Tribes of the North pixel art

[Boldek]

I like your alt shaman better, seeing as he looks more barbarian, except that maybe it would be more fitting for your orig, except that he resembles malin keshar too much. and why would a magic wielding and sword swinging guy evolve to a wimpy dude with a stick? better magic channeling maybe?

[Chtomorc]

Don't know who Malin Keshar is... Maybe I have to look into and change it. First sprite was only a recouloured one, I don't have any inspiration, it may come from Keshar sprite ...

From a evolving point of view, maybe I wasn't clear. The lvl 1 shamans are designed to be naturally in resonance with the ice / water element. They had little control on it though and also use a axe to fight.

The shaman can evolve to 2 lvl 2. The first(the blue mage) is a classical magic user, meant to be a mystic leader, who accomplishe the main rites of the tribes. He can drain the heat from his enemies in melee and regenerate himself or cast powerfull ice bolts in ranged combat. So he don't need weapon anymore.
The other (ice dancer) is an ascet who train is body and master ice summoning to make blades he use for fighting. They are sort of artists and look after body and mind perfection. They are a lot less "brutal" than other barbarians and can cast ranged slowing bolt to their foes.

The lvl 3 magic user both come from the blue mage, they represent two distinctive path in the mastery of water, and are lead by their belief in the two faces of their main goddess know as the Earth Mother. The first his Val'Hal, the udder of life, and the other his Sacha, the Udder of death. So, there is an ice controller who his a (relatively) pacifist healer, and the other one his the brutal blood controller, who make all the fighters around him berserk and wear a mighty axe in battle to slaughter his ennemies (he is a little mad himself).

So I thnik that the lvl 1 and both lvl 3 fit relatively well the concept, but both the lvl 2 need to be redone.
As I said, I need to work a lot on the blue mage to make him fill the gap between lvl 1 and lvl 3, and I'll try to make a lvl 2 ice dancer from scratch when I have more time.

EDIT : what do you think of the lvl 1 and lvl 3 ? What could I make to make them better looking / filling the concept ? Ttechnical improvement suggestions are welcome to

[Finrod]

The newer pic for the Shaman is definitely better for his role. I think the Ice Dancer is fine (I still think his attack should be bigger, or have skirmish)

To make the Priest of Sacha look more crazy, you could have his eyes glow red when he does his bezerker attack. (like the Dwarvish Bezerker) And you could have him do the Bezerker laugh too.

Malin Kashur is the guy from DID.

@Boldek, you can see the attacks and lvls in the Faction and Era thread.

[Chtomorc]

@ Finrod : I don't even make a try at animation, but I'll keep your idea in mind when I make the priest of Sasha anim

I had almost finish the hunter line... I'm pretty happy of the lvl 1 and the lvl 2 Strider, but the rhino hunter and ranger are subject to change, if you have advices to improve them, they're welcome.

I had made a new attempt for the lvl 2 ice mage, to make transition between shaman and lvl 3... But there is something odd with him and I can't get what it is, maybe an exterior look will help me.

Thanks for comments !

[Crendgrim]

I assume you speak of the first picture.
This guy has some weird legs: His right (our left) leg looks like being stretched outwards, so he seems to have bandy legs.
Besides, the right (our left) leg is a bit too far to our right, what also makes it looking weird.


Crend

[Dixie]

Imho, your lv2 hunter (rhino) is way too similar to the lv1. And is he the one to level to the ranger? Because the ranger is much bigger! I know these are frankensprites, but you might want to find a way to make your level 2 a bit taller and larger. The gear is generally okay, he's just pretty small for a lv2...

[Chtomorc]

Concerning rhino hunter, give me your thoughs of the improvement I have made.

I think the developpement of muscles fit well with the fighter line (faction-wise).

[Dixie]

I think you've pretty much fixed the size issue and as far as I'm concerned, he looks decent enough

[Shinobody]

Not to be picky, but I think that there's some big leap between level 2 and 3. (I mean the ranger looking one).
Well, the only thing he's got in common with the guys is the fact he uses javelins. He gets new hood (instead of old scarf), gets mailshirt, hell, he even gets bolas, boots are new too...
Shouldn't there be more to link him to former versions? I dunno, maybe even TCed hood would look more familiar...
Those are just my thoughts though, so feel free to ignore them if you like
As goes for actual quality (apart from designs), people with lot more experience than me already said that it's great. So I won't say anything.

[Chtomorc]

The ranger clothes are meant to look like gray wool shirt Maybe I need to change colour. For bolas, I was wondering also giving them to the lvl 2. Hood is new, but it is meant to be an upgrade of the lvl 2 cape (not scarff). Maybe the lvl 2 cape is not enough long to make it clearly visible.

I am not satisfied with the fur of the boots for lvl 1 and 2. I consider change them to fit more the lvl 3 ones and give them same colour.

Although ranger is clearly a recoloured version from the mainline one, I like it, and modifications should be done on the lvl 2 unit.

[Shinobody]

If this would be it, giving lvl 2 even simple mailshirt would be:
1. Visible upgrade
2. Something clearly linking the unit with BOTH possible upgrades ... Wait, "strider" is not 2's upgrade, it's dead end?...
Then maybe just switch the sprites, and have current sprite of "strider" evolving into "ranger", and have "masked" version being dead end? I mean, They seem to be closer related than the other way round...
Or like I said before, try giving him some simple chainmail, and maybe adding scarf to ranger? Something like that:

This humble sprites are in no way supposed to look finished or what. They just contains edit suggestions.

hunter_line_sug.PNG (3.72 KiB) Viewed 3778 times