Khalifate facelift: Redux

[Sleepwalker]

Hey I might draw some inspiration from their stances, their cloth necklace things and those shoulder slung capes. The kalifa archers and the Ekim guys might fit for that. Thanks.

I edited my last post with a small update to the Amirs arm. Making it look slightly more bent (all the other arms on the two guys are bent, that might give the impression that they are short. They look fine to me though).

[thespaceinvader]

The cloth necklace is supposed to be part of the turban - you can wrap it up around your face during sandstorms.

[zookeeper]

The ahadath's axe seems to be at an odd angle. His arm seems to be pointing southwest, but is holding the axe completely perpendicular to the viewer and perfectly vertically too, as if trying to make it as easy as possible for the artist to draw it.

[Sapient]

I am sad that the Amir is losing his spear. But, since you are drawing something close to a samurai, you may want to draw inspration from Neoriceisgood's version. Note the long arms and dynamic posture:

[Noy]

If it didn't, almost every single Kalifa unit would have pierce damage... completely unbalancing vs the drakes. On that note I think we might also remove the Rami, because having archers is kinda redundant and we might be able to do without them alltogether with a mix of different units.

[Sleepwalker]

Actually it would have been easier for me to draw the Ahadath holding his axe in the other hand. But considering that he will hold his bow with his shield arm I drew it this way, so that you can see the bow during his ranged attack animation without the shield obstructing it, being behind instead. Yes, he will hold his shield while firing the bow.

I tweaked the axe a bit more...

Sapient: You probably misunderstood me. That the Amir looks a bit like a samurai was kind of an accident, though Neoriceisgood's samurai guys does look cool. I'll see if can find more interesting poses for other units.

I tweaked the Amir's sword arm again. If I make it any longer his hand will reach under his kneecaps if he relaxes his arm...

[Wintermute]

great progress! I think that any efforts to get the art on these guys up to mainline quality are well worth it.

[jb]

Your sprites look great. Nice work.

[Dave]

Cool! Looks very nice! It'd be nice to see the Kalifa make it into the game at last!

David

[Cuyo Quiz]

I can't find the unit tree for these guys... help?

Also, what is the inspiration?. I'm getting Ottoman/turcopole ideas from these.

EDIT:Sublime, Turuk. Ottoman/Rashidun, i see.

[Turuk]

Cuyo Quiz, here you go.

http://www.wesnoth.org/units/1.4/C/era_ ... _x.34.html

[Noy]

Also, what is the inspiration?. I'm getting Ottoman/turcopole ideas from these.

EDIT:Sublime, Turuk. Ottoman/Rashidun, i see.

No/Not exactly. Its the Abbasaid Caliphate, which was much more developed militarily than their forbearers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbasid_Caliphate

[Girgistian]

Yay! Arab factions. Are you planning to animate them by yourself as well or do you mind if I have a go with the attack and defence animations?

[Sleepwalker]

Thanks, glad you like them.

I'll draw the karadis as soon as I know more about mounted unit size... check out art contributions for my horse topic.

Girgistan: Sure, I don't mind as long as it turns out good . It would lighten my burden considerably so give it a shot if you like.


EDIT: Horse issue cleared, expect to see the Karadis soon.

[Jetrel]

In response to your inquiry about horses - I haven't gotten any other horse units done, but this is a final version of how the L1 horseman will be revised:

height-comparison-horse.png (4.33 KiB) Viewed 5662 times

I'd like to see a little bit more variation in shading/saturation on the body armour (the rest is fine), but that's a personal preference. When Jetryl's giving the thumbs up, you know you're in pretty good shape.

One major bit of advice, and this is regarding both sangel's comment here, and the question of "reinterpreting" the existing sprites. A few of those sprites are wearing very saturated, primary-colored outfits. If at all possible, it's probably best to avoid any colors that can be confused with team colors. A great example of this was the red mage, which I made a merely "ruddy" (kind of dusty maroon) hue, because I wanted to get it to the point that it couldn't possibly be confused as being on the red team. Many of the "large patches of primary color" on the existing units can probably be replaced with TC. Also, a rule that basically comes out of this is that color is far less of an option for differentiating units. It used to be that our loyalist general line was differentiated by a series of colors (orange->red->purple->blue), but when they were team-colored, we removed this and made the costumes more distinctive and more elaborate on the higher-level ones. The same should done here.

By extension, although these are inspired by the Abassaids, in a game like wesnoth, it's artistically a bad idea to be too strict about limiting yourself to precisely one historical culture. Just as our "loyalists" are vaguely european, it's actually a very good idea, in terms of visual variety, to work in any interesting costume elements you can think of that vaguely apply to an arab-flavor army. Wesnoth is emphatically not a historical game - it's a fantasy game, and it's a bad idea, visually, to be too conservative about designs. This is the only arab-flavored faction we're going to have in the game (assuming this even gets finished), so if there's some cool costume element that would enhance these guys, but doesn't specifically fit the Abbasaids in history, that's NOT a reason to forgo its use. These guys may be primarily inspired by that group, but they also act as a representation of basically all mideastern fantasy/history. They're never going to be facing off against, say, a historical turkish army, or a historical persian army - in fact they're basically doing the opposite, and are going to be used to represent the spirit of those as well. So work whatever elements from them that will visually make these look cool. Remember that "looking cool" is your primary objective.

For example, right now, there's a certain amount of "visual sameness" between the Ahadath and Amir lines. Perhaps one of them, say, the Amir line, could have turbans around their helms, or in place of them? Think thoughts like this.