The Era of Legions Sprite Conglomeration and Progress

[SelenaRH]

Helloooooo! I am entirely new here but a bit of a pixel artist. A few of my friends were wanting some custom sprites for a project they would like to do for here (The Era of Legions), so I decided to give it a go. I have decided to post my works in progress here as I have never sprited for a game before and I figured the guidance you all could offer might be helpful. So if this thread is in entirely the wrong place, please move it.

I found the spriting guide page, which is extremely helpful for knowing the dimensions and such of sprites, which I know to be 72x72 pixels. As well as the team color thing. I'll just edit this top thread as I go and occasionally post to let people know of updates, though I'll try not to spam.

Also, more information on the project will have to be gotten from the people doing the designing and the concept work of the project. I'm just the artist and have been asked not to share too many details other than artwork, which I'm mainly doing for critique purposes. This means if you see a finished sprite on this page please do not just assume you can take/use it without permission.

••••

DRAGON ARMY

Note: I'm trying to figure out a good way to show team color for the Dragons. So far I've come up with putting a collar on them, but I'm not sure I like that idea. I also thought of having the wing membrane change color, but not all the Dragons will have wings. So any ideas on how to bring across team color would be appreciated.

Yellow Dragon (Scout)


Young Yellow Dragon WIP
Upon looking at this sprite I have come to the realization that I may have to shrink it, as I am not sure if I can fit a flying animation of this sized sprite into a 72x72 pixel square. Derp. I may be able to, if not... a new image will replace this eventually.

[Crow_T]

I'm just the artist and have been asked not to share too many details other than artwork, which I'm mainly doing for critique purposes. This means if you see a finished sprite on this page please do not just assume you can take/use it without permission.

I'm not sure that attitude will fly here, this is GPL country We love to share (At least in the Wesnoth universe!)

But a critique, this is currently very flat value wise, and the proportions are non-wesnoth.
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 30#p544361
http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 15#p541681

[Captain_Wrathbow]

Welcome to the forums! Hope you'll stay awhile and become a member of the community!

Upon looking at this sprite I have come to the realization that I may have to shrink it, as I am not sure if I can fit a flying animation of this sized sprite into a 72x72 pixel square. Derp. I may be able to, if not... a new image will replace this eventually.

Sprites don't have to be 72x72. You can make them larger- have a look at the new (well, I guess they aren't really new anymore, huh?) drake sprites, I'm pretty sure a number of them use a larger canvas size. (not to mention the epic fire dragon)

This means if you see a finished sprite on this page please do not just assume you can take/use it without permission.

Anything you post here is going to automatically be assumed to be under GPL. (and it will in fact have to be GPL if you plan to use it in a UMC)
However, most people do have the common courtesy to ask before taking, and you really don't have to worry about someone stealing your work and claiming it as their own. Consider it an honor if someone wants permission to use your sprite!

[Iris]

Anything you post here is going to automatically be assumed to be under GPL.

Unless one sticks an appropriate disclaimer to it, that is.

But you are correct in that content that will be published in our add-ons server has to be GPL, at the time it is published in our add-ons server. That said, there’s absolutely nothing stopping anyone from developing a non-GPL add-on or an add-on containing non-GPL content and publishing it on their own website.

In general, this topic provides all the rules that anyone needs to know about the add-ons server.

[Crow_T]

Is it wrong to say that team color doesn't matter that much to the player? There are both the circles under the sprite and the balls above them- team color is cool, but not absolutely neccessary to gameplay. I feel that at an UMC level it is forgiveable not to have it- just my opinion.

[SelenaRH]

Flat Values: Of course they're flat. x3 I haven't added any sort of shading yet. I didn't want to do that only to have to go in and change things up and stuff.

Porportions: I'm not entirely sure what you mean by proportions. A little more explanation on that would be nice. The links aren't really that helpful without explanation.

Size: Would you happen to know what the largest size sprites can be is? I don't want to make them larger only to go over that size limit.

GPL: The guys working on the project just want the information about the project to be a secret until it's done. They don't want anyone taking their ideas or anything (as that's quite common online, I have no idea about the community here I'm just following their wishes~). Once the project is done then everything used in it, sprites included, will be open source like everything else put up here~

Team Colors: Oh, I forgot about the little colored circles. I will probably remove team color from my sprites then.

I'm not entirely sure of the workings here and everything, so I figured I'd jump in and learn as I go, as I've found that's often the best way for me to learn lol.


Anyways, I realized the yellow dragon there didn't fit very well in the hexagonal tile. So I shrunk it a bit, cleaned it up, and made a comparison. I am unsure as to yet what size would be best.




I'm not used to working quite this small with sprites. The smallest I usually work is something of this size (Not Wesnoth related).

[Captain_Wrathbow]

Is it wrong to say that team color doesn't matter that much to the player? There are both the circles under the sprite and the balls above them- team color is cool, but not absolutely neccessary to gameplay. I feel that at an UMC level it is forgiveable not to have it- just my opinion.

Circles under sprites are optional; they can be disabled in preferences.
By "the balls above them", I'm guessing you mean the green, yellow, or red orb? That has nothing to do with team color; it shows whether the unit has any attack/movement left this turn.

Despite that, I do agree that TC isn't a big deal. I wouldn't be concerned about just dropping it, especially for UMC sprites, as you said.

[Crow_T]

Regarding the "balls," your team has them, the AI allies have blue ones (no jokes here), and enemies have none (no jokes or trash talk here either). So there is an indication of usage there.

For other examples of Wesnoth sprites see http://units.wesnoth.org/

[Captain_Wrathbow]

Ah, right. The way that you had compared them to the circles under the units caused me to misunderstand; I thought you were saying that the orbs were team-colored, like the circles. Sorry.

[Crow_T]

No problem Captain W, Rangers have never done me any wrong

Anyhow, the Khalifate link is pretty explanatory, it's pretty close to what you are doing- bigger head and hands for starters.

[Alarantalara]

Size: Would you happen to know what the largest size sprites can be is? I don't want to make them larger only to go over that size limit.
Anyways, I realized the yellow dragon there didn't fit very well in the hexagonal tile. So I shrunk it a bit, cleaned it up, and made a comparison. I am unsure as to yet what size would be best.

I'm not used to working quite this small with sprites. The smallest I usually work is something of this size (Not Wesnoth related).

The game engine will let you use a sprite as big as you can draw it, so there is no physical limitation.

However, there are limitations with respect to the terrain system and asthetics. Sprites that are much bigger than the hex tend to end up getting partially obscured by terrain in inconvenient places and look bad. If you want everything to be always visible or believably covered then the black area in the picture is safe.

example.png (2.64 KiB) Viewed 5531 times

You can usually exceed this to the left and right without much trouble, but going down is problematic with the great tree and stands out. The gold hex represents the hex the unit is actually in. Also, making units too large will hide those behind it, so even though the appearance will be correct in the entire black area, you will want to leave more than half of each of the hexes outside the gold one visible so as not to make other units vanish.

[SelenaRH]

Thank you Alarantalara. That's very helpful~ And relieving since Dragon wings are kinda hard to keep squished into such a tiny space.

So I deicded to go about this a little differently. Gonna sketch everything out before turning it into a pixel, will probably be easier that way and details will be easier to fix. They also look more similar to the Drakes, which I like. Should they be larger? Or are they good with the size they are. Also, I'm not entirely sure what perspective Wesnoth is. It almost looks to be isometric but not quite, so I did these in a, roughly, isometric perspective. Also, what other base poses are there? I know Stand, Move, Defense, Attack: Melee, Attack: Range, Death. Anything else that isn't idle animations?


Stand


Fly/Move


Defense


Attack: Melee


Attack: Range

[tr0ll]

Wow those are kinda cute (for dragons lol) - are they babies?
One way to show team affiliation that might not feel artificial is to colour the glow in their eyes. Im not sure if team colours can cover a range (to get a shiny effect) or have to be a single rgb value.

[8680]

Im not sure if team colours can cover a range (to get a shiny effect) or have to be a single rgb value.

They can, and do:

[SelenaRH]

Alright. I think I'm done with the Stand pose of the new sketches. It looks alright on terrain, though I'm not sure how it looks in game yet. I'll leave that up to the other guys working on this project to test.



And they are sorta babies, they're going to be the level one form, and all the dragons will start as "young 'color' dragon".

And I made their eyes the remapping color.