Reminding myself why I'm not an artist, again

[Exasperation]

So, normally portraits are made for units based (loosely) on their sprites. In the process a lot of detail gets added, and a lot of the results are truly amazing. On a whim I decided to turn the process on its head, and make a sprite out of one of those amazing portraits (specifically, thespaceinvader's Saurian Augur portrait). Here's the result.

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It suffers a little from creeping biggerism (it's one pixel taller than the Saurian Flanker, two pixels taller than the Soothsayer), and really suffers from loss of detail. Plus, I'm not a particularly skilled artist to begin with, so I didn't expect great results. Still, it's not so completely terrible that I feel ashamed to put it up here.

[thespaceinvader]

It's a touch unclear, but a very nice try, and a very flattering one =D

It's perhaps a shame that so few portraits are good for an exercise like this one, given the crop limit.

[Exasperation]

I tried to clear up a few of the more obvious problems - any improvement?

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@tsi: I'm glad you at least don't hate it. There was a while in the middle of this where I was thinking "What am I doing? He's going to come after me with a torch and pitchfork for what I've done to his work!"

I actually got really lucky with my choice of portrait. I picked this portrait to work from because I really like the Saurians, and the existing Saurian sprites are for the most part pretty simple so I wouldn't have to feel too bad comparing my work to the mainline sprites (I mean, imagine if I had tried this with one of the Drakes, with their brand new beautiful sprites - I might as well have made a stick figure). However, what I didn't realize before picking it is that the Augur is not only one of the few full-body portraits, but the portrait is practically in the right pose for a wesnoth sprite, just flipped horizontally.

[thespaceinvader]

Teah, you'd struggle with most of the portraits. However, this is a good way to learn to sprite, actually - it's a way of doing the work without needing to worry about the design, and with a guide for the exact anatomy of the subject.

Some hints, though: avoid too much detail. You won't be able to include everything at sprite scale. I'd skip the necklace altogether, for instance, and I'd probably skip the belts across the chest, too. But make the pauldrons bigger, and shinier - i'm struggling to read them at the moment. It doesn't matter if they float unsupported in a sprite.

Darker outlines, particularly on the blue cloth - that blends in a little at present.

Sod creeping biggerism, make it a little more proportional - you'll have more room to play with. Unless you're plannign on using this sprite for any particular purpose, you might as well have fun with it.

Thin down the head of the staff a bit, to allow a little more space for the crystal - that's the important bit, after all.

Clear up the front knee a bit. With appropriate shading, you should be able suggest the muscles, that area's a bit of a mess at present.

Overall, this is a good way to learn. nice job =)

[xbriannova]

I think its nice, but he might be leaning too far forward... Other than that, I have no qualms with this. It looks good really, don't beat yourself up.

[Exasperation]

OK, did some more revising. I never even tried to include the necklace, so that was easy to remove. I haven't removed the crossed belts on the chest yet, but I did remove the belt around his waist, which was barely visible anyway. I also removed some of the embroidery (applique? whatever type of decoration the gold bits are, anyway) on the lower part of his robe.
I made the pauldrons bigger and, hopefully, shinier (should I add a really bright spot as a highlight on the near one?).
I darkened a bunch of the outlines - hopefully I was right about which ones needed it.
I'm not sure exactly where to make changes to make it more proportional (and I would like it to be at least close to the right size for a Saurian sprite), but I made his torso, his near sleeve, and his near hand a little wider. I also lengthened his staff for the second time (if I stuck with the relative size of the staff in the portrait, it would come out to be one pixel wide, but widening it made it look sort of stubby, so I keep lengthening it).
I expanded the staff's crystal significantly, at the cost of part of the staff-head.
I tried to fix the front knee. I think that when I originally shaded that (it was the last bit I shaded and my concentration was starting to go) I accidentally put the same muscle-outline in two places on the leg, and things just sort of went downhill from there. So this time, I blanked out most of what I had there before and re-shaded pretty much from scratch.

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Am I moving in the right direction?

@xbriannova: I think that's because the enlarged head in sprite form makes him look a little top-heavy. I may try shortening his neck a little, to see if that helps.

[thespaceinvader]

One thing you definitely do need to do is put the neck in properly - you shouldn't be able to see nearly as much of the rear pauldron.

[Exasperation]

You just told me to make the pauldrons bigger and shinier. Did I expand that one too much, or did you mean to make the other one bigger, and both of them shinier?

[thespaceinvader]

I more meant the near pauldron - the far one is mostly obscured, and making it bigger takes away from the rest of the image. You need to make sure that his neck is deep enough - it should join up with his chin.

[Exasperation]

OK, shrank the far pauldron back down, although I left it a little shinier than it originally was. I also tried to clarify the connection between neck & chin a little, and separated the staff from the gold edges of the clothing a little more (I think they were blending together a little bit much).

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Edit - I tried shortening the neck a little (the second picture here). Is it an improvement? I think I actually managed to make the brown bands on the neck more distinct.

[xbriannova]

I think shortening the neck helped immensely. There's plenty of improvement. I went from thinking that this little saurian's leaning a little too far forward in a reverse-limbo fashion to being on the fence about this issue regarding your sprite... I guess its good now... Though you might want to listen to the others like thespaceinvader to make more improvements. I don't exactly know everything that makes a good unit image.

[Lizard]

I like the sprite, too
Do you already have s.th. planed with the sprite? I'd like to use it in my Saurian Faction (Tree) when you got the baseframe done and if you are ok with it. My current saurian Mage Lines all look alike, you new pose would add some much needed diversity.

[Exasperation]

I don't have anything planned for it, and even if I did have something planned I wouldn't mind if you used it as well. Feel free.
I guess if you're going to be using it I should probably think about team-coloring it, too. I'm thinking the best bet would be to TC the pauldrons and the golden decorations on the robe?

Edit- I finally got to removal of the chest-straps, and applied TC to him. Unless there's more problems or I messed something up, I think he's done.

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[Exasperation]

Every once in a while, I get the urge to make unit art, and am forced to refresh my memory of why I don't generally do so.

In this case, I started making a Skeletal Dragon, based on the new Fire Dragon (although I started this quite some time ago - over a year - so it's not based on the finished version of the new sprite). I finally got around to completing* the flats for the sprite.

I'm not sure I'll ever get around to trying to shade it. I am, however, proud of one thing about this sprite; when I couldn't figure out how various things should look from the Fire Dragon sprite, I went and looked up images of fossils as references, and tried to work from those.

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* completing as in "all the limbs are present", not as in "finished product".

[Reepurr]

whew dragon.

Nice to see someone who understands anatomy doing work on the Skeletal Dragon Great work on the legs and hips there.

I don't know if what I was working on a while back would be helpful at all?

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