Female Wesnoth - Fencer

[ghype]

The following images are posted in order to clear several misconceptions regarding the differences of male/female elves in our current stage of wood-elves.

(1) High level male elves share all the same armour.

• Champion, Marshal, Avenger (male) have the same "chest plate"

• Hero and Ranger do too but is irrelevant since they are lv2

• Assuming Captain does as well, but it is not visible due to its stance

• Following .gif proofs my statement, focus is only on the chest which are identical to all 3 units shown.
  Exception is lower abdomen, which is the same, but moved 1px sideways to the Avenger due to stance:

• 

  had to reposition sprites for having chest centered

  _elve_chestplate.gif (5.86 KiB) Viewed 20875 times

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(2) Differences between current male and female elves are very subtle

• The only difference in Avenger or Ranger male/female is that shoulder are more narrow and hips is a bit more open or lower

• Proof of of that are int he next to .gif

• 

  _elve_avenger_difference.gif (4.54 KiB) Viewed 20875 times

• 

  _elve_ranger_difference.gif (4.48 KiB) Viewed 20875 times

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(3) Sharpshooter is exception to both (1) and (2)

• This line wears different chest clothing. I say clothing, because we can assume that that is no actual armour.
  This would explain the lower hp of this unit

• Differences are not only in the stance, but also a thicker arm for the male or longer hair for the female

• Proof of of that are int he next to .gif

• 

  _elve_sharpshooter_difference.gif (4.22 KiB) Viewed 20875 times

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Conclusion:
In summary we can say, if the chest armour of the male units (Marshal, Champion, Avenger) are identical, then so should be the chest armour for the female ones. Especially if there is already a consistency establish through out the lv2 Ranger and the lv3 Avenger.

In fact thats exactly what I did, I copied the female Avenger chest, pasted it to the male Marshall / Champion and recoloured it in order to rework the male unit into a female unit. Further more I narrowed the shoulders 1px on both sides and lowered the hips too. I even lengthen the hair of both, which doesn't happen at the Avenger or Ranger line.

So I can say that my changes are very lore-friendly and following the non-existing protocol based on the existing male/female elves. Of course I could have done more, but I didn't want to over-do them. I wanted to stay as close to the existing changes as possible. If you still have concerns, you can state them now.

Thanks for your time.

quotes & answers:

make the shoulders narrower and widen the hips?

narrower , yes
widen the hips, maybe not. This would probably end up in a visual overemphasising of the lower body culture of a sprite.

Half-undressing them and giving them boob armor does not make sense, because nobody in their right mind would want to wear that sort of garb in battle and get killed ;)

ofc it is a complicated topic, but regarding (2), you can see that exactly that happens on the Avenger line. The male muscular structure makes as believe that that could be a chest plate. but what if it is only clothing and the actual armour are shoulder/arm pads? If you check the portraits , yes they were leather armour. but portraits never represent it's sprite 100%.

I think it is worth making female units but maybe just not elves first. ;) Probably it will take a while before the new elves get fully implemented but might as well work on some of the images that aren't being worked on.

If it means that means that I will have to do it again once they are fully implented, I will

[GunChleoc]

Now that I look at your sprite comparisons, the male armor has highlights on the chest as well - I guess it's the small scale of the sprites that put me on the wrong track with my comment.

[The_Gnat]

The following images are posted in order to clear several misconceptions regarding the differences of male/female elves in our current stage of wood-elves.

Nice post! I love the careful comparison and totally agree with what you are doing!

[ghype]

So here is the first taste on how the fencer line could look like. If anyone is not happy, let me know what I should improve.

fencer+female.png (5.3 KiB) Viewed 7451 times

duelist+female.png (5.45 KiB) Viewed 7451 times

master-at-arms+female.png (5.52 KiB) Viewed 7451 times

[enclave]

not bad maybe longer hair on first 2

[ghype]

upon request, here are two versions for the lv1 and lv2 fencer with longer hair.
dont't know if it is necessarily better. also i finished the the first animations, but i will post them some other time.

fencer+female-2.png (5.28 KiB) Viewed 7402 times

duelist+female-2.png (5.43 KiB) Viewed 7402 times

[enclave]

i think it's at least 1% better i was thinking maybe some hair would cover the front of body to make it more visible, but no idea if it would improve it for real or would add another 1%
otherwise i think it's all good.. like you said before, many female units dont really look 100% female so it would fit the wesnoth standards..

[ghype]

after all, the animations are the more critical aspect since you see stuff you are not supposed to see in base sprite.
we can discuss it there again, once i posted them.

[The_Gnat]

Awesome that looks fantastic!

after all, the animations are the more critical aspect since you see stuff you are not supposed to see in base sprite.
we can discuss it there again, once i posted them.

Yes definitely that will be the hardest part but well worth it when it is finished!

[ghype]

Here is the first piece of hard work. How do you feel about this?

My female version attack animation:

fence+female-attack-0.6.gif (10.41 KiB) Viewed 7292 times

Male animation for comparison:

fencer-attack.gif (9 KiB) Viewed 7292 times

Note: that white border on the first frame of my animation is bug from my photoshop. the frames won't have it.
If anyone can recommend another program for display animation .gifs pls let me know

[enclave]

i cant recommend anything, but possibly free gimp could do it, dont know.

the animations look like fencer increase in size for a time of attack and then comes back to small one

[ghype]

the animations look like fencer increase in size for a time of attack and then comes back to small one :D

thats exactly what happens, the fencer attack animation received a do over at some point in the past.
but you do not notice it in-game

[Edwylm]

it has the illusion of motion blur with the animation compared to other units. it gives it the idea that its moving faster for being a skirmish unit.

[ghype]

it has the illusion of motion blur with the animation compared to other units. it gives it the idea that its moving faster for being a skirmish unit.

that totally makes sense now.

i rendered the animation with the longer hair and I am much more satisfied with it.

[The_Gnat]

i rendered the animation with the longer hair and I am much more satisfied with it.

That looks great! I felt that potentially the female variations wouldn't be visible enough due to the motion blur of the fencer's animations. But you have done really well!

The only thing is that I feel like one of the frames of the animations her chest looks a bit flat but it is hard to tell because it is quite fast