Help For A New Contributor

[Troy]

I'd say he is a little to chubby for a cavalry man, but the again what do I know?

[Zhukov]

Now that. That there picture. That is nice.
Hullo Tamur. I've been keeping my opinion on hold until you posted your first serious piece. A pleasant surprise.

Feedback:
• One of the first things that jumped out was that he's slightly chubby, as Troy noted above. Is this a bad thing? Personally I think not. He doesn't look overwieght, but rather of stocky build. Nothing wrong with that.
• The portrait does a good job of covering the whole unit line of cavalryman through to cavalier. Was that intentional? If so, nicely done. If not, well... what the heck, nicely done anyway.
• If memory serves, a decision was made some time back that the loyalists would have a 'royal purple' colour scheme. What this means for you is that the team colour (TC) parts of a loyalist portrait should be purple, not red. In this case I am refering to the red on the fellow's shield which I assume you used because that is colour used on the sprite. For an example, check out the royal guard portrait and compare it with the sprite. If you don't understand what all this means, do not hesitate to speak up. A more thorough explanation will be provided.



Hmm, while I'm at it, a couple of general things. Be aware that the artwork side of Wesnoth is very collabrative. Work you post will likely receive quite a bit of feedback. Plenty of it will be from folks who know what they are talking about. Unfortunately some will be from people who are utterly clueless. And of course some will be from people somewhere in the middle (like myself). Also, occasionally people may edit your work, usually to point out possible problems or suggest improvements that would be hard to put into words. Hopefully all this will not be a problem.

Lastly, you may want too read this if you haven't already.

Okay, that's the lot. Welcome aboard.

[Jetrel]

I've still to shade his hair a bit and deal with the back of the neck with some leather/cloth, but how's this for a cavalry portrait? I looked at the unit images and keyed on the red shield and slightly conical helm. Comments and suggestions appreciated.

I like slightly darker and more saturated skin tones than are in the Lutes images, but I can copy them if necessary.

AH. This is looking very, very nice. I'd accept it as is, but if you'd be willing to pull a few final stylistic points, I'd really appreciate it:

- The "super"-highlights on the face and leather - notably on the bridge of the nose, the lip, the chin, and also on the tips of his collar, should be removed - such super-highlights are great for shiny surfaces, but I think the skin and leather should be a bit more matte/dull, and should thus go without that strong specular highlight. (What I'm suggesting matches what Lutes did; he saves the specular highlights for metal.) This might necessitate brightening the skin tones to match what were in lutes' images, it might not.

- I might borrow your relative saturation of certain colors directly from Lutes' work - in the case of the red, I'd change it to match the red in some of the outlaw images.

- If you broaden the point of his chin, it might help make him look more "stocky" than plump. (Speculation, again, I'm not sure about this.) I don't mind the look, it gives him character. Suits the unit type, too.


- Also, when you post the next revision, if you could post a higher-res file, or a work file (e.g. psd/xcf), I'd really appreciate it, as there's a tweak to the shading on the helmet which I think would be beneficial, but is complicated to describe in words.

[TL]

He looks a bit surly, possibly because he has no cheekbones. I'd probably be a little bit pissed too if I didn't.

Naw, I'm just kidding. It does look really good, although a little more line detail (like cheekbones) might help. This would probably help to shed the "plump" look too.

[Tamur]

Thanks all for the comments. It's rare that I teach myself anything worthwhile, so yes Zhukov I'm definitely excited to be here. The first thing I noticed browsing the forums is that there are quite a number of folks who know what they're talking about.

Troy:

I see what you mean about the chubby/pudgy look. I'll play with that a bit in the next revision, though to be honest I kind of like it, hehe.

Zhukov:

1) covering the cav line: hehe, I'm too new to pull off such a feat purposefully! Glad to hear it works well though.

2) royal purple: I'll give the royal-guard sprite a look. I was browsing somewhere here and read an article on team colours, so that does make sense. I'll switch the red out.

Jetryl:

1) super-highlight: consider it gone. I'm used to working in a three-tone manner, will have to break that habit on things that don't deserve specular attention.

2) saturation: will do. I'll be swapping purple in for the red, but will use Lutes' purple values when I do it.

3) broad chin: I'll try out a couple of options and post so everyone can say what looks better.

and yes, I'll link to an original file next time (for one of the versions anyway). I work primarily in Painter but will convert it to a PSD.

edit: and TL, thanks for the anatomy lesson I'll make sure this is part of the chubby/chin/cheek revision.

[Sgt. Groovy]

It's pretty impressive how fast you've picked up the style.

As for criticism. I think the one thing contributing to the chubby habitus is the lack of shoulders (more specifically, the outline of the shoulder continues as the outline of the arm without an angle in between). I have attached a suggestion for more puffy shoulder line.

Also, one thing you should pay attention to in with shading the shiny metal parts is the sensitivity of very shiny surfaces to reflect secondary light (ambient, reflected from other parts of the object), which causes lighter areas near the shadow side edges (that is, the darkest spot of shiny objects is usually not right at the "horizon" of the object). The arrows in the lower image point this out.

And, even though eyebrows are not always the same shade as the hair, I think yours would benefit of a little reddish tint to them.

[Jetrel]

2) royal purple: I'll give the royal-guard sprite a look. I was browsing somewhere here and read an article on team colours, so that does make sense. I'll switch the red out.

To summarize this - when you went to that page showing the unit sprites, they all had these patches of red on them; often on things like shields and such. As it turns out these patches of "red" will actually be "blue" if the unit is on the blue team. This is not the case for portraits, which we don't yet have a good solution for programmatically recoloring. But even if it were, it would be advantageous for all of our portraits for a given faction to (generally) share the same color for accents, so that when we can recolor them, we can do the same transformation on all of them.

[turin]

Very nice. The 'stockiness' doesn't really bother me, but if you want to fix it, Sgt Groovy's suggestion should do it.

Actually, his body build looks kind of like the pictures I've seen of Mongolian cavalry, e.g. Ghengis Khan... heh.

[Tamur]

Is it all right to attach files on a regular basis here? Linking to a PSD on my file server has me a bit bandwidth-worried for future.

[zookeeper]

Is it all right to attach files on a regular basis here?

Oh, certainly.

[Tamur]

OK, out of time for today but I'll be back at it tomorrow. Here are two revised versions. The changes are subtle between the two, but I'd appreciate feedback on the thinner versus regular versions. If the thin-camp wish, I can push him to even thinner by moving the breastplate towards him a bit and angling it differently. However, again, I prefer him the way he is in the standard version.

Standard


Thinned a bit


Hmmm, max attachment is 512KB, that won't do for a 1025x1025px PSD. So, here's a link to a 730Kb zip file: http://cicero.modwest.com/images/wesnot ... sicref.zip

[Sgt. Groovy]

I vote for the thinned, no need to make him any thinner. To feel out for a more rugged look, you might want to try a five o'clock shadow.

[Tamur]

Scritchies added... with those, the thinned version looks much better to me. Other comments?

[theotherhiveking]

The shade around his mouth is a beard? If not it looks bad for me. If it is a beard make it darker.

[toms]

The scarf should go around his neck, now it looks like it does not. (see the attachment)