The Horse's Butt.

[thespaceinvader]

Indeed, the lance, like a lot of metallic weapons, looks much brighter and sharper without an outline, however it shows up abominably against the forum background. Look at the version on grass to see how it'll look in-game.

I would suggest that you don't resize things in pixel art. Redraw them. Resizing will only make them very blurry. You need, and i know it's a pain, to bite the bullet and redraw anything that you need to change the size of. Fir selection, however, i tend to go for the freehand tool, which works very well at high levels of zoom in pixel art, which is hotkey 'F'.

[Lecter]

Aint the lance a bit smaller than the other horseman images?

[thespaceinvader]

Heavily foreshortened due to the angle of the image. Though possibly it ought to be held out to the side for the directional standing frame, as it is for the standard one, and this could become the attack frame (or the starting point for an attack animation. Hmm...*edits*

[Na'enthos]

Heh. That soldier sits on his horse like a sack of potatoes.

..anyway, carry on.

[thespaceinvader]

MM, he does look kinda hunched. I think that's a problem with the armour, primarily. It could probably do with a little more definition around the shoulder blade area.

[DJ1337]

I think his middle back needs to be narrowed a bit, or the shadow in the centre of his lower back needs to be slightly lessened. Maybe a bit of collar to his armour to make his neck look longer (in standard frame only).

[thespaceinvader]

MM, yeah. Changing the lip at the top of his armour from an upward to a downward curve and narrowing his lower back would probably do it. I'll get on it after work.

[Redeth]

Resurrection time. Following on Master Stilgar's efforts, what do you think?

[JW]

Resurrection time. Following on Master Stilgar's efforts, what do you think?

When spinning, it looks pretty fluid. When paused on the north frame the tail blends into the rear a little too much IMO. Very nice work though other than than minor issue.

[irrevenant]

The feathers(?) on his helmet look like they shrink in the NE and SW frames. He's rotating too quickly to see much else - could you slow him down a bit, please?

[Jetrel]

Well, this is interesting. I really should have posted my own work on the subject earlier; I didn't expect anyone else to duplicate efforts. I've basically done the same thing for the L1 horseman, but I combined it with a pile of other fixes. The end result was to make the horses considerably bigger (and more anatomically correct - their legs actually bend like real horse legs, rather than being the stilts that our current horses have), and to make the riders comparable in size to the L1 spearmen. After doing some study on what real horse riders look like, I came to realize that horse riders don't "sit down" in the saddle - their legs have some bend to them, but it's more like they're standing with their legs splayed to the sides - it only marginally reduces their height, rather than reducing their leg length by half. Some people might want to cry foul about biggerism, but these are -horses-. They'll look unusually large for L1 units, but horses are supposed to be large; they're about the same scale as the wolves.


I'll post those in a bit, after which I'd like to do some division of labor.

Redeth, I assign to you the task of making a single attack frame, and a single defend frame for each direction. We actually might not even need that much - we may only need a SE and NE defend frame (make those two first, and see if we actually need the others). I'd prefer to have 2-frame defend animations for NE and SE, rather than unique defend animations for N, NE, SE, and S.

Me, I'm going to work on movement animations; creative mechanism provided some images that will serve as a guide, and I'm going to use those to actually animate the horse's walking.



Once we're done with L1, I'd love help with cloning all frames for the other levels, and for the elven rider line. There will be minor costume changes to most of these units (and somewhat major changes for the elves).

[Shadow]

Meh.

Since I've already redone one horse and I must redo it again. I would offer to cut the process a bit. I would lend a hand on the animations if needed.

[Jetrel]

Meh.

Since I've already redone one horse and I must redo it again. I would offer to cut the process a bit. I would lend a hand on the animations if needed.

It would be quite welcome - after redeth and I finish the level-1, we'll have a good deal of work to do to make the level-2.


Here are the frames - the four directions, and a size comparison hopefully showing that although the whole unit is considerably bigger than he used to be, it does make sense for him to be that way (and that the rider is, with his legs bent, slightly shorter than the similar L1 spearman).

[Shadow]

Light miscommunication. I would help with the basic animations because I need them too. Else I would just wait until they are finished and copy them for my own purposes. I would help with the basic animations if wanted nothing more.

[Jetrel]

Light miscommunication. I would help with the basic animations because I need them too. Else I would just wait until they are finished and copy them for my own purposes. I would help with the basic animations if wanted nothing more.

Okay, try and make me attacking and defending frames for the north-east. If you can, see if you can make a 2-frame defend animation, furthermore, have him rear towards the north as he does it, so that it can possibly get used for both NE and N directions.