Ghouls

Contribute art for mainline Wesnoth.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

Forum rules
Before posting critique in this forum, you must read the following thread:
shevegen
Posts: 497
Joined: June 3rd, 2004, 4:35 pm

Re: Ghouls

Post by shevegen »

These are some serious skills you got there!

I like the pictures and the progression a lot. That's really great.

HOWEVER had, I believe that one problem is that it does not seem 1:1 inspired into (or for) the
game wesnoth as such. For example, the big jaw - I guess you wanted to be creative there. :)

Or the stitches - like the ghouls are a bit like Frankenstein. Creative freedom.

For wesnoth, or RPGs or game worlds in general, I found that in the long run consistency
is a good thing, and best maintained everywhere (which can be difficult). So within the
context of this thread, I think the most important question to be asked is:

"How do ghouls look like in wesnoth typically?"

So, in other words: how would the average ghoul look like?

If we look only at the in-game icon then they tend to be fat, probably strong, quite
massive overall, perhaps slow-ish (some undead are slow yes?). So the portrait
is perhaps more for a particular boss-ghoul rather than your average ghoul
living next door (or on the streets, a hobo-ghoul).

Perhaps the portrait should be split - like one boss ghoul, and then the average
ghouls (without stitches). I guess one problem is that the average ghoul may
not look as fancy and awesome, so stitches and an alien-like jaw (the movie
alien) makes it more interesting.

I assume that for the game wesnoth, the background story was not so important;
it was more important to have interesting unit types rather than a detailed
game lore. Perhaps the ghouls on the battlefields of wesnoth tend to be
sturdier than the average hobo ghoul on the street?

Anyway - while I think the portrait may not fit that much to ghouls in GENERAL,
I love the artwork. The jaw-drop is quite massive though, looks like it
decayed half-way down already. :)
shevegen
Posts: 497
Joined: June 3rd, 2004, 4:35 pm

Re: Ghouls

Post by shevegen »

Oh - the first portrait was perhaps a bit too human-like, a chubby big guy.

I understand that they should retain the human-esque part, so they should
be identifiable as "humanoids", whatever that means, but they should also
be undead, so I liked the progression. It should be a balance between
human and undead-thingy. Perhaps someone could even build up a
campaign around that ghoul in one scenario.
User avatar
doofus-01
Art Director
Posts: 4122
Joined: January 6th, 2008, 9:27 pm
Location: USA

Re: Ghouls

Post by doofus-01 »

beetlenaut wrote: August 15th, 2020, 3:47 pm
doofus-01 wrote: August 15th, 2020, 12:21 pm I am a bit disappointed they are just flesh-golem super-zombies
The difference between them and zombies is that ghouls aren't all the way dead. (That gives a reason for their arcane resistance.) However, I'm not that attached to the origin story. I already used up my only idea, but if you have a suggestion, the story could be changed.
I've played the scenario now, and see that we can change the ghoul origin story without ruining the SotA story, it doesn't seem critical to the campaign.

If it's OK, I'll include a revision to that part in the future PR for this, or maybe as its own PR, since my idea might not be seen as an improvement.

EDIT: #5189 contains my proposed revisions
BfW 1.12 supported, but active development only for BfW 1.13/1.14: Bad Moon Rising | Trinity | Archaic Era |
| Abandoned: Tales of the Setting Sun
GitHub link for these projects
User avatar
Szynka12
Posts: 2
Joined: November 1st, 2021, 7:56 am

Re: Ghouls

Post by Szynka12 »

I dont know about Ghouls but i think Ghast deserves his own portrait. Especially when he looks and acts so different in comparison to his smaller brothers. Big, fat pile of meat and muscles with jaws on it's body would be ok considering they attack they prey with their enormous mouths instead of claws. Maybe adding two smaller heads (or jaws on its shoulders) would help. Sketches are cool, but i wonder how our hulky friend will look like with big belly-mouth.
Post Reply