Heir campaign portraits

Post by **Pickslide** » July 13th, 2004, 5:20 am

The parchment idea is great! I think at least. I could try to finish up all the pencils first, and put them on parchment so it looks like an old book or something. If I remember right, way back Warcraft 2 did something like this. I think that'd look really cool. When I finish coloring, It probably wouldn't be hard to kind of fade the edges from a parchment look into the scene.

Integral · Post by **Integral** » July 13th, 2004, 7:26 am

One game I played did all the story pictures in a medieval style -- illuminated pictures with deliberately disproportionate and flat figures, and I think some images that were broken into solid color regions (ie, like a stained glass window). I'm not sure if that would work here; I thought I'd throw it out as an option, though

.

Daniel

Post by **fmunoz** » July 13th, 2004, 2:36 pm

Pickslide wrote: fmunoz:
Thanks, I was really impressed by your art too. Especially that title screen, I think yours is still better. I'm just not a fan of that anime style.
All the portraits are 250X250 PSD files with shadow, light, background, flat color and burned/dodged layers. I like to resize to 205 after all the work is done, so it blurs little imperfections away (Shhh...don't tell). I have all the original paper copys still, so I can make bigger versions.

Mmmmm I uaually work with images at least twice the size needed (not sprites) and for portraits I work with 2000x2000 versions, it's easier to made edits and can be printed in other media...
Your portriats are very good... but the faces are really lacking details... Did you saw new Lisar's one?

Post by **Pickslide** » July 13th, 2004, 5:02 pm

Yeah, I like the new lisar you drew much more than the current one.

Right now I'm thinking of using illustrator to trace my lineart so I can have a nicely scalable set of vector lineart for the portraits. It'll just be a pain adjusting line widths with a mouse x_X. I think It'll be better in the end though, it'll make resizing much easier and prettier I hope. If it works well, I think I may do that for all the story pics as well.

Speaking of, here's the main stuff for the king and prince splitting up and going off to war. I need to add in footmen all around, and landscaping again. I still don't know how to decorate the armors, I'll try to come up with something today. I also need to figure out that helmet...but the hard parts are done.

Post by **quartex** » July 13th, 2004, 6:40 pm

These look really nice. If they are drawing on parchment, and not supposed to be images of the actual battles, you can makes them a bit more stylized, or have a simple background. I like the idea that these images might have been drawn by an unknown chronicler of the story of Konrad, and as such, don't have have all the background detail of a photo-realistic image.

But as this thread is getting longer, how about keeping this thread only about the portrait images, and starting a new thread for the storyline images.

Post by **Jetrel** » July 13th, 2004, 9:07 pm

Post by **Pickslide** » July 13th, 2004, 10:58 pm

Yeah, I should start another thread.

Ok, after looking around the internet for photoshop stuff, I found an amatuer comicbook style art forum and I read some tuts. Following one, I redid the line art on Delfador using Illustrator, so its cleaner.

Now, I also tried out a different way of shading, also from this site, and it comes out very cell shaded looking. I think it looks *much* more professional, but a little more "animation" style. As a bonus, with this method I can rescale with no loss in the lineart niceness, so I can get closer up to the face.

What would you say about this new style? Also, its much easier to fix and draw.

I am now planning on inking and coloring the story pics in this way as well.

3 pics to elaborate:

Holy crap, after looking at these together in preview, I think the new way wins hands down but I just wanted to see what everyone else thinks too...

telex4 · Post by **telex4** » July 13th, 2004, 11:22 pm

Yeah, it fits the Wesnoth style more. However I'd set the stroke to be slightly thinner, as at the moment the black lines are a bit too imposing.

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 14th, 2004, 9:08 am

The old way is MUCH better.

Arthelorn · Post by **Arthelorn** » July 14th, 2004, 12:42 pm

I like the new line art personally, but I prefer the old coloring style.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » July 14th, 2004, 1:31 pm

Have you considered doing these in SVG so that you don't have a big problem when it comes to moving various parts such as the arms?

Check out Inkscape for an amazing free editor. It looks suited to this kind of comic-style artwork.

Post by **quartex** » July 14th, 2004, 2:50 pm

The new line art is too bold, IMO. Especially with delfador's staff, my eye jumps to the big black lines, which makes it look a lot more like a comic book. The big black lines are distracting, I prefer the older way.

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 14th, 2004, 3:34 pm

Right. You can't looka t his head or his staff anymore, and his robes are just worse because a lot of good shading is gone.

charlieg · Post by **charlieg** » July 14th, 2004, 7:24 pm

Pickslide wrote:Following [a tutorial], I redid the line art on Delfador using Illustrator, so its cleaner.

Ah, so you have done! Cool, this could/should help you manipulate the images without having to do lots of touching up.

I would still nudge you towards Inkscape since it's Free Software and the next release is imminent.

Pickslide wrote:What would you say about this new style? Also, its much easier to fix and draw.

I am now planning on inking and coloring the story pics in this way as well.

It is definitely the way forward. Not only is it more maintainable, it becomes more reusable (can copy/paste shapes etc) and easier to combine SVGs together to create really cool composites.

Pickslide wrote:Holy crap, after looking at these together in preview, I think the new way wins hands down but I just wanted to see what everyone else thinks too...

I agree with the others that the lines have become too bold. However, now that you're using a vector graphics editor, it'll be easy as pie to change them!

Elvish_Pillager · Post by **Elvish_Pillager** » July 14th, 2004, 9:15 pm

Everything about the old way is way better.