Dark Adept Portraits (Male W.I.P [10%] Female W.I.P[70%])

[Sgt. Groovy]

From such an high angle, the female looks pretty small.

Also, isn't the general style of both of them sort of deviation from the shell-shaded style toward looking more like hand-painted?

[Thrawn]

From such an high angle, the female looks pretty small.

Also, isn't the general style of both of them sort of deviation from the shell-shaded style toward looking more like hand-painted?

they are still obviously cell-shaded, and it has the right mood, so I don't see a problem.

[zookeeper]

The female version looks great as it is IMHO, but if I had to change one thing I'd probably remove that little smile she seems to be having:

[wayfarer]

Well personal I would say the little smile fits. She still things she has everything under control. Though cool portrait.

[Pic]

I'm fine with it Critique wise I’m not going to complain about the beard, but to make it a more realistic not shaven look, perhaps some stubble should be introduced on the upper lip? At the moment it grows along his jaw line and I know it doesn’t just grow there with me, if i don't shave.

Also the shading above his eye ridges..? (On his forehead) The brushstrokes can be seen and gives him a slightly hairy forehead look, maybe if it was brought less into the foreground it would be less noticeable (not that anyone else has)

I'm glad you fixed his chin! The line of mine wasn't really quite right at all

And the hair looks better and more hairy, just the brush or did you do anything special?

[Pic]

And now (IMHO) critique for the female one:

Maybe the ear needs some more shade? I was trying to figure the light source and i decided on the northwest, the shading under the nostril to the right makes sense then, and then ear doesn’t. If it’s from a different angle then the shading under the nostril to the right is to heavy.

Maybe the shading of the neck is a bit off for the same reasons? If the light source is north west-ish then the head would shade the neck more?

And I think that, if you turned her head to face us dead on, perhaps the eyebrow on the left (her right) is more arched then the other eyebrow. This happens in people anyway of course, but i didn't know if it was purposefully done.

Besides that it's looking very good and much better then mine ever did! I prefer the little smile and it's much better for some reason, that it is a similar pose to the male; the fabric looks better then the males as well.

[deserter]

The female version looks great as it is IMHO, but if I had to change one thing I'd probably remove that little smile she seems to be having:

How about something from the mid-way? Perhaps a bit more neutral expression? I don't know though... I don't see a problem with a little smile.

[Zhukov]

From such an high angle, the female looks pretty small.

Also, isn't the general style of both of them sort of deviation from the shell-shaded style toward looking more like hand-painted?

So are people supposed to aim for the Lutes look or not?

[JW]

Wow, those new portraits are tight. Nice work.

[Jetrel]

they are still obviously cell-shaded, and it has the right mood, so I don't see a problem.

They're not Cell-shaded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_shading

Cell-shading refers to images which separate the objects into regions of a single color and luminosity, and suggest the 3D form of the object by making a very limited set, often as low as two sub-regions of those objects a brighter/lower luminosity, for highlights and shades. In almost all cell-shading, the image is layered beneath a set of black outlines that help to delineate the points of greatest contrast in the image.

There are additional techniques that can be layered on top of this basic cell-shading; regions can be given soft edges; regions can be made of a gradient instead of a solid color. These drawings are still typically classified as cell-shading; perhaps an advanced version of such.


So, what is this? This is a painting that mimics some of the features of typical cell-shaded drawings. It mimics:

• regional color separation.
• color and luminosity choices
• General, macroscopic object shaping choices
• The presence of some visible linework.
• And in these wesnoth ones - identical composition and background.

It's not unlike the stuff put out by, say, warcraft. It's still undeniably "cartoony" in some ways; certainly, this is no da vinci.

Also, isn't the general style of both of them sort of deviation from the shell-shaded style toward looking more like hand-painted?

So are people supposed to aim for the Lutes look or not?

