Black characters?

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LienRag
Posts: 127
Joined: September 24th, 2018, 4:03 pm

Black characters?

Post by LienRag »

I'm installing a few computers for children now, and I'd like to personnalize their Wesnoth HTTT campaign by renaming main characters with the children's names (Konrad for the boys and Li'sar for the girls).
Problem is, kids in question are black or brown: is there a way to have a black/brown Li'sar, Konrad (and Asheviere for coherence)?

I know it's just modifying the picture, but I'm not good at all at drawing...
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ghype
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Re: Black characters?

Post by ghype »

LienRag wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 4:16 pm I know it's just modifying the picture, but I'm not good at all at drawing...
Hey there, recolouring campaign units should not be a problem.
It can become quite tedious to do that for the animations for every level manually. Each attack (melee/ranged), defend or ability (leadership/heal/...) consist of 2 or up to 8 frames.

LI'sar for instance has 59 frames for all levels and Konrad only 43 frames.
You'd have to change the hair and face/skin color in order to change their ethnicity.For one frame it is doable, but 92..
Another solution would be to use only 1 frame for each animation. That would minimise the work drastically.
So if you are willing to trade the fluid animations for the recoloured version, that thats very doable.

Just not that a full "black" unit is more difficult to accurately draw than darker shades of brown. The shade of an indigenous African is something I don't think I could achieve accurately, but I have never tried though.

Also, you could ask a moderator to move this thread to the Artworkshop, where you can reach out to many more artist, who maybe have some more time then the art developers.
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skeptical_troll
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Re: Black characters?

Post by skeptical_troll »

If you don't mind recolouring clothes too, and you have some WML knowledge, you could play around with IMAGE_PATH giving an object to all units you care about. Or you may use the new quenoth elves, although it would play a bit different.
Argesilao

Re: Black characters?

Post by Argesilao »

You can use a free program called GIMP, but a minimum of practice is required in the use of the program like that, even if GIMP is quite friendly and intuitive.

With GIMP you can cut out the portion of image with the character skin, for example the face, and then change the color using the colors-balancing, and then you paste the face in the original portrait; but it's a long work in the Heir for the Throne because there are a lot of portrait.

Otherwise, and more simply, always with GIMP, you can filled the pink areas of the portraits with various tonality of brown.
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ghype
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Re: Black characters?

Post by ghype »

Argesilao wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 7:15 pm but it's a long work in the Heir for the Throne because there are a lot of portrait.
i haven even thought about the portraits. Changing face/head colors in photoshop is quite easy and with a total of 14 portraits only its pretty doable and something I would be willing to do if this someone else would commit to the sprites
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Edwylm
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Re: Black characters?

Post by Edwylm »

Argesilao wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 7:15 pm With GIMP you can cut out the portion of image with the character skin, for example the face, and then change the color using the colors-balancing, and then you paste the face in the original portrait; but it's a long work in the Heir for the Throne because there are a lot of portrait.

Otherwise, and more simply, always with GIMP, you can filled the pink areas of the portraits with various tonality of brown.
easier way would be to place all the character skin's in 1 image that why you have a constant color balance to all the images. then copy/paste the parts to the original images. this method is faster and easier than going though each image.

you could look into the quenoth elves for insight on skin color too.
ghype wrote: October 23rd, 2018, 7:28 pm i haven even thought about the portraits. Changing face/head colors in photoshop is quite easy and with a total of 14 portraits only its pretty doable and something I would be willing to do if this someone else would commit to the sprites
to me the sprites are not a problem but I don't have much time to dedicate until Sunday. I estimate just changing the skin of the units would take about a hour or 2 to experiment with color and the rest would be cake of less than 2hrs.

Though main question would be when LienRag wants the modified images.
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octalot
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Re: Black characters?

Post by octalot »

I don't have time to do anything for this, just a comment and some old sprites. Konrad's a protagonist from the start, but Li'sar is introduced as an lying antagonist and is a questionable ally until scenario 21; I think she's a bad choice for naming after the player.

If sprites for a female protagonist would help, I tried adding more clothing to the 1.12 sprites, and Li'sar turned out looking like she was raised by elves. The .pngs and Gimp .xcfs for many of the other poses are on Github: https://github.com/stevecotton/wesnoth/ ... 0dc020e246 (branch "ranger_lisar").
Attachments
human-princess.png
human-princess.png (3.07 KiB) Viewed 7173 times
LienRag
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Re: Black characters?

Post by LienRag »

Thanks for the replies.

I don't have deadlines right now, and yes I know GIMP, it's quite doable for the "sprites" but for the portraits in the story just putting brown color on the face will be quite difficult to do right, and facial structure of most black/brown people do not look like Konrad's or Li'sar's.

I didn't get the part about having all the character's skin in one image? Nor the one about the image_path...

Quenoth Elves have the right color and (some of them) the right faces, but how could I use them? I saw the sprites but not the portraits, are there enough to replace Konrad's and Li'sar's? I saw Arty Squid magnificent Asheviere, but I can't find Quenoth portraits.

Oh, and I find Li'sar a very interesting character, she is indeed an opponent, but never a despicable one (does she really lie? she's deceptive as I remember her, not a liar stricto sensu), so imho she does make a good role-model for a young girl.
LienRag
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Re: Black characters?

Post by LienRag »

Oh, I think I get the GIMP cut-and-balance-and-paste thing now (yes, I understand quickly, but only after I've been explained slowly)!
It's a good idea, I'll give it a try.
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octalot
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Re: Black characters?

Post by octalot »

The Quenoth portraits are in the campaign data for Under the Burning Suns. There's also a discussion thread including draft sketches that didn't go in to the game, but I don't think there's enough of a single male character to provide all of Konrad's facial expressons: https://r.wesnoth.org/t43175

The "image_path" is a set of filters that the Wesnoth engine can apply to sprites, by adding something after the filename in the .wml files. ImagePathFunctionWML

Li'sar lying: maybe it's only once, telling them that "the northern road should be safe for you" when tricking them to the Valley of Death.
Shiki
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Re: Black characters?

Post by Shiki »

octalot wrote: …to provide all of Konrad's facial expressons…
I guess it's the littlest matter, one may just use the same image all the time.

For the IPFs: There exists one or two which enable changing of the skin color. One example changing the armor color is here:
https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/blob ... g#L91-L102
Try out the dark board theme.
LienRag
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Re: Black characters?

Post by LienRag »

Interesting.
What are IPFs?

I tried the "changing darkness" and it does work (strangely, it makes Konrad's cheek red, but then selecting it allows to correct it).
I tried with sprites too and they are so pixelized that it's difficult to choose which pixel to colorize.

Do I need to host my files somewhere to show you what I've achieved or is there a simpler way?

Li'sar: yeah, she tricked them: "should" is a polysemic word, it's not the same as lying.
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Edwylm
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Re: Black characters?

Post by Edwylm »

LienRag wrote: October 26th, 2018, 11:16 pm
I tried the "changing darkness" and it does work (strangely, it makes Konrad's cheek red, but then selecting it allows to correct it).
I tried with sprites too and they are so pixelized that it's difficult to choose which pixel to colorize.

Do I need to host my files somewhere to show you what I've achieved or is there a simpler way?
the first part, well that is something that you need to experiment with.

the 2nd part. go to the full editor&preview and click on Attachment that is where you can upload files to your post.

As to my comment on placing them in 1 image, i meant place like all the sprites for Li'sar on 1 large image. this why you don't have go though each sprite image file and do the color balance which you might make a mistake. for pixels you can select a pixel by color across all the sprites. then the only thing you have to do is delete the old sprite with your modded sprite.
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octalot
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Re: Black characters?

Post by octalot »

Version of the tutorial with Kaleh, Konrad, Li'sar and Nym:
https://github.com/stevecotton/wesnoth/ ... 8154fb8a72
https://github.com/stevecotton/wesnoth/ ... _kaleh_nym

Notes:
The editing on the nym_no_bow portrait isn't mainline quality.
Has been edited during playtesting, haven't yet playtested all four characters after editing.
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