Mefisto in vegetative state

[thespaceinvader]

Again, you need to move that whole tail. It looks like the body is mounted on a statue tail at present. Any movement in the body needs to be reflected right through the whole body.

[Mefisto]

Even when the snakish parts of the body acts as a support? Real snakes move all their bodies only when they slither. Lamia is like a dancing cobra.

[Girgistian]

It only has to move very, very slightly so that we can see that there's some weight shifting from side to side while she turns - subtle movement like this is kinda hard and time consuming to animate, but it's worth the practice.

[Mefisto]

You mean one pixel here, two pixel there? OK. I'll work on this. I thought that TSI meant the upper body and that's why I worked on rotation of torso.

BTW, I have a request. Could anybody post the image of magenta scale for TC recolored to nine team color scales? I tried to install Wesnoth_TC, but compilling something in console is still a nightmare for me and it would be much quicker for me to manually recolor magenta pixels from sprites. I use limited palette colors so this is not a problem for a tiny sprite.

[thespaceinvader]

Yes - not major movement, but subtle shifting to show that it is actually animate, and not a statue - in the same way that when a person stands still, but shifts around in place, their feet may not move but that WHOLE of the rest of their body does. If you don't show that, it looks wrong.

If you want to see your units TC'd, just copy and paste the image over a base frame from the game, load up, and use the debugger to create an instance of that unit. Use the 'change side' command to see all the colours.

[Mefisto]

I managed to exchange the image of merman brawler into the image of magenta scale and open it game in debug mode (I wanted to see all the colors.

Use the 'change side' command to see all the colours.

Well I could only shift between sides which were present in the scenario. (red and light blue in this case). Is it possible to see all the teams?

[thespaceinvader]

It should be - I can see all the colours in the first scenario of HttT, that's the one i use for all my testing.

[Mefisto]

OK, I managed to do it. I used a multiplayer map with all nine sides and a faction from Bad Monn Rising because the game didn't allowed me to modify mainline units. The result is:

[Vendanna]

While I don't hold knowledge about how a lamia would have looked like, I think that it would have been a better approach to TC the lamia's tail rather than his "human skin" for a few reasons.

A) It is normal to see different coloration on earth snakes scales without too much problems, but skin color is a bit more tricky (since the coloration also depends on the blood color I think)

B) The tail is way bigger in the sprite than the small body part, so its easier to spot the TC in the tail that on a tiny fraction of the body.

Of course, that's what my election would have been when doing it.

Now about the sprite, there are a few things that may improve it.

1) The Lamia's stance (with the hands at the sides looks) rather uncomfortable and unnatural, try changing the hand that doesn't hold the bow to another position.

2) The end of the tail is "off the ground", I don't think that's a problem during an animation, but as "stationary stance" would look like the lamia is wasting energy to have it over the ground. for no purpose, I suggest approaching its end into the rest of the tail.

The rest seems ok and nice
2)

[doofus-01]

2) The end of the tail is "off the ground",

I think that's because there's a rattle on the end.

I think that it would have been a better approach to TC the lamia's tail rather than his "human skin" for a few reasons.

For what it's worth, I'd agree with that. The hair (little snakes?) could probably work as well.

[Mefisto]

Thank for the replies. First of all I don't consider my unit ready yet, though it is almost done. I imagined three levels of Lamia - L1 has plain brown tail, L2 - which you can see - has striped tail and golden jevelry; L3 three not done yet, will have even more ornate tail (and much longer) and the crown.
So in this project natural for me was to design TC coloration over human part of lamia's body - to avoid confusion. Besides - Think of primitive tribes who paint their body to distinguish it from others. My Lamias don't wear clothes. I design it as a tropical creature (she will dwell in the swamps, tropical forests and caves.

I don't like the rattle on the end of tail. I thought that it would be good idea but now I think it's unnecesary. I'm going to elongate the tail slightly. The hair of L3 will be in form of little snake. The hair of L1 is a simple hair. The hair of L2 is something in between.

This pose is a "bow" pose, readying to shoot. She grabs an arrow from the quiver. I see it's not clear so I need to lighten it. I made already the "rest" pose with the hands down. When the unit is finished I'll post it.

Now somethink different: Wose. I intended if for "Delfador's Memoirs". I hope it's good enough. If not, maybe somebody else wants it.

[thespaceinvader]

Very nice job =)

[Mefisto]

Wow. Thespaceinvader praised me. I attach slightly reworked wersion with enhanced contrast and slightly changed eyes. It should look better on dark background. Back to work on lamias and others.

Edit: I made lamia L1 unit (lamia-scout) on the basis of the previous unit I presented lately. I made two variants: on the left is more colorfull version which is less distinct from L2 and on the right is the more faded variant which has more distinct coloration but can be dull looking in game. Since Im working now on improving L2 unit (upper body stays, pattern of the tail stays, the length of the tail, the quiver and the bow are going to got changed) I have to decide if I retain the previous colors or make them more vivid for this unit. I don't want to confuse the colors of the tail with TC, so i'm not going to make them much more vivid.

[A-Red]

You might want to make the tail slightly shorter on L1, just to give that little extra bit of distinction. I personally prefer the green-tailed version--it more closely matches the L2 so that they look like the same creature, but the L2's colored bands still make it easy to tell them apart.

[kitty]

That's quite a nice wose!
Coming up with a concept for the wose that fits in our frame is quite a challenge and I like your solution to it!

But this guy has still got a couple of technical problems....
While I like the way the treetop isn't a mass but extremely detailed and see-through it is very clearly generated by a certain brush and/or filter and appears due to that stylistically different from the rest of the figure, it is less painterly. You should try to reunite these two halves of this guy by giving the crown more colour variety, some softer shading etc. The bark on the other hand appears very soft, like some smooth material instead of the hard and cracky stuff it really is.
And if you convert your wose to greyscale you can see that you only used a very small range of midtone values - to bring your figure to life you'll need real darks and real lights as well!
My last crit is the face, something about it doesn't add up for me. One the one side you have those menacing glowing eyes and the mouth with those nasty teeth but on the other hand the nose is incredibly cute and chubby (and not tree-ish at all). I'd suggest thinking a bit about which direction you want to go with him...

Keep it up!