That's a good question, with a tough answer. Here's what went into my decision, first, the state of what we have:

We essentially have two portrait styles for wesnoth. Style number 1 is a strict, cell-shaded portrait style, like those images by Jason Lutes. Portraits in this style include:

Everything by Jason Lutes
Pekka's longbowman
Thrawn's poacher and Thief

The other style is what pickslide describes as a "fantasy painting style"; done as best as the artist is capable. These are:

Everything by Pickslide
Everything by Jormungandr
Everything by Jetryl

(we also have other, non-mainline portraits from grp21, and Magdelena Miñko, both of which are high-level, gradient-based cell shading with wild, highly saturated color choices)


So here is my decision:
The "lutes" and "painted" styles do clash, but in my opinion, they don't clash horribly (because of many shared things about them), that is, they don't clash so badly that they merit throwing out either set of art. Currently, they are divided along factional/racial lines, a feature I intend to keep.

I prefer, personally, the painted style. I could offer some speculative reasons for that, but largely it's a matter of opinion. The lutes style is more procedural, and yields easier results for beginners - unfortunately, it absolutely requires good linework to equal lutes' own work in quality (and it needs to equal that to be worth having). Unfortunately, doing said "good linework" is something that very few people around here can do - I had to personally tweak Thrawn/Tatmf's portraits into shape to fit that level of cleanliness, and a certain je ne sais quoi in the shaping of the lines which might have something to do with fractal density (though I'm just grabbing at straws; I really don't know what that secret ingredient is - it might also be a series of conventional symbols used for things like cloth folds). In other words, it is easier to make the Lutes style, but not vastly easier.

Bottomline is this:
• Lutes style for Loyalists, Outlaws, and Dwarves.
• Painted/High-level-Cell-shaded style for everyone else.

We have to make a compromise, because these don't grow on trees. What we do when we get everything done, and want to make things more consistent, gets decided then.

[Jetrel]

And chiefly, this is the burn of being an OSS project. We have no cohesive, paid team of ninja artists we can sic on a task to get it done quickly and professionally. If this were a business, I'd quickly look through some samples of applications, and hire a few capable freelance artists to get this done in less than a couple of months (maybe more, since we actually have rather steep requirements). Hiring someone would be at least a month's worth of work, which costs quite a bit.


I have a budget of $0.


That we can make art in quantity, to say nothing of our (relatively professional) level of quality, is ... astounding. It's like a mountain that can walk.

[Jetrel]

Edits:

• Male - reshaped top of head slightly.
• Male - made the stubble much more consistent; he should look like hasn't shaved in a day or four.
• Female - tweaked the mouth to have more neutral expression
• Female - other very minor cleanups.


If no one has any objections, I'll go ahead and do the commit.

[zookeeper]

One thing: there's much more contrast in the female's cloak than in the male's. The female cloak and hood has those slightly brighter highlights and such, whereas the male cloak is much more "plain" and almost looks (when compared to the female one) like it was lacking the very final finishing touches to the shading. It might be realistic*, but still something at least my eye picks off easily.

I didn't notice this before since I hadn't seen them next to each other or side by side, whereas that is exactly how you mostly see them in-game, so it might be worth checking.

* More often than not (well, often anyway), I've looked at the sky (when there's a reasonable amount of clouds about, that is) and thought that if I'd see a sky like that as a sky texture in a game, I'd probably think "duh, couldn't they have made a more realistic sky, that looks bad". I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's annoyingly true.

[Jetrel]

I didn't notice this before since I hadn't seen them next to each other or side by side, whereas that is exactly how you mostly see them in-game, so it might be worth checking.

Yeah.

* More often than not (well, often anyway), I've looked at the sky (when there's a reasonable amount of clouds about, that is) and thought that if I'd see a sky like that as a sky texture in a game, I'd probably think "duh, couldn't they have made a more realistic sky, that looks bad". I'm not sure what to make of that, but it's annoyingly true.

Interestingly enough, I've independently noticed this too.

[JW]

It would be nice if the female's nose were slimmer. Right now it looks pretty much a duplicate male nose. You did a good job thinning the eyebrows and softening the jawline for the female, but for some reason the nose keeps making me look at it.

-edit-
It's mostly because the nose is the same size, but the head is considerably smaller. Women generally have smaller noses to begin with, so resizing it to appropriately match the male nose:head ratio might even not go far enough.

Just a thought - you'll see what works best I'm sure.