Unit sprites for After the Storm

[Mefisto]

Sorry, I meant "I'm the one to be blamed for...". English is not my mother tongue. I should apologize too. I hope artisticdude treats my edits like fanfiction/fanart to his work and doesn't feel offended.

[artisticdude]

I am the one to blame for hijacking artisticdude's thread. I have written already what made me to give some contributions here: I liked the original approach and design and I felt I could add something useful quickly.

Artisticdudes art was a big improvement over the old sprites. Perhaps it was a bit rude to raid the art with edits. In that case I apologize. Let's see what he says about this.

I don't mind people playing around with my work; in fact, it can often be really helpful to see what other people come up with, and I appreciate the interest a lot. I don't necessarily think every edit that's been made is an improvement over the originals, but some of them certainly are, and it won't hurt me at all to have that extra input. Just please understand that if I don't incorporate a certain edit or suggestion it's not necessarily because I think it's a bad idea persay, but because shadowmaster or I have a different idea of how the final result should look. For instance, I'm pretty happy with the original palettes overall (there's definitely room for improvement, but generally they're pretty close to what I want), with the exception of the metal axe blade palette, which is one of the aspects of Mefisto's edits that I think is unquestionably an improvement.

The poses/legs are still my biggest concern at this point. When I first drew the base sketches I was coming off of a long stint of playing with 'real' isometric perspective, so I accidentally ended up gravitating towards that isometric perspective with the legs (and, to a lesser extent, with the torsos). It's something I've been struggling with behind the scenes for a while now without obtaining any really satisfactory results, and (although it pains me to admit this) the best solution may be to completely redraw major portions of the affected sprites, even beyond the legs.

And I've never even owned a CRT monitor, so I'm afraid I can't comment in that discussion.

[Mefisto]

Good to know. I'm glad you find something useful in my edits.

I'm going to finish my mangroves during the next week and then I'll try to see what can be done with lacking graphics to AtS. I won't make animations as I'm not good with them yet but probably some aliens-verlissh would be good to try.

[Iris]

Yes, I think we can all agree that LCDs have come a long way since they were first introduced in the market. *thumbs up*

SM: Well... I've been watching your topic, and have thought about trying some edits to your heroine and faerie sprites in lack of having any verbal suggestions. But I have a lot on my plate already and haven't gotten around to anything like that.

Just like you haven’t finished those awesome demon portraits. :p But it’s all right, mainline commissions obviously take a higher priority, and are more worthwhile in the end. *wink*

The faeries are up for edit, experimentation, and expansion — I have tried working further on the theme by e.g. attempting to fill the naiad gap, or providing a real generic Dark Faerie (which Anya is not) for the Era of Chaos, but I obviously cannot really spend much energy on unimportant side-projects like that, since the only units featured in AtS are the forest faeries, plus the (unseen) Fallen Faerie unit which I need to redraw.

Hero units in general aside from Galas and Mal Keshar, though... concepts would need to go through me first, especially given that I have a few sprites in line for 0.9.0 that I can’t publicly unveil yet.

i have secretly considered suggesting (and attempting) a redraw of the imp line, originally drawn by the holy (if i am not mistaken) neorice a while back

The imp line, much like most of the unit sprites used in IftU, has a really messy story.

Let’s see. The L0 and L4 are unmodified neorice sprites (except for some minor palette changes). (EDIT: the L0 used to be — that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore) The L1 is a heavy edit of my own building upon a very early version of the mainline Ghoul, presumably made by Francisco Muñoz (or whoever he took, ahem, inspiration from). I’m not completely sure where the L3 came from; possibly a frankenstein I found somewhere.

As for the L2, there are actually two of them; a mostly unmodified sprite from neorice (again, with some palette tweaking) that is still used in AtS and used to be the Blood Hound from the Chaos faction in the original Extended Era, and a slightly altered version by myself that is in IftU and somehow never made its way to AtS — mostly because AtS and IftU’s production diverged greatly following both campaigns’ respective abandonment and re-adoption processes. Note that the same thing happened to some WML foundations, as I found out just yesterday. Talk about a troubled production.

Of course, I don’t like either version of the L2 (my edit is quite crude in hindsight), and the line as a whole is horribly inconsistent in theme, aesthetics, and proportions. That’s what happens when you start a campaign by gathering random unit art from random people and trying to unify the resulting mess around a common theme afterwards. That is one of the reasons I abandoned IftU for good and refocused on AtS. And most importantly, that is why I work on creating unit sprites on my own nowadays, instead of taking art from others (sans some minor exceptions) — it allows me to enforce some degree of consistency, to the detriment of quality.

In any case, the point of version 0.9.0 is precisely to provide a completed campaign. Not a polished one, but one that is complete and ready to be carefully balanced while art is revised and expanded (hopefully) in order to increase overall quality.

And that is the modus operandi I have adopted for this project because the alternative (continuous perfectionism) resulted in the 2009-mid 2011 (approx.) development hiatus.

End of rant.

[Mefisto]

The faeries are up for edit, experimentation, and expansion

This is something I made when I saw this topic in october (obviously this is a very quick and dirty sketch). What about this perspective?

[Iris]

This is something I made when I saw this topic in october (obviously this is a very quick and dirty sketch). What about this perspective?

Hm, no. That looks more fitting for a movement animation, not a standing frame. And the unit itself (both in terms of proportions and motion) looks like some kind of flying garden pixie. Our faeries are supposed to be more elegant and classical than that, their wings existing mostly for decorative purposes* (and also because people have become used to winged depictions of faeries thanks to creators such as big D). After all, they are more or less the ancestors of the generic mainline elves.

For this line’s standing and movement animations I’d really prefer to wait and see what Jetrel will actually do with regards to the Elvish Shyde and Sylph in mainline. Yes, I actually recall saying the same thing back in 2009, when the completion of his little project with the Sylph seemed to be approaching inevitability. Then he got sidetracked with the elvish faction overhaul, and then Frogatto.

A thing I forgot to mention: my official policy with regards to unit animations here is that standing frames take the highest priority above all animations, which is why I haven’t animated a single unit in years myself (excluding a couple of animations I had to make a while ago for some important cutscenes, that is). Oh well, who are we kidding; the secondary reason for this policy is that I often change my mind about baseframes.

*:

Also because of a bonus backstory item in the unreleased scenarios.

[Mefisto]

So I am to understand that the syplhs, faeries & Co. are levitating, not flying like overgrown insects (or hummingbirds)?
For fallen faeries what about this pattern of wings?

[Iris]

I had chosen to do those without wings at all, actually.

fallen.png (2.2 KiB) Viewed 6126 times

Decidedly far from perfect, because the clock is ticking and writing these scenarios is really hard etc.

[Mefisto]

Is it (the fallen one) still meant to be floating in the air?

Which sprites are most needed?

[Iris]

Is it (the fallen one) still meant to be floating in the air?

Yes.

She was also meant to evoke the concept of banshees, but meh, laziness; although she is technically undead and currently has a pretty strong wail attack in-game.

Which sprites are most needed?

All Shaxthal units (except Elyssa) may need to be redrawn since I’m not all that convinced by the current style used for them (mine); the Imp line is inconsistent as I previously said, and needs to be redrawn; the Valdemon Basher and Serpent Messenger imps are my own creation and they both need to be fixed.

Everything else either relies upon the demon line’s palette form factor, or is part of the unit set used exclusively during the finale scenarios. For the latter, I could use help, but I am not sure how much I want to reveal yet because things get complicated later on and I don’t want early spoilers running around until I have the scenario set completed; both plot-wise and gameplay-wise, it is a pretty atomic thing that is best not served in pieces.

[Mefisto]

I could start to work on imps unless they are already taken. If not:
1. do they need to be made as variation of one design or not? I mean primarily colour palette.
2. do they need to retain the current quasi-humanoidal appearance?
3. should they have some common traits in appearance with demons?

[Iris]

‘Imps’ are actually demons for most practical purposes, even though that doesn’t mean much given that the ‘demons’ race in IftU/AtS is actually a shorthand for a vast amount of different species of First Cycle creatures stranded both on Urvatha (Inferno) and Silida (???), all of them very diverse in appearance and other aspects.

Since their introduction in IftU, I have imagined imps as the demons’ counterpart to the goblin/orc distinction in Irdya:

Goblins are, despite their appearance, born as siblings to the orcs and members of the same race. While other races usually bear children singly or in pairs, orcs will have large litters of children all at once, causing their populations to explode rather quickly. Within any litter, there will only be one or two true orcs, who will grow to the full size and strength of their race. A few more will be half-orcs, notably weaker than their big brothers, and relegated to supporting roles in combat, such as archery. The rest, often a full half of more of any litter, will be goblins. Goblins are puny and quite frail, rarely growing past the size and stature of a human child. Goblins are born into a lifetime of near-slavery to their larger kin, and used as sword-fodder in battle. They thrive in spite of their tragic fate; in part because they are so very numerous, and also because their brother orcs are well aware how dependent they are on the goblins.

Goblins perform the bulk of manual labor needed by the orcs, with the sole exception of jobs that require the brute strength of true orcs. Those the orcs revel in as proof of their prowess.

I do not like going into pseudoscientific details like this, but I would imagine that the imps featured in IftU and AtS are the less privileged members of the in-game demon fighters line species, a similar species, or a hybrid (seeing as how they have poisonous saliva but the demon fighters don’t). They are misshapen, less mentally gifted creatures, but they can be just as deadly or even more. AtS E3 sees the introduction of one L4 Armageddon Imp as a Demon Lord on Irdya during the second scenario, so that should be a good indicative of how far they can ascend amongst their ranks given the chance.

Incidentally, AtS E3 also sees the introduction of the Valdemon Basher (L2 member of a missing unit line for a different species), Serpent Messenger (L3 member of yet another missing unit line for a separate species), and Ixthala Fire Dancer (L2, just like the others, but this one was taken from UtBS) as members of the ‘imps’ race just to show how diverse they can be. But the regular Imp line that is the most used throughout these four campaigns should represent various growth stages of a single species.

So:

1. do they need to be made as variation of one design or not? I mean primarily colour palette.

Yes, individual unit lines should be internally consistent unless there’s a good reason to do so (e.g. ornaments and weapons specific to higher level units).

2. do they need to retain the current quasi-humanoidal appearance?

Yes.

3. should they have some common traits in appearance with demons?

Given my explanation above, I would say the answer for this one is potentially.

More generally speaking, I like it when artists get more creative with my concepts if the result turns out to be better than I could have ever imagined, as this was the case with the portraits in IftU for Elynia, Anlindë, and Elyssa; kitty’s ideas were so good I simply had to work extra to depict them similarly in their sprite form. Too bad it’ll take ages before such a thing can happen in AtS too.

[homunculus]

I always thought imps in IftU/AtS were from Doom, and might even have some copyright issues.
And sarcastically I thought: the Doom game has become the source of education about folklore creatures.
doom imp
medieval imps

To my knowledge, imps in folklore were magical servants of a witch, resembling small animals (including birds, reptiles, fish and insects which aren't really strictly animals).
Often slightly deformed, or made up from bodyparts of several different creatures.
abundant references about such minor demons can be found from google picture search: temptation of saint anthony
the most iconic of which is probably this one.

This was a quick summary about what I found about imps (earlier when I wrote about hard-line folklore imps probably not being suitable), maybe can be useful in some way (perfectly aware of that the imps in the game need to look generic, and the same unit tree, and fit into the story, etc.).

[Mefisto]

I thought of something like this fellow - a hybrid of Tasmanian Devil from Looney Toons and minotaur.

[homunculus]

one more reference that i remembered, thinking about more generic imp pictures, bit similar to the current imps: homm 3 imp.
not extremely stereotypical in the sense that the head does not look like a disfigured dog head.
but anyway, it seems to be in the different direction (not that i would know what the right direction could be).

now me wondering if minotaur (or a bull head) might look too powerful.
or maybe the head could start from rat head for level 0 and progress to bull head for, say, level 3.

anyway, good luck