]

It's going to need some more work - I hope that Zero can go over the frames and rework the shading. These have gotten a bit pillowed and lacking in detail.

[Zerovirus]

Kinda on vacation right now. Don't even have wifi- I'm posting from my iphone. I did bring my laptop but I have no way to transfer data between my laptop and the internet, so you guys might have to wait. Again. Sorry